Existing customers too? The signup button sends me to a form for new customers. Do I really have to cancel my account and open a new one?
Kristi from Braintree here. Happy to help. Just sent you an e-mail.
Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
41–50 of 96 posts
Re: Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
#42Pretty cool. I love the competition in the payments space right now. My bet is that Braintree is seeing some serious competition from Stripe and others. One thing to keep in mind is that 2.9% + 30cents is relatively high. If you go to Authorize and negotiate they will lower the price if your volume is high enough. Stripe will also negotiate once you hit a certain volume. One thing I really want to do is take on the m…
That last paragraph is spectacularly spot on - that's why I started knoxpayments.com - connecting people directly into their banks. No fees on micro, $0.18 on everything else - flat. Just won Best Enterprise at Launch 2014, and we're moving fast toward solving this problem for folks!
Do you have any data on conversion rates? I imagine they would tank through the floor if you're asking a customer to turn over their online banking credentials.
Re: Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
#43They ran this promotion before too. I tried to use it but later was told I couldn't because I'm a 3rd party payment aggregator. The trouble is they never said TPPA couldn't participate anywhere in the promotion. I felt tricked. I continued to try to set up processing with them as a TPPA but it was this long drawn out and manual process. The CEO ended up contacting me to apologies and see what the problem was. He told me they didn't disclose the TPPA restriction on the website to make it "simpler". After many phone calls with them I was never able to get set up. Stripe just came out with Stripe Connect and I was up and running in a matter of minutes. Not to mention support at stripe has never been so bad that the CEO had to contact me. In fact I think stripes real edge is their excellent support. I would never use anyone but stripe after seeing how bad it can be. Note I have no affiliation with either company. I'm a Chicagoan and want to see Chicago companies like Braintree succeed but boy what a poor job they did. Definitely not with $1500 IMO.
Re: Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no commitment if you code against Spreedly instead of against Braintree's API. Then, once you save your $1450, you can switch processors if you're so inclined by changing just one token in your code. Spreedly is a unified API for 58 payment gateways, a gateway-agnostic billing info vault so your customer info isn't trapped in whatever processor you chose at the time they signed up, and can alleviate much of t…
Have you ever had to change gateways? They charge 2 cents on top of gateway fees - would it be substantial for you if you went direct to the gateway? I imagine less sales at higher prices it's worth it. Many lower price sales it would be worth it to gateway hop manually cost wise.
> Have you ever had to change gateways?
Several times. And have lost customers in the process, since any customer info stored at the gateway is lost and getting hundreds of people to re-type their billing info in is a big undertaking and a big pain.
The cost of "hopping gateways" for any SaaS has little to do with the cost of the gateway or the cost of development. It's all about customer retention.
When I left one merchant account provider which had ratcheted up its rates every month for years to the point that continuing with them was absurd, the gateway refused to provide my customer info to me or transfer it to a new provider. It simply wasn't mine to have, in their view. That will never happen again; even if I leave Spreedly, they will give me the info to take with me.
> They charge 2 cents on top of gateway fees
Whether it's a $29/month customer or a $2000/month customer, 2 pennies just doesn't register. Let's say I have 500 customers that get charged each month. That's $10/month in transaction fees from Spreedly. That would buy me... 2 more ad clicks from Google. Or the peace of mind that my business's billing info and cash flow can't disappear overnight.
Re: Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever had to change gateways? They charge 2 cents on top of gateway fees - would it be substantial for you if you went direct to the gateway? I imagine less sales at higher prices it's worth it. Many lower price sales it would be worth it to gateway hop manually cost wise.
The monthly fee makes it unappealing for small volume customers, and the per-transaction fee makes it unappealing for large volume customers. I'm guessing there's some intermediate range, when you are negotiating the final deal, where it's comforting to have that "flexibility".
[deleted]
Re: Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever had to change gateways? They charge 2 cents on top of gateway fees - would it be substantial for you if you went direct to the gateway? I imagine less sales at higher prices it's worth it. Many lower price sales it would be worth it to gateway hop manually cost wise.
The monthly fee makes it unappealing for small volume customers, and the per-transaction fee makes it unappealing for large volume customers. I'm guessing there's some intermediate range, when you are negotiating the final deal, where it's comforting to have that "flexibility".
Justin from Spreedly here. Dan, thanks for the kind mention! Dan's use case is one of the main driver's we see. We also see most interest from businesses/services that need their own vault as they work across multiple payment gateways. Either a SaaS billing/booking platform or someone working with 3 or 4 different gateway's globally. Single API/Single Vault/No PCI headache. Many of our customers are weighing up PCI L1 for card storage and/or integration to multiple gateways or Spreedly.
In terms of Dan's scenario we had a customer whose primary gateway was unresponsive early Sunday morning which happened to be their biggest day of the week. They brought a Stripe account up in around 5 - 10 minutes and processed 6 figures that day. Not sure how you ROI that against our fees but they were happy!
Re: Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
#47They ran this promotion before too. I tried to use it but later was told I couldn't because I'm a 3rd party payment aggregator. The trouble is they never said TPPA couldn't participate anywhere in the promotion. I felt tricked. I continued to try to set up processing with them as a TPPA but it was this long drawn out and manual process. The CEO ended up contacting me to apologies and see what the problem was. He told…
(I'm an engineer at Braintree.)
Hey Luke, we had an internal discussion about what happened with RaceMetrics and came to several conclusions about what we could do better. The restrictions on who can use Braintree and who can't now are listed here: https://www.braintreepayments.com/faq#restricted-business-ty...
Your experience with us was before we launched our Marketplace product, which eliminates the need for many people to onboard as a TPPA. If you were to apply now, things would be a lot better.
Re: Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
#48I'm a current Braintree customer, where my start-up integrates to their services via our custom cart. I can't really compare them to their other competitors, but one of the things I really like is the ability to call them and ask questions about my business workflow.
Often times, I get their 2 cents before I change my business workflow, or I get crazy unexpected scenarios I need help on (mainly involving vendors getting new credit cards).
I appreciate them going beyond the call of duty with helping me with things outside the traditional technical api questions. I just hope the paypal acquisition won't change things...
Re: Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever had to change gateways? They charge 2 cents on top of gateway fees - would it be substantial for you if you went direct to the gateway? I imagine less sales at higher prices it's worth it. Many lower price sales it would be worth it to gateway hop manually cost wise.
> Have you ever had to change gateways? Several times. And have lost customers in the process, since any customer info stored at the gateway is lost and getting hundreds of people to re-type their billing info in is a big undertaking and a big pain. The cost of "hopping gateways" for any SaaS has little to do with the cost of the gateway or the cost of development. It's all about customer retention. When I left one m…
I was talking more about large volumes of lower amount purchases. I understand that if your prices are high even with high volume it's worth it.
Thank you for the details. Spreedly looks great.
Re: Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
#50I am working on a marketplace project right now and I was wondering if anyone can suggest an international payment processor other than PayPal. Braintree Marketplace would have been perfect but it is currently only for the US. The same goes for Balanced Payments and several other options. (My project involves freelancing and finding small projects - Sign up page at http://www.ladr.io/ if anyone interested)
Check out MangoPay.