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Ask HN: Is PayPal a good option for my startup?

3 points by fbsn ↗ HN
We're developing a SaaS tool, and would like to charge a monthly fee. The thing is: we've read a lot of complaints about PayPal's customer support.

Would recommend it to first timers? We don't have any experience with online payments.

(If you know of any alternatives, please tell us. We are from Brazil, so no Stripe for now)

9 comments

[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 31.8 ms ] thread
gravypod
My question to you is what other option is as "trust worthy."

I'm using trust worthy loosely here, but my point still stands. If your users don't trust your payment service, they wont trust you.

They have cornered the market.

fbsn
Does that mean you consider PayPal trust worthy?

We've never used it, and we don't know how people feel about it.

I know it's strange to consider using something we don't know much about, but we don't see another way short of developing our own payment system, which, considering our (barely existent) experience, would not be responsible.

gravypod
I would never, in my life, trust PayPal in my life. But users would.

One of my friends had them lock his account with over $10k ( I don't have the pounds sterling symbol on my keyboard, but it was pounds) saying that they suspected him of nefarious intent.

My tips for PayPal is to make sure you do whatever it takes to verify your account and move any money you can out of PayPal as fast as you can.

chirau
If you want to try out both PayPal and cards, you should probably use Braintree Payments. They even process your first $50k for free, which is great for startups. Uber and Airbnb use them, see how seamless those checkouts are?

https://www.braintreepayments.com/

fbsn
The scary thing is the $15 chargeback fee since we plan on charging $5/month.

Are chargebacks a common occurrence?

chirau
I am not sure if you will find too many providers with a better fee and quality of service. Authorize.net is $25 and Stripe is $15 as well for chargebacks.

Are they common? Depending on your business, they might not be that common to you. But ALWAYS expect some chargebacks.

Eyes2design
I'd say that process is bigger than PayPal. you would need Ach, and Credit Card ability. I do have contacts with the seventh largest Credit Merchant, the Avg savings in processor fee is about half that of PayPal. I have been coding on some of their payment gates for 4 years.

Now all Merchant services will have bad records mainly because people don't read contracts. All merchant services that are cheaper per card require monthly charges mines about $30 month (if you keep up the PCI Scanner) that puts my rates to 1.2 to 1.6 on normal cards with 30c transmission fee. Since your recurring it is different the charges reduce because of less repeat transmission fees.

Hit up at my Store site for More info It really comes down to what is needed and most merchant provider fail to ask the right questions. https://www.eyes2design.com

I'm working on my personal blog right now on a different domain name.

noonespecial
Paypal is a fine option. Most people are able to use it without trouble once they understand its weird nuances and are careful not to trip its many automatic lockdowns. You only hear about the people who have problems.

BUT

Paypal should not be your only option. No option should. Start researching a backup now.

fbsn
Do you have any suggestions?