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Ask HN: Are there decent alternatives to PayPal?

68 points by tav ↗ HN
I'm looking for an integrated payment handling solution for my startup but am cautious of PayPal given all the horror stories. The Amazon solutions aren't particularly attractive and they're not available in the UK afaik. Has anyone had experience with Google Checkout?

My ideal would be something like http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/ -- they look awesome but are unfortunately US-only. There seems to be a UK-clone http://subsify.com/ -- but they haven't launched yet. Anyone know of any alternatives and care to share their experiences?

51 comments

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SymbMeta
Square?
jonursenbach
You can't really use Square for internet transactions; you need an iPhone/Android app to initiate and complete the purchase.
semanticist
US-only and not actually widely available even there.
damir
I've heard people say good things about Plimus.com.
reinierbutot
http://www.ogone.co.uk/

I am looking into this myself (but only doing business in The Netherlands) and this seems to be one of the best solutions. For my purposes anyway.

inovica
These look good but no indication (that I can see) of pricing. Any ideas on what costs are?

We're based in the UK and use Worldpay and Protx (as well a PayPal and Google Checkout)

stef25
I just finished integrating Ogone in to an app. You pay a lot to use them but the product is solid, pretty straight foward to integrate, good documentation and support helpline.
tav
This looks really good — thanks for the link! Besides the pricing, it's not clear whether you need to have your own merchant account? http://www.ogone.co.uk/en/Extra%20Services/Merchant%20Accoun... seems to indicate that you do, but the rest of their site seems to suggest otherwise. Could you shed some light on this by any chance?
bnoordhuis
Another happy Ogone customer here. They're not cheap but the API is versatile enough and the support is quite alright.

For Dutch businesses: Ogone supports iDEAL and I think their transaction overhead is actually lower than when you do business with iDEAL directly.

tav
Thanks for the endorsement. Is there a public link for their API documentation?

Also, any chance you could elaborate on, or perhaps email me tav@espians.com on the general pricing?

bnoordhuis
They don't have any public documentation but you can sign up for a free test account and access the API docs from the control panel.

As to pricing, it depends on your transaction volume. The only link I can find is in Dutch but it's relatively straight-forward (and maybe Google Translate can help you out).

http://www.internetkassa.com/ogone-abonnementen/

bjelkeman-again
We have been using Mollie for IDEAL payments in the Netherlands. Mollie charges 0.99 Euro cents per transaction, that is all inclusive (no extra bank charges).

Paul, our programmer who handles our payment gateway stuff, wrote a Python interface to the iDEAL API by Mollie.nl for use in Django projects. We also have our own transaction system, as we are dealing with donations, not your normal purchases. So we ended up rolling our own.

http://github.com/peeb/django-mollie-ideal

tomh-
moneybookers.com
ulf
While they are an alternative and available in UK, I would NOT recommend them. The technical integration via iFrame has so many pitfalls, especially for non-technical customers, that you will go through endless trouble. Furthermore, their fraud protection does not really work, and processing chargebacks was a total bitch. Disclaimer: I once used them for a german e-commerce site. We pretty fast switched to a different service provider (Wirecard).
VMG
One thing about US-only services: I have read on multiple occasions that Google Checkout is US-only and was surprised it was an option when I wanted to donate to a OSS project from Germany. So it seems to depend on whether you use it for incoming or outgoing transactions.
david_p
google checkout maybe ?
known
Perhaps you should talk to your bank. They might have a solution.
david_p
These are usualy the expensive kind of solutions ...

If you want 100% control over your money, you could use http://paybox.com, they are located in france but I believe their solutions work worldwide.

Apreche
I really just want to use Amazon, like Kickstarter does. However, ther are no e-commerce packages that support Amazon out of the box. Shopify, BigCartel, etc. All of them primarily support PayPal, and maybe support Google Checkout.
evilhackerdude
What about Chargify? http://chargify.com/

About other countries and currencies: http://support.chargify.com/faqs/general-questions/does-char...

jsatok
I signed up for a Chargify account a couple days ago, been working on integrating it into my app. Really simple, great API. I haven't run any transactions through it, but on the integration side, it's pretty solid.
wheels
Chargify isn't a payment processor, they're just a front-end for various other payment processors to handle recurring billing.
tav
As far as I can tell, you can only use Chargify in the UK if you have an account with Barclays. And, on top, you still need to get hold of costly payment gateways and merchant accounts...
rmoriz
recurly.com and spreedly.com have support for EUR/GBP and .EU based merchant accounts
illumen
worldpay? Depends on what you are selling, and to what market(s). eg, currencies are important, turnkey support for selling subscriptions, or electronic products, or virtual currencies(some payment processors don't do some of those). The fraud rate of your demographic(eg, products for teens in HighCrimeCountry might have higher fraud than old ladies in LowCrimeCountry). Some people only have paypal, and not credit cards too. There's so many factors to give a good answer.
sushrutbidwai
Realex payments?

Few other are - payvision.

Global players - Google checkout, Amazon checkout.

citricsquid
The reason Paypal are popular is because they offer something no other service can. If you want the versatility and spread of Paypal then you're just going to have to suck it up.

Yes, Paypal do sometimes have problems, but if you follow their rules and regulations and don't build your business around them you should be okay. The majority of horror stories are knee jerk reactions to an unfortunate situation which are never reported on again when a resolution is found.

The reason Paypal have such over zealous fraud checking and don't hesitate to lock accounts until they're 100% sure it's legit is because of how large of a target they are for fraud and also because of how accountable they will be. If someone sends me $10 and I run off with it, Paypal will have to pay out that $10 from their own pocket to the customer, might be okay on a small scale but at Paypals volume...

