
PayMill, Stripe clone, rolls out silently across Europe - SebMortelmans
http://www.paymill.com
======
gkoberger
This was created by the Samwer brothers, who have an interesting history of
cloning sites and flipping them, often to the company they cloned:

[http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/04/features/ins...](http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/04/features/inside-
the-clone-factory?page=all)

So, proceed with caution if you decide to use them. (That being said, I wonder
if Stripe will just buy them in order to get European payments working?)

~~~
UntitledNo4
Why do you think developers should proceed with caution? They don't seem
malevolent to me. Perhaps you question their methods, which is legitimate, but
if you have any other information apart from that, I would like to hear it.

Additionally, I don't know if I can criticise their model. Yes, it's not very
innovative, but on the other hand you can think of it as a outsourced European
development team for US-based startups. They know the market, the language(s),
the problems. They do the development work and then if the original startup
wants to buy the product, they can. Who knows, perhaps it might even end up
being not much more expensive than setting up the infrastructure and acquiring
the knowledge required to operate in the EU. It might also serve as a test
case: "is service X really going to work in the EU?". They take the risk that
something might not work.

As an EU-based developer (who never used any of their products. yet?), I also
think it's valuable for us (EU-based developers). Instead of waiting for
startup X to get their act together, they offer us an alternative, which then
later might be merged with the original product.

As a side note, there is a bit of a unintentional Schadenfreude to be found in
this article as well. Since it's 6 - 7 months old, their investments in
Facebook, Zynga and Groupon doesn't look so hot anymore as it did back then.
Maybe they should avoid the investment side of things.

Edit: grammar

~~~
Jd
Generally speaking, I agree, but the Samwer teams often overstep the bounds
and going beyond simply duplicating functionality (i.e. blatantly ripping the
design features and html/css theme of the website landing page). I think if
you talk to people who've worked for their companies (I have) there is the
general impression that whatever the boundary is that should not be crossed,
it is being crossed.

------
schmrz
If someone was wondering here are the supported countries: Denmark, Germany,
Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Latvia,
Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Austria,
Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Czech Rep .,
Turkey, UK, Hungary, Cyprus (Greek part), Israel. (from
[https://www.paymill.com/en-gb/support-3/worth-
knowing/terms-...](https://www.paymill.com/en-gb/support-3/worth-
knowing/terms-conditions/index.html))

~~~
guard-of-terra
What's the point of supporting both Greece and Turkey but not the other part
of Cyprus? Just wondering.

~~~
ekurutepe
Probably simply because they're not officially recognized by the EU.

~~~
guard-of-terra
I bet they aren't officially recognized by USA either, you can still buy Coca-
Cola there.

Seriously, I come to think IT products are inferior to physical products in
the terms of being able to distribute and make them available regardless of
politics.

~~~
kc0bfv
I suspect citizens of Iran, North Korea, China and the old USSR would disagree
with that last sentiment.

Ooh! And the US (Cuban cigars).

~~~
guard-of-terra
Do you think there are no iPhones in Iran or North Korea? Hint: there are.

Even in USSR people managed to smuggle enough British LPs and Japanese tape
recorders to kickstart a Rock movement. It's not that hard.

Compare this to major IT services (Amazon, iTunes, movie streaming) not
available in quite a few otherwise rich and democratic, albeit small,
countries; or even only available in a selected few of countries.

~~~
kc0bfv
Well, I guess my point was that there are a lot of physical goods that US
companies may not sell to these countries due to sanctions - political
reasons. Certainly folks circumvent these measures. People also circumvent
regional restrictions on Internet services with VPNs. I'm sure this company
doesn't want to smuggle its service in. I have no idea why the service isn't
available in some specific area, but I suspect "not being recognized by the
EU" isn't the primary reason. Though that may make implementation more
difficult in an area.

My impression has been that companies have prevented each other from
distributing to some of those rich and democratic small countries. Through
region specific licensing of their media they've limited distribution. I don't
think those are political measures, although certainly in other cases
companies have used political means to achieve their goals.

------
timnash
While I applaud any move to bring more payment options in Europe this is
really still very german focused and appears only half baked. The English
documentation is interesting with lots of muddled terminology and when you
start the application process bit's of it are still in german in places. The
site also seems to lack error and confirm messages (wondering if this is
simply not translated)

For those in the UK jumping for joy at a Stripe like payment gateway there is
a bit of a gotcha it only supports Euros.

Also there is no details about who is actually processing the payments and
several interesting and dubious (but again could simply be translation
problems) statements about PCI compliance on the site which could make due
diligence interesting.

