Live data from Hacker News

Samwers Clone Stripe

paymill.de

71–80 of 167 posts

Re: Samwers Clone Stripe

#71
post #31
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are vastly underestimating the effort required in setting up a payment gateway in a country.

Why? It's just some contracts and APIs. And it doesn't explain all those other startups that deliberately limit themselves (and then later have to buy local clones because they did not expand quickly enough).

It is more than that, it is tax rates, money laundering the archaic regulation that differs between countries (even in the EU) a lot of boilerplate stuff needs to be in place.

Re: Samwers Clone Stripe

#72
post #48
post #28

I don't get it. Why do US net startups very often make the same mistake of not expanding into the whole world quickly? It took eBay something like 4 years to go to Germany, by which time there was a local clone there that proved to be uncatchable. The expensive result was that eBay had to buy the clone (Alando) for 43 million dollars to become relevant. Kickstarter is still US-only. Stripe as well. So are countless o…

Groupon took your advice and (in my opinion) has contributed to their poor numbers. The problem is that when an established US company looks to expand, those countries tend to put a premium on expansion there. For example, if Groupon expands to the UK, sales people will ask for more money up front and put a premium on "acting faster". Oh, and pretty much what everyone else mentioned... It's extremely difficult for an…

Guess who implemented Groupon outside of the US? The Samwer brothers. They created CityDeals, that merged with Groupon. One of the brothers has been in charge (unofficially, I think) of Groupon's international operations ever since.

Edit: Actually, Marc Samwer was head of international operations until earlier this year: http://gigaom.com/europe/marc-samwer-out-as-groupons-interna...

Re: Samwers Clone Stripe

#73
post #5

Looks like they're a PHP shop and only offer PHP client libs yet. Seems they didn't even understand the message Stripe has in kinds of developer focus. Also: Why would I use a payment service of the biggest copy cat company in the country ? To deliver them my revenue numbers on a silver plate so they can decide if they should "enter my market"? They don't even openly publish the upcoming fees and just want you to "ve…

I want European credit card billing _NOW_. Sadly, the only support german companies it seems. :-(

An opportunity to clone the clone in other European countries?

Re: Samwers Clone Stripe

#75
post #30
post #28

I don't get it. Why do US net startups very often make the same mistake of not expanding into the whole world quickly? It took eBay something like 4 years to go to Germany, by which time there was a local clone there that proved to be uncatchable. The expensive result was that eBay had to buy the clone (Alando) for 43 million dollars to become relevant. Kickstarter is still US-only. Stripe as well. So are countless o…

You are vastly underestimating the effort required in setting up a payment gateway in a country.

Those difficulties and processes would be the same for Stripe as Samwers.

Re: Samwers Clone Stripe

#76
post #50
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Groupon took your advice and (in my opinion) has contributed to their poor numbers. The problem is that when an established US company looks to expand, those countries tend to put a premium on expansion there. For example, if Groupon expands to the UK, sales people will ask for more money up front and put a premium on "acting faster". Oh, and pretty much what everyone else mentioned... It's extremely difficult for an…

Facebook didn't do the mistake of buying the local German copycat (StudiVZ). StudiVZ is now dead.

Same in NL (hyves.nl)

Re: Samwers Clone Stripe

#77
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Although Recurly could be technically used in Europe, it generates invalid invoices (at least here in Spain). We are switching away from it, and personally, I do not recommend it anymore.

well. you could do your own invoicing if you're not satisfied with the pdf they generate. Stripe and Paymill don't do invoicing, too.

Ouch, that's a big minus from the point of view of an European company - not having to look for another app to generate invoices or futz around with generating your own was nice.

The specific issue with Recurly that we had is that they silently changed their platform to perform VIES validation on all VAT numbers. While this makes sense for transactions with entities from outside of the merchant's country, validating VAT numbers for German-to-German or Spanish-to-Spanish transactions is silly. Not only do such transactions always get charged VAT, but it's possible that a given string is a valid VAT number and yet is not present in VIES. Since you will pay (and therefore charge the customer) VAT for same-country transactions anyway, you don't care if the number that the customer provided is valid according to VIES.

This change has cost us a little wave of support tickets and an ugly workaround, in preparation for moving off Recurly.

I firmly believe that a company that gets online recurring payments right in Europe will become a money-printing machine in no time.

Re: Samwers Clone Stripe

#79
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want European credit card billing _NOW_. Sadly, the only support german companies it seems. :-(

An opportunity to clone the clone in other European countries?

That just seems silly. However, a Stripe equivalent for the whole of Europe would be great. Clone or not.

Re: Samwers Clone Stripe

#80
post #70
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are vastly underestimating the effort required in setting up a payment gateway in a country.

But if you are Stripe and you get millions in investments ( i.e. http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/09/sexy-payments-startup-strip... ) you can afford to hire specific european nation experts, lawyers etc.. to get into these markets quickly

Thats a dangerous strategy for such an early stage startup. They need to validate their business THEN expand. Which is what they are doing now... Stripe just started beta testing internationally.
Post reply on HN