Poll: How do you bill recurring payments? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#81

Post by tzs » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 8:12 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #39

tzs wrote: post #10

We keep the credit card numbers on file (yes, fully complying with PCI) and handle the recurring billing ourselves.

Impressive. Do you feel this is worth the money and effort? How big is the company?

We peaked several years ago at around 100k credit card transaction a month, but that line of our business is in an area that is in decline generally (I don't want to go into detail since I'm not a spokesman for the company, but basically it involves selling something that some very big and powerful companies have a strong interest in making free as it is a compliment to their products).

I suspect that the smaller companies like us will be out of this line of business in a year or two, and even the big players will be out of it in 5. Nowadays we're down to about 20k transactions a month.

Back then, it was worth it both for cost and flexibility but now there are a lot more options so I'm going to reevaluate.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#82

Post by fastspring » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 8:26 PM UTC

For an all-in-one subscription management system (merchant account, gateway, order page merchandising, VAT, etc.), there's FastSpring.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#83

Post by tashmahalic » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 9:19 PM UTC

I'm planning to use Paypal Adaptive Payments for a site I'm building. Can anyone save me?

I'm building a Ruby site and will charge my users automatically on a monthly basis, based on their usage, so their charge varies. They agree to a billing agreement when they sign up, and their charges will vary mostly between $0.25 and $5.00.

I need a payment service that:

(1) enables me to automatically charge my users varying amounts (without them approving each time),

(2) has a decent micropayment fee structure ($0.05 + 5% for less than $10),

(3) allows my users to pay with any credit/debit card without requiring a proprietary login (e.g. Amazon), and

(4) can store my users' billing info so I don't have to be PCI compliant - I just do an API call to charge them.

The only service I've found meeting my needs is Paypal's Adaptive Payments API. I've had some bad experiences in the past with Paypal and I'm wary based on others' feedback (e.g. "Paypal is the Anti-Christ"), but I don't see any other option.

Does anyone know of a good alternative?

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#84

Post by peeplaja » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 9:28 PM UTC

Out of out-of-the box solutions like listed in the Poll, CheddarGetter has by far the best pricing for any bootstrapper.

Our European startup is using Adyen, a Dutch company.

I also use Amazon Payments for a subscription service I have.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#85

Post by SupremumLimit » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 10:15 PM UTC

jordanvisco wrote: post #72

patio11 wrote: post #2

Spreedly provides the logic, Paypal the gateway. It works, it took vanishingly little time to get working eight (a few hours, total), it is fairly inexpensive, and it didn't require a real merchant account, which would be difficult to get for my business. ("You live where? I see. And your business does what exactly? I see. And you have five figures in yearly sales? I see. Thanks, we'll pass.")

We did this for one of our startups but had major issues after the first month when it turned out that spreedly doesn't db the credit card cvv ('cause they're not allowed) and then paypal wouldn't let us bill without the cvv code. We've had numerous issues with paypal not letting us do some simple things just because they made a decision at some point that we were sketchy and shouldn't be allowed and they tell us the…

And also, Paypal only allows transactions without CVV for US and Canadian accounts, so if you're in another country Paypal + Spreedly isn't an option for recurring billing. Took an hour on the phone with Paypal to find this out.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#86

Post by SupremumLimit » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 10:27 PM UTC

El34 wrote: post #26

locusm wrote: post #20

Any comment from Australian devs as Im about to go through this myself. PayPal is the anti christ, not an option for me.

Paypal website payments standard is your only option here. Unless you want to bill in AUD, you can't really use a merchant account in Australia. It's technically possible to use NAB to acquire in foreign currencies (ie. USD), but it's not feasible for small startups due to cost and complexity and the bank not actually knowing how. I lost my real HN account because I'm an idiot or whatever, but send questions to wtfau…

This is interesting. I'm in the process of getting a merchant account from BNZ in New Zealand, they are a subsidiary of NAB. They are the only option here for billing in USD but at least they have an actual product for it called CurrencySelect and it seems like this is a workable solution and nobody is too confused by it. The fees are pretty high though - starting at 8.1% per transaction and only going down starting from $25K in volume.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#87

Post by dangrossman » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 11:34 PM UTC

endtime wrote: post #79

Authorize.net, though we don't really like it. The API is ugly and we can't update a recurring bill (so if someone changes their plan we have to ask for their payment info all over again). It's not enough of a priority to change it right now, because most of our clients pay us offline anyway, but eventually we'd like to move to something a little more modern.

You can't change the amount with ARB? I thought you could.

Store their card data in Authorizenet CIM and run a nightly cron job to make the charges you need. You can charge whatever amount you need and never have to ask for payment info twice.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#88

Post by dangrossman » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 11:36 PM UTC

Authorize.net's CIM to store the payment data, and a nightly cron job to charge whoever's monthly subscription fee is due. It's not that hard, everyone managed before these subscription-as-a-service companies popped up in the past few years.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#89

Post by dh » Fri, Feb 11, 2011, 12:02 AM UTC

bobx11 wrote: post #41

I use chargify but I don't want to vote them up

Sorry to hear that, as a founder I would love to learn how we can do better. Feel free to contact me anytime and chat.

Re: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?

#90

Post by landyman » Fri, Feb 11, 2011, 1:11 AM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #87

endtime wrote: post #79

Authorize.net, though we don't really like it. The API is ugly and we can't update a recurring bill (so if someone changes their plan we have to ask for their payment info all over again). It's not enough of a priority to change it right now, because most of our clients pay us offline anyway, but eventually we'd like to move to something a little more modern.

You can't change the amount with ARB? I thought you could. Store their card data in Authorizenet CIM and run a nightly cron job to make the charges you need. You can charge whatever amount you need and never have to ask for payment info twice.

Yes, you can change the amount with ARB -- once you have the subscription id, you can change pretty much anything about that subscription.