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How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

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Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#71

Post by nodesocket »

This guy get's absolutely zero sympathy from me when he starts his rant, complaining in a condescending tone.

"It sure is a weekend. It is probably nice and cozy for most of you over there in Chicago, enjoying a ball game, visiting friends and family, grilling that steak, feeling good about yourself."

It is funny how people like this want to blame and paint American corporations as evil, yet they build their business on startups and companies that could have only been founded and successful here in the US. They hope and dream of making it to Silicon Valley, raising money from US investors. It is total hypocrisy. Don't like it, why don't you use only Serbian companies, banks, and investors to power your startup? Oh that's right...

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#73

Post by markdown »

whalesalad wrote: post #32
wheelerwj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can't pay your drivers if you have no money...

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…

Non-firstworld problems:

* Getting a loan isn't easy. * Getting a credit card isn't easy. * Getting an overdraft facility isn't easy.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#74

Post by lern_too_spel »

nodesocket wrote: post #71

This guy get's absolutely zero sympathy from me when he starts his rant, complaining in a condescending tone. "It sure is a weekend. It is probably nice and cozy for most of you over there in Chicago, enjoying a ball game, visiting friends and family, grilling that steak, feeling good about yourself." It is funny how people like this want to blame and paint American corporations as evil, yet they build their business…

He's very clearly talking about Braintree, which is based in Chicago, not about American corporations in general.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#75

Post by sk5t »

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?

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#76

Post by averagewall »

no_wizard wrote: post #69

After reading the comments, and seeing what others have gone through, and generally speaking I'm not the biggest fan of PayPal. I gotta say: +1 to stripe! https://stripe.com/ They are fantastic to work with, and its super easy to get setup with them. Hats off!

I asked Stripe a question once, and they answered! Specifically and referring to the details I had described in my question. I'd never expect that from a Paypal. But like Braintree, that will probably become a thing of the past as they grow bigger.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#77

Post by nodesocket »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #74
nodesocket wrote: post #71

This guy get's absolutely zero sympathy from me when he starts his rant, complaining in a condescending tone. "It sure is a weekend. It is probably nice and cozy for most of you over there in Chicago, enjoying a ball game, visiting friends and family, grilling that steak, feeling good about yourself." It is funny how people like this want to blame and paint American corporations as evil, yet they build their business…

He's very clearly talking about Braintree, which is based in Chicago, not about American corporations in general.

And tell me why Braintree has an obligation to take his business. He's in a risky country Serbia, which has a high potential for chargebacks and fraud.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#78

Post by ManuAloha »

We actually had the exact same situation here in Hong Kong with Braintree. They did not transfer the funds to our account and always blamed "banking partners" for the problems. The worst customer service I've dealt with and switching to Stripe as soon as it became available in Hong Kong was a no brainer.

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#79

Post by everydaypanos »

In a world where Stripe is used in very few countries - Braintree seemed like a great alternative(It was just about the time it was being bought by PayPal).

Six months into our "cooperation" they sent an email breaking the contract with us(e-commerce retailer) because their "bank" was protesting too many of our sales..

The truth of the matter is that Braintree was literally accepting all credit card transactions and had almost 0 fraud protection(for example we had orders being shipped to a Greek city, ordered by Iraqi-named citizens using US based credit cards..they all went through fine).

So they just breached the cooperation and they kept a large chunk of the owed money for like 4 months until their "bank" verified some thing or the other.

In my personal experience you cannot rely on Braintree to block fraudulent transactions for you - you have to do it yourself and pray that still you don't miss on too many frauds passing through to Braintree. Makes you wonder what use all these "credit card gateways" have if you still have to bear all the cost of doing the fraud-prevention yourself..

Re: How Braintree destroyed a successful taxi startup from Serbia

#80

Post by Buge »

brianwawok wrote: post #53
brentm wrote: post #39

Unrelated to the payment subject but it always blows my mind when companies not just copy a business model (which is fine and expected) but also more or less copy the identity along the way.

Which identity did they copy? (I mean, I suspect you are implying Uber or Lyft, but I didn't get any vibes that pointed me towards either one of them past the "app for taxi" part)

https://i.imgur.com/3pyKkY9.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/A8T3aso.jpg

They both have the name of the app in the top center, in a thin stylized font, with lots of spacing between the letters. Immediately under is the words "Pickup location" in light text on a white background then under that the address where you are being picked up. There's a blue circle to represent your location.

There's the map with pastel colors, and a popup with round corners saying "Set Pickup Location" then on the right side of that is a circle with a right 90 degree angle arrow inside with rounded corner and ends. Under that is a pushpin with a sphere with a specular highlight. In one corner of the screen is a man's silhouette inside a circle.

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