Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 158 posts

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#141

Post by mrajcok »

manquer wrote: post #98
everydaypanos wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first thing they ask you when you open an account is how much volume you have.. There is no such thing as a "backup" payment gateway. The first few weeks of operation the "backup" gateway would suspend your account for not providing the necessary volume of sales.

Not backup .. load balanced perhaps ? Across two or three ?.. you would not trust single server, cloud provider, DC , DNS for HA then why trust a single payment provider ?

This exists for high risk merchants -- there are a number of offerings like: https://www.easypaydirect.com/special-needs/load-balancing/

I'd need to do more research to find the best solution but it looks like payment processor risk is definitely something that can be mitigated.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#142

Post by jimnotgym »

sk5t wrote: post #75
jimnotgym wrote: post #61

We put a new ecommerce site live on Magento2. We were short on time, so to make everything go more smoothly we chose to move our payments to Braintree as they have an pre integrated checkout with Magento2. Of all the things I thought I would be sitting up all night sorting out, I really didn't expect it to be Braintree, but it was. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh to Americans, but the fact it was thanksgiving did not…

> I'm sorry if this sounds harsh to Americans, but the fact it was thanksgiving did not interest me in the slightest, as we are at work that day, and so are our banks. If you want to sell your service in the UK you should be available 9-5 UK time What does Braintree's SLA look like? Are these service levels something a UK customer ought to expect having enrolled for an account with Braintree?

For context, I didn't just stray onto the US Braintree site expecting UK service. I was sold to by our Paypal rep from Ireland. Braintree have a specific UK service.

" What are your support hours? For European merchants our email and phone support is available from 11am to 11pm GMT, Monday through Friday.

Of course, we offer emergency support via email 24x7x365, and have support reps and engineers on-call at all times."

I had to get my Paypal rep to get some people high up at Paypal Europe to contact Braintree to get my emergency service.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#143

Post by markdown »

joshdotsmith wrote: post #99
sanswork wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most all end users can use stripe. A lot of businesses can't https://stripe.com/global .

Stripe did introduce Stripe Atlas. Although this doesn't solve the situation totally, it's at least one of a number of helpful steps in the right direction.

That only works for a tiny proportion of Silicon Valley-like startups.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#144

Post by markdown »

vidarh wrote: post #114
markdown wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to be resident there. The same applies in the US, except in most circumstances you have to be physically present at the bank to actually open the account.

You don't need to be physically present with most banks though their frontline staff might tell you that. You will face extra requirements to prove your identity if you can't show up in person, though. E.g. when I opened my first US bank account the bank required me to get a copy my ID documents notarised, and wouldn't accept just any notary public, it had to be notarised by the US consulate.

Mind telling me which bank?

I know of only two that'll even entertain this: TD Bank and Silicon Valley Bank.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#145

Post by mdekkers »

I have been looking to move away from Braintree for a while, they are eyewateringly expensive, and are now Paypal, which I am extremely uncomfortable with. I was previously based in a country where there is no Stripe support, but that is changing, so looking at alternatives. Can't wait to move away...

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#146

Post by sk5t »

jimnotgym wrote: post #142
sk5t wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sorry if this sounds harsh to Americans, but the fact it was thanksgiving did not interest me in the slightest, as we are at work that day, and so are our banks. If you want to sell your service in the UK you should be available 9-5 UK time What does Braintree's SLA look like? Are these service levels something a UK customer ought to expect having enrolled for an account with Braintree?

For context, I didn't just stray onto the US Braintree site expecting UK service. I was sold to by our Paypal rep from Ireland. Braintree have a specific UK service. " What are your support hours? For European merchants our email and phone support is available from 11am to 11pm GMT, Monday through Friday. Of course, we offer emergency support via email 24x7x365, and have support reps and engineers on-call at all time…

This seems more like promotional material than something to rely upon. Did your contract promise time to response, with or without carve-out for US business hours? "Emergency" and "email" are not terms that frequently dwell in intimate proximity.