Personally I think the best method is to have a basic merchant account (authorize, nochex etc) and also Paypal, use your merchant account as the default credit card processor and also offer Paypal for those who either have Paypal accounts or are only comfortable with Paypal. If you're smart about how you use Paypal you'll be fine :)

ck2
PayPal locks legit accounts too, all the time, if they feel the type of activity has simply changed/increased in nature. Then to get your money out you have to prove to them otherwise. They will simply keep asking for more and more information from you on purpose to try to make you give up.

And I would bet they have never paid a dollar out of their own pocket to cover fraud, they basically will close the accounts of both parties to cover themselves or take "fees" out of the covered party's return for their "protection service".

Never, ever, keep more than $100 in your PayPal account. You are begging for trouble otherwise. Also if possible close the original checking account that you tied to your PayPal account, because they will tap into it to reverse any transaction at their will, without notice.

anthony_franco
Yeah, PayPal can be a pretty big pain. We've had our accounts locked out by them a few times. But eventually they are satisfied and leave you alone. Here's some general tips I'd follow if you do go down the PayPal route.

1) Use your full legal name when creating the account.

2) If you're creating the account for a company, make sure the owner of the account is an officer of the company (CEO, Vice President, etc).

3) Have only one account. If you're creating an account for your business, and you already have a personal account, you're gonna run into problems.

4) Make sure the mailing address you give is actually accessible. PayPal's gonna mail a verification code to you once you start making a sizable amount.

And just in general, once you start getting money into your account, PayPal's always gonna come knocking. At one point, PayPal prevented us from even receiving payments. But eventually, after a while of working with them, they got off our backs and we stopped having problems with them.

aandon
Good advice. I use SkipJack and they rarely hassle me, even when I authorize very large sums or rebill. They've never held my funds. I also allow customers to use PayPal if they want and many of them choose to pay with PayPal.
alexbowman
AliPay is one to maybe watch. The leader in China they have announced plans to expand internationally.
leftnode
I've been attempting to work with Alipay for my job for a while now. While they are the Paypal equivalent in China, it's very difficult to work with them.

First, they require a ton of documentation to become a registered business with them. Their API is non-existent, and getting answers is difficult because you either need to speak Chinese or use Google Translate. A lot.

While I'm sure it's great, it can be very frustrating.

mpclark
I've heard good things about SagePay in the UK, though haven't used it myself. Have dropped PayPal because, though I understand chargebacks and fraud can happen, I was not at all happy with the level of information provided (ie almost none) when payments were held for investigation, then approved, then a few days later yanked from my account. Am now using Barclays ePDQ because I bank with Barclays, but the system is horrible to integrate, looks hideous, and is expensive. But at least it isn't PayPal :)
cosmicray
About Google Checkout ... I've used both PayPal (~10 years) and GC (~3 years). My view is that PP has a more robust dispute resolution system. Resolving a dispute at GC is merely a matter of "Providing a positive customer experience" (and doing a refund even if the customer is defrauding you). The GC process (and dispute results) is very opaque.
nhebb
I'm not sure if they still do this, but I dropped Google Checkout several years ago because they allowed the user to hide contact information from the vendor. This may sound like a great privacy feature for the customer, but it really made it a nightmare to support customers who I couldn't confirm were actually my customers - especially if I needed to re-issue license keys.
DeusExMachina
www.fastspring.com

Easy to configure, neat interface, great support. And accepts paypal payments.

elliottcarlson
Agreed - had a great experience using FastSpring; hope to use them again once another idea comes up :)
liscio
I've yet to have one of the "bad" problems with PayPal, but I'm always trying to stay a step ahead of them when I can.

For instance, if you're expecting a higher-than-normal sales volume (e.g. a launch day, version upgrade, promotion), it doesn't hurt to give their Merchant Services department a phone call (the number I was given was 866-837-1851).

Be sure you ask for Merchant Services if you're not connected to them by default—it's a whole other support organization from what I could gather on my last phone call with them a month or so ago.

They may be taken aback by the reason for your call, but you can go over your phone numbers and addresses with them to make sure they can get a hold of you in the event that a fraud trigger is hit. If they can't speak with you, they have no other choice but to shut you down until you call them.

You can also get them to put a note on your account about the expected volume increase, so that when the activity does go into review, it may not be such a harsh reaction (e.g. freezing withdrawals temporarily rather than totally shutting down incoming funds.)

For the price of their service, the wide range of things you can do with their APIs, and the support I've received thus far, there's not a whole lot left to complain about IMO. Maybe my tune will change if I experience some of the "trouble" you hear about online, but I think that the proactive approach I describe above may help prevent that from ever happening.

srhyne
Cheddargetter.com, wonderful API
csomar
My advice is to support as many gateway payments as possible. What you should support are:

-PayPal: They are popular. You "must" support them because a huge % of your users will consider them as the only electronic payment system in the web.

-Credit Cards: Because they are even more popular and available in almost every citizen's pocket (we are speaking here of developed countries).

-Moneybookers: They are an alternative to PayPal. Don't underestimate its' power. It may take only 5% of user's share usage, but can be a valuable alternative if PayPal is down.

Have you considered such systems like fastspring? They offer a multiple gateway solution and they take a % for that.

barmstrong
For SAAS type subscriptions, I was pretty happy with Spreedly

http://spreedly.com/

One thing that is pretty cool is they let you be merchant account agnostic (all CC's are stored in their own PCI compliant vault). So if Authorize.net drops you or is being stupid, you can setup a different merchant account and the entire thing is transparent from your customer's perspective.

ergo14
I'm looking for a solution where I can have recurring payments for my SAAS startup. I'd like to charge in USD and/or EUR, but I'm based in Poland, and so is my company.

I can't use google checkout (not present here), and I want to avoid resorting to Paypal because of horror stories(actually one of my clients got permanently suspended). Any other solutions anyone could recommend to me?