

HN: I need help getting to launch - marcamillion

I am bootstrapping my startup, however I live in Jamaica. I have been teaching myself Rails and all the web languages necessary (jQuery, html, css, etc.) to get this thing done (for the last 7 - 8 months) the way I need it and am very close to launching.<p>I have spoken to customers, gotten feedback, validated the idea, built everything out, and have the marketing site ready to go.<p>Where I am stuck is billing and actually accepting payment.<p>I started going down the path of using something like 2checkout and have been approved for an account - but none of the recurring billing management solutions (recurly, chargify, spreedly) will work for me because I am not from the US.<p>So I had to resort to building that functionality on my own. Given that I am literally learning Rails while I am doing this, the more I dug into building billing/subscription functionality is the hairier it got, the more frustrated I became. To prevent me from giving up altogether, I gave up on that path.<p>I have decided that it might just be better to incorporate as a US entity and get a US bank account and deal with a US gateway, and use their API, etc.<p>My Jamaican registered company has a US issued EIN, but nothing else.<p>Ideally, I would want the US based company to be a wholly owned subsidiary of my Jamaican company.<p>Can anyone help/give suggestions on how I can navigate these waters and get to an amicable solution as quickly and cheaply as possible ?<p>I am SOOO close, this is the last MAJOR obstacle before launching. Oh, and I need to have payment in place because I need to start making money. As I said, I am bootstrapping, so having cash flowing in is of utmost importance.<p>I always see you guys help out other startups, and I know that this might be a gargantuan task - but if you can contribute in a little way, then hopefully the cumulative effect will be enough to get me through the launch.<p>For those interested, the app is: www.compversions.com<p>If you need any more info, let me know and I will gladly provide.<p>I am SOO close, and would love if the community could help me get there. You guys are my board of advisors :)
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trevelyan
Setup a secure payment page on your site which collects credit card
information and saves it to an encrypted file on your server. Then when
someone tries to pay upgrade their account automatically just as if you were
processing their payments in real-time. As far as they are concerned your site
and payment systems now work perfectly.

Have your server email you whenever this happens so that you can login and
process their payment manually through Paypal's premium merchant service. That
provides a virtual terminal which accepts major credit cards and costs
something like $30 a month. You will occasionally have trouble processing a
payment and have to take the hit or come up with an excuse to get another card
from your customer.

This isn't a long-term solution but it will tide you over until you have a
real processor and 99.9% of your users will never know. Good luck!

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marcamillion
I know this is a 'quick and dirty' solution, but it just screams security
flaw. I am nervous about accepting credit cards period - much less collecting
it into a file and trusting myself to encrypt it and secure it properly.

I agree with the thinking and sentiment though, and appreciate the suggestion.

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trevelyan
You have to judge the tradeoffs for yourself. That said, whatever you do
remember that anyone with access to your server has full access to all your
payment data regardless of how you process the actual payments.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Clickable: <http://www.compversions.com>

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marcamillion
Thanks for that.

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ig1
What's wrong with 2checkout's recurring billing solution ?

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marcamillion
It's not that...it's the integration with my app - that is lacking. i.e. being
able to put a user on a trial account, then have the app send an 'upgrade
token' to 2checkout when their trial expires.

Then also automatically renewing every month - and allowing the user to be
able to upgrade and downgrade as they see fit (from within the app).

The integration is very lacking for 2checkout.

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sammville
Hey! why not try paypal recurring payments!

