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Ask HN: Paypal alternatives for vendors outside the US?

113 points by aboutus ↗ HN
As a digital vendor who lives outside the US, I don't want to be at the mercy of PayPal's psychotic mood swings. What alternatives are out there to process payments and accept payouts from gumroad, paddle, Leanpub etc?

69 comments

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DiabloD3
Bitcoin.
tckr
Stripe has Bitcoin suppport now: https://stripe.com/bitcoin
yc1010
It does BUT it doesnt have zero fees nor does it have next business day settlement like bitpay does
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mkr-hn
Bitcoin is an alternative to Paypal in the same way a bag of gold on a rocket is an alternative to a bank transfer.
buro9
What are you selling?

I'd say Stripe, but it depends what you're selling: https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses

If what you're selling in any way touches any of the things on that list, then you should get your own merchant account and handle it directly. It's messy, it's work you don't want to do, but the list of prohibited businesses put on you by your bank is much shorter than the list put on you by Stripe, PayPal, etc.

aboutus
I'm asking on behalf of completely legitimate businesses who provide typical digital products and services.
foxpc
Stripe is kind of limited on what countries they support (as merchants).
MarkCole
For European businesses Paymill might be an alternative. It works pretty much exactly the same as Stripe, just available in more/different countries.

http://www.paymill.com

bojanz
For our European SaaS we had to switch from Paymill to Stripe because a large percentage of US customers would get their cards rejected when paying via Paymill.

(Paymill is Europe-only, and when a US bank detects a payment going out to Europe, it flags it as fraud. Thanks, US banks!)

grobmeier
Oh my god. I saw this by random. I see clear now. Thank you.
RedSocks112
Meh. My application with paymill has been in the works for over a month now (following google wallet digital goods shut down). Requests for updates are ignored. Documentation isn't great. It is a shame as on paper they do seem quite good...
l0ckk3
Hey. I'm in charge of Developer Relations at PAYMILL. I'm sorry to read that you are having difficulties with the service.

What do you mean with "Requests for updates are ignored"?

The current documentation has been around for a while and is currently being entirely updated. I would be happy to hear your thoughts to ensure the new version will be satisfying for our users.

Feel free to contact me, I'll help you with that.

yann.irbah[at]paymill.com

benev
We use Paypal, Stripe, GoCardless (UK only I think), and Bitpay.

Although we are obviously aware of Paypal's mood swings, we haven't been the victim of any. So far all of the above have worked well for us. They've all been easy to integrate.

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WA
I have a SaaS that processes payments with PayPal since 2011 and I never had a single problem. I know about the horror stories, frozen accounts and whatnot, but maybe it's also worth considering where your opinion comes from.

I also use Stripe and accept wire transfers.

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fjuan
If you're in Europe, give a try to https://klarna.com. It's more than a payment processor, and can help you a lot! Disclaimer: klarna employee.
markdown
2CO/2Checkout works great for me. You can withdraw your funds either via wire transfer or a Mastercard debit card issued by Payoneer.com

Have used them for 7 years without issue.

egomaksab
I recommend Fastspring (http://www.fastspring.com). Yes, it's more expensive than others but it has a lot of features that make it worth it. The main selling point for us was that essential you sell your product wholesale to Fastspring and they become the seller. This makes accounting and taxes much easier, especially for EU customers.
aboutus
At first glance, Fastspring looks fantastic. It even accepts PayPal, so I don't have to miss out on those sales. Hopefully it's the real deal.
SyneRyder
Fastspring is great, I've used them for the last 5 years. They handle VAT as well, one of the main reasons I use them (I'd rather not deal with that bureaucracy myself).

It's still a good idea to have a second payment processor, in case one has downtime or a customer has a problem charging their card. I've never had problems with Fastspring, but I occasionally had problems with others - I have a switch in my backend where I can flip to a second payment processor instantly.

jakobegger
I can also vouch for Fastspring. The reseller part is really important. It means they take care of billing and VAT, similar to the App Store. It's a bit more effort to set up compared to the Mac App Store, but they take less and pay out faster. Customer support is really good. Their API is a bit annoying to work with, but gets the job done, and the customer support makes up for unclear docs. I'm really happy with them.
matheweis
I'm not in the same boat as OP, but I definitely can vouch for Fastspring in general. It's extremely convenient from the business standpoint that I don't have to worry about all of the complex international tax laws, etc.

Also, I've used PayPal API, and found the Fastspring API comparatively easier to use once you figure it out.

btzll
Another vote for Fastspring from a happy customer. Their support is top notch.
mrcold
Love FastSpring. Easy store manager and great tech support. Plus, I don't have to worry about anything because they handle all the invoices, VAT and other boring stuff.
thibaut_barrere
(EU-based freelancer and SaaS builder here). I can warmly recommend https://www.recurly.com, which I use to handle recurring billing on a number of projects (my own SaaS https://www.wisecashhq.com, but also client projects such as https://www.boxcar.io/developer and https://www.process-one.net/en/ejabberd/saas/).