It's not my intent to apologize for Braintree, about whom I know virtually nothing.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#147

Post by cookiecaper »

everydaypanos wrote: post #133
flurdy wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, you can't call them "backup" to their face. But you will trickle through traffic for weeks whilst you sort out teething troubles anyway, so there is not going to be volumes after a few weeks. Then eventually you can make a decision which works best. The new provider (the backup) or the old provider. Then turn the volume to the best one. Though I would never go 100% on any of them. Maybe keep some geoip through…

It is not a matter of just being shut down due to low volume. The rates that you get depend on the volume. So the "back up" gateways end up so expensive you have no interest in even keeping them around. From my experience you end up being tied pretty hard to pretty one provider and as long as you make fraud prevention yourself you can stay in business. Problem is that if you do all the fraud prevention stuff yourself…

>It is not a matter of just being shut down due to low volume. The rates that you get depend on the volume. So the "back up" gateways end up so expensive you have no interest in even keeping them around.

The rate difference would be an investment in redundancy. If Provider A goes down, I would guess you'll be grateful to have Provider B taking the failover traffic, even if costs you an extra 2.9% in transaction costs. You'd keep feeding Provider B the minimally-acceptable amount of traffic at the higher price point to keep that redundancy alive.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#148

Post by cookiecaper »

mdpopescu wrote: post #103
whalesalad wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a local loan, "Hi, we have a very successful local business but we made a mistake with choosing a payments company that might end up killing us entirely. Here are our stats, here are the kind of transactions we're dealing with, etc... We need a loan of X to keep us operating for the next few months. what kind of terms can you give us?" Serbia might not be the kind of place where this is possible, but I could go t…

This would get me laughed at in any Romanian bank. "You managed to lose a ton of money and now you want to lose our money too?"

To be fair, it would get you laughed at in a lot of places in America too. If you have a great credit rating and a rapport with a good, locally-controlled institution, this might work. The parent seems confident it would work in his case, which is great, but it is definitely not always that easy out here.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#149

Post by cookiecaper »

sova wrote: post #12
wav-part wrote: post #5

Payment Processing/Network is the most innovation-less thing IMO. But still there is not a non-profit leader. Why ?

An excellent question. May the digital credit union arise from the ashes!

I believe I read that PayPal's founders themselves have stated that PayPal would've been impossible to start under post-9/11 banking regulations. We all know that the current (terrible) state of banking is a regulatory/legal problem, not a technical one.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#150

Post by vidarh »

markdown wrote: post #144
vidarh wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to be physically present with most banks though their frontline staff might tell you that. You will face extra requirements to prove your identity if you can't show up in person, though. E.g. when I opened my first US bank account the bank required me to get a copy my ID documents notarised, and wouldn't accept just any notary public, it had to be notarised by the US consulate.

Mind telling me which bank? I know of only two that'll even entertain this: TD Bank and Silicon Valley Bank.

Chase was the one I had to go to the US Consulate for. I've also used TD Bank, and some others that I don't remember.

The key thing is that a lot of their front line staff may either not know or don't want to deal with the hassle of this for a "normal" account holder.

Best bet is generally to get through to whatever department handles high net worth individuals or corporate accounts. Some banks also have special departments handling expats that are used to dealing with the hassle of people who are not present. And even if you're a foreign national, those departments may be able/willing to help.

Even if they're not the right ones to handle the account opening (I certainly was not a high net worth client when I opened my first ones) these are the teams most likely to know if their bank allows for it and who to talk to.

If you have a lawyer or accountant, my impression is that your odds go up just by channeling your request through them. Presumably it makes them think you're more likely to be a potential high value client. In general this sidesteps a lot of complications with banks.

An approach some may allow if they do need you to come in is for you to come in to non-branch offices. E.g. a large bank with a private wealth management or investment banking office in your country may be willing to let you pop in (by appointment) to show your ID there if you find the right person and ask nicely.

I get the impression that with a lot of banks just demonstrating that you know about premier/high net worth departments or think to go to a corporate / investment department creates the implication in their mind that you're not a regular customer and should be treated with some extra care just in case you turn out to be important.

Post reply on HN