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Ask HN: Favorite payment processor?

41 points by StavrosK ↗ HN
I've been thinking of starting a small project that needs to charge money, and PayPal doesn't cut it (I need to be able to place a hold on $1-$2 at a time and then either release or keep it a few days later).

I've been looking at various processors and am slowly beginning to realise why PayPal is used by so many people: Every other processor requires my family medical history to sign up for (and most don't even support vendors outside the US)!

Sagepay, for example, requires me to apply for a merchant account at my bank, then apply for a sagepay account, then hook everything up in some obscure way I don't understand, and that's before I even get a quote on how much it will cost.

There are various startups that add subscription management on top of your payment processor, but I don't need subscriptions. I just need a simple way to hold $1 from a person's card and then release it (hopefully with no charge) or keep it.

Does anyone know of a payment processor that would fulfil my needs and not require my firstborn in exchange?

33 comments

[ 9.1 ms ] story [ 90.3 ms ] thread
bobf
Amazon payments?
StavrosK
Ah, good catch, why didn't I think of that? Are they available for UK banks? I'll look now, thanks...
ladon86
No they're not. You need a credit card from a US bank. Amazon FPS has some really good aggregate payment features that I can't find anywhere else, so I'm starting a US company primarily to get round this.
StavrosK
Ah, that's why I didn't think of them :( That is terribly unfortunate. They seem to be the best option so far, and if the only alternative is Braintree, it seems that the project is dead before it even begins...
pledgingto
To be more precise, Amazon Flexible Payments Service (http://aws.amazon.com/fps/)
StavrosK
Thanks, their website is a bit hard to navigate, they only emphasized simple payments and Amazon checkout.
mvip
I can't seem to find if it's only available to US/UK users, or if it can be used for clients world wide. We're based in the US and are currently using Google Checkout (which works great), but would like to offer our users an alternative.
StavrosK
It says somewhere they can be used by customers in many countries, but the vendor can only be in the US, I think.
frisco
Braintree: http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/

Libraries out of the box for Ruby, Python, PHP, .NET, and Java: http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/gateway

StavrosK
Thank you, that looks very interesting.
maccman
Another +1 for Braintree, they've been excellent.
StavrosK
The only problem is their high fees ($75/mo minimum, $35/mo fee, 2.29% + $0.30 per transaction). They're an absolute killer if you want to accept micropayments of < $100 a month, initially...

EDIT: They aren't even available outside the US :/

jasonkester
$100/month is not a lot of money. If you're a business, and you want to process credit cards, that's what it will cost you.

A good definition of "hobby" is anything where a $100/month expense eats into your profits in a meaningful way.

You're right about micropayments though. Apart from AWS, I don't know of anybody who offers a good way to do them.

noodle
1) you can get it done with paypal and not have $100/mo in fees.

2) paying $100/mo but making less than $100/mo violates the principles of bootstrapping.

jasonkester
To clarify, Paypal is fine for hobby projects, where you don't mind sacrificing a bit of professionalism for a cheap and easy payment solution. And where it's not the end of the world if they freeze your account.

You can survive in that mode while your hobby transitions into something that brings in a few hundred dollars a month and pays for your beer.

But once you graduate to a real business, you need to get a real payment processor. It's not a step you can skip, and it will cost you $100/month.

noodle
i don't disagree, i'm just pointing out that the space between $0 revenue and a few hundred bucks doesn't have a better solution.

everyone has to start somewhere.

evaldas_a
We had another problem with braintree - due to some error on their side, they have submitted all of our AMEX transactions for settling twice. It took a lot of phone calls to convince them that the problem was on their end, and after they "fixed" it, it happened again during the next billing cycle. They fixed it for good after it and we had no problems since then, but for a while there I was seriously considering ditching them for good. However, at the end of the day, they are still way better than PayPal - we had the common issue of having our account frozen...
apalmblad
It sounds to me like you need to do pre-authorization transactions to do the hold. When looking at gateways, check that their API supports it, and how long you can do the preauth for.

I use Beanstream for processing, and they aren't too bad. I've also heard good things about the API for braintree.

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compumike
PayPal can now do the pre-authorization thing under their Adaptive Payments API (see https://www.x.com/docs/DOC-1419). We did exactly what you're talking about (one-time preapproval, and then either charge or cancel after a few days) for a project earlier this year. You do have to explicitly apply to PayPal for access to these advanced APIs, but we found that process to be quick and painless. The API is relatively clean.

When we were working with it earlier this year, the end user had to have a PayPal account, which might be a barrier. However, my understanding is that this is no longer required (https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2010/06/it%E2%80%99s-official-...).

StavrosK
Thank you, that seems to be the best solution so far.
to
i always liked moneybookers. sadly nobody uses them. why? - more countries - better support - account and linked bank accounts are not chained to your location (im german living in america with an austrian bank account: paypal fail - german adress with austrian bank not possible same with us address. its the god damn EU i can open accounts where ever i want as citizen of the EU) - higher limits - way less bullshit
StavrosK
Wait, seriously? We can open accounts anywhere in the EU?
to
look at your passport. it says european union on it for a reason.
swombat
In the UK, I've happily used SecureTrading. They provide great customer service. I wrote an ActiveMerchant plugin for them too: https://github.com/swombat/active_merchant
auxbuss
Hard to evaluate, though, as they don't publish any pricing. Not that I could find. Suspicious minds might conclude: What have you got to hide? Also, it's disingenuous to claim rates lower than the competition without publishing them.
swombat
We said we came from Protx (which we did) and got matched pricing, i.e. a low fee per month up until 250 transactions., then 10p per transaction.
madaxe
Basically, any "serious" PSP is going to want a stack of information from you before you can start trading. PayPal shut down and suspend accounts on a regular basis because they basically only fraud screen you after you're up and running, which is why their barrier to entry is so low, and why they're such a wretched hive of villany and scum.

SagePay do have some kind of deal where they do the whole merchant account bit for you, but will require a fair bit of info before they'll let you trade.

Other good ones in the UK, however : Commidea, SecureTrading, Ogone, GlobalCollect, ServeBase, and Paypoint.net. Out of all of them, I'd recommend Paypoint, Sagepay, and Commidea on a par - basically, pick whichever fits your pricing model - all three have nice XML APIs, Commidea is kinda "enterprisey", but very competent, and Sagepay falls on its ass at least once a week (they had a 5 hour outage last week, which caused merry hell over here).

StavrosK
Thanks for that, I have no problem providing info if they're clean about what they need (to do X, we need Y from you). Sagepay has all these convoluted wizards that ask you if you have Y, not if you want to do X...
jpspeno
PayPal's Website Payment Pro isn't too bad. I've used it for 5 years and it's been mostly hassle free. I don't have experience with any others however.
raerae7133
Take a look at Wirecard and Cybersource - both support non-US vendors.