It can be used together with Stripe as a gateway (much recommended, the setup is much faster than on other gateways), and provides a full-featured setup with PCI SAQ A, VAT handling, PDF invoices, coupons, dunning etc.

bizifyme
You are welcome to try out our service, https://www.bizify.me

We have higher fees then PayPal but we also support payment by mobile phone (SMS) in a lot of countries and of course also payment by credit card.

You can read more about our service here: https://www.bizify.me/hacker-news/

If you would like to try out our service, just contact us and we'll give you a great rate if your products are "normal" products. Adult related content is a little higher risk so we can't give you as good rate on adult as we can on "normal" products.

PS: You can check out our WordPress plugin if you are running a WordPress blog: https://wordpress.org/plugins/bizifyme/

ExpiredLink
Any payment provider. You can chose between dozens per country.
irrlichthn
I can recommend BMTMicro: http://www.bmtmicro.com/ Payment processor with the best support I had so far. Supports nearly every payment type and does all the nasty stuff for you (invoices, recharges, customer support etc)
Shizka
Great question! I recently launched a startup where we ended up using Paypal because we simply couldn't find any good alternatives. It is a huge drawback from our point of view and we really want an alternative. There just doesn't seem to be one.

We wanted to set up a payment flow where a consumer would transfer the money to us, and after the delivery of the product we would transfer it to the seller. Strripe offers something that can accomodate this flow, but not internationally. It is only available in the US.

There seems to be a huge gap in the market here. Is there something missing from my exploration of alternatives?

steven2012
At least in the US, what you are attempting to do would probably run into a bunch of regulations. Not only are you probably aggregating funds, which smacks into money laundering regulations, but VISA/MC rules say you can't charge a card before the product ships. If what you are trying to do is some sort of escrow service, again at least in the US, that requires a license.
Shizka
Thanks for the answer. Ouch, that makes sense and it is probably something similar in Europe.

Do you have any idea for how to ensure that the person has the funds when we need to charge the card?

And do you know how vendors like Airbnb handles this?

scoot
Do you have any idea for how to ensure that the person has the funds when we need to charge the card?

You preauthorise the card for the amount at purchase, then complete the transaction on shipment.

toomuchtodo
Would you not preauthorize the card again right before shipment? What if their card is no longer valid, closed, or is past their credit limit?
Shizka
But that would still leave you with a risk that the card is closed or that the payment will get rejected, right?
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yazinsai
For the folks over in the Middle East, there's https://whitepayments.com/

(As if the guy on the front page didn't give it away)

aiaf
The login link on top takes you to a non-secure page :/
namenotrequired
Nationally many countries have their own local market leader. In the Netherlands, iDeal is the most popular (and the most user friendly of those I've tried). http://www.ideal.nl

For moving money internationally and between currencies there is TransferWise, which I personally mainly use for c2c payment but they also support business accounts and I've used it to pay companies on occasion too.

With a TransferWise invite link you can transfer up to £3000 (over $4.5k) for free, here's mine: https://transferwise.com/u/5d78

Where I work we use mangopay, which is specifically for marketplaces. http://www.mangopay.com

simi_
I was going to recommend TransferWise too, more of a second hand recommendation since I haven't used it but I've had several friends praise it.
silver1
Bluesnap.com (Supports 180 Countries, 110 Payment Types, 60 Currencies & 29 Languages) - Dont know why no one has matched the features offered by this service ...

paywithatweet.com (pay with twitter)

chargebee.com

adyen.com

afex.com

securetrading.com

credorax.com

ccavenue.com

moneybookers.com

2checkout.com

chargebee.com

For India (stricter rules of double authentication:

payzippy.com

paytm.com

zaakpay.com

citruspay.com

payupaisa.com

indiapay.com

payu.in

rodolphoarruda
For latin america: MercadoLibre or MercadoPago. They are from Argentina and work very well.
zhte415
Alipay

Another huge elephant in the room.

zone
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Paddle.com. It seems to be open to any business worldwide and it offers a Stripe modern looking payment form.
jakobegger
They have pretty annoying sales people. Contacted me out of the blue and didn't leave me alone until I responded in a rather impolite manner.
chrowe
Hey - CEO of Paddle.com here. Really sorry one of our sales guys was a little overzealous :( we'll make sure we do better in future.
andersthue
I sell downloadable software.

I have tried shareit, bluesnap and avangate.

Avangate checkout flow peformed best.

I am currently working on switching to cleverbridge, ping me if you want stats on them when I have switched.

mastersk3
PayMill, Braintree and Stripe for Europe; eWay or Pin for Australia and, 2Checkout or Worldpay for everywhere else.
ssully
Braintree was bought by Ebay last year. Someone looking for an alternative to PayPal probably won't be too inspired when they see "A PayPal Company" below Braintree's logo[1].

[1]: https://www.braintreepayments.com/

gettingreal
If you can use stripe, that should be your first choice.

Failing that, 2Checkout and http://www.fastspring.com/ are really good and 2Checkout works in many countries.

The other option would be to just get your own merchant account and use something like WorldPay