Something to watch, but for UK merchants I suspect it may be a lot of work to
get going so not quite the frictionless option people are holding out for. Be
interesting to hear from a German companies perspective to see if similar
issues exist on the paymill.de site?

~~~
jpkrohling_jpk
I'm very sorry for the translation problems. We are working to solve these,
but we would appreciate if you could send us an email on support@paymill.com
if you find something wrong or ambiguous.

But a small correction: we support the local currency of your company. If you
are based in the UK, you'll be able to accept GBP. If you need support for
other European currencies, you can contact us and we can certainly look into
it.

About the PCI compliance: you don't have to be PCI compliant, for one reason:
the payment data never reaches your server. Our javascript bridge solution
takes care of sending the data directly to our payment servers (which are PCI
compliant), so you don't have to be.

I'm not sure what you mean by not being frictionless for UK companies. Is this
about the points above? If not, please do let us know what your concerns are
:-)

~~~
gmac
From the en-gb FAQ: "Which currencies does Paymill accept? Currently, we can
only accept €. However we are very hard working to being able to offer you
more currencies shortly."

So which is it?

~~~
d0mme
Hi gmac,

this is sadly a historic relief from our German site from our first version of
our site, we're gonna fix it tomorrow. Thanks for the hint!

However, we offer domestic currencies, but also USD/EUR if you want to. Just
contact us at support@paymill.com, and we can get things done.

------
jusben1369
At Spreedlycore we support 40 + payment gateways. (our target audience are
developers/applications that need to work with more than one payment gateway)
No one's asked us about PayMill yet. It'll be interesting if they do.

It worries me when the first two sentences contradict each other: "Paymill
enables you to offer credit card payments on your website within a short time.
There is no waiting time" Which one is it?

I hope it's the real deal because the world needs it (we deal with a lot of
non US developers around payments all the time so know the pain). But Stripe
hasn't nailed it and Braintree couldn't nail the "immediate sign up" outside
of the US so I too will wait to hear if it's all that much different.

Lastly looks like just Visa/MC. No AMEX or Discover which isn't the terrible
but worth noting vs other options. (AMEX is more expensive so not having it
I'm sure helped them get to 2.9%)

~~~
jpkrohling_jpk
About the contradiction: you are right, it sounds a bit strange in English.
We'll correct that. But what we mean is: you can start integrating the
solution right away in "test mode", no need to wait till your activation is
processed. In a couple days, your activation is processed and you can start
receiving money for real.

~~~
jusben1369
Thanks for the clarification.

------
mrkmcknz
This is major news for startups in Europe. Major news.

The only issue I have is that the activation process seems like any other
merchant account application. It will be interesting to hear from people who
are rejected in the activation process to see how 'frictionless' these guys
really are!

~~~
jpkrohling_jpk
Sorry to hear that, but the activation process is unfortunately needed. That
said, you can still start right away integrating our solution into your app.
If you decide to indeed use our solution, you can just ask for the activation
and in about 2 business days you'll be able to accept "live" payments.

~~~
mrkmcknz
That's awesome, just cool to know why the activation is needed and how long it
will take.

I'm stoked to have you guys launched and I'm sure many other developers are
also.

------
jacques_chester
It's definitely been very annoying for us outside of the US watching the light
speed evolution of payment systems happening there _and only there_.

So this is good news for my European friends.

~~~
guard-of-terra
This is a too narrow view. Africa leads with mobile phone banking (use your
phone as a wallet and transfer funds and be able to cash out), Russia and CIS
have viable cardless electronic money (you deposit money into electronic
kiosks at shops and molls and then pay for goods and services via interwebs or
from mobile), China has I guess everything we can imagine and more.

~~~
kc0bfv
Many in the US have lusted over NFC payments via cellphone, available in
Japan.

------
urlwolf
To those mentioning it looks 'half backed' (and wondering whether it works):
Samwer brothers' companies are built to flip. From talking to their devs at
meetup (not paymill's, but other rocket company), they mention software dev
practices leave a lot to be desired. Whatever it takes to get something out of
the door. Code quality is not a priority. This makes me reticent, even though
I really need a real EU stripe.

------
fredsters_s
Interesting. This still needs to play out, but it seems like a lesson to
geography-bound US startups (airbnb, stripe etc). I guess the question is, how
much does execution count for? If I'm a Europe-based dev, do I _really_ care
that this isn't Stripe?

------
ceelee
Here's a previous HN thread on PayMill with some solid comments:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4380302>

------
buro9
This is great news, but I will probably try and wait for Stripe as I have no
urgency to move today.

Why? Because this looks like where Stripe _were_ and I know that when Stripe
finally makes it to the UK they are the ones pushing the envelope and I want
to be where they _are_.

I also hope Stripe will be more competitive on fees.

Obviously, should the need be pressing then this looks like a good stop-gap.

------
Kliment
I've been using this service for a month and a bit now and it's worked really
well. There is dramatically more paperwork compared to Stripe, but it works
and it's way way better than anything else available in Germany.

------
dewey
I'm using them for a month now and i'm quite happy with the service.
Especially compared to the CC gateways we were using before. Their support
team is very competent and usually reply within a few minutes. (I had some
problems with the Magento Extension but they fixed it and pushed a new version
of the extension to their github).

------
the_mitsuhiko
Do I have to be PCI compliant if I use them?

~~~
michaelfairley
If your business accepts credit card payments, you must be PCI compliant.

~~~
chmike
What means PCI compliant ?

~~~
carlsednaoui
First result on Google - but here it is anyways:
<http://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/pcifaqs.php#1>

~~~
jpkrohling_jpk
You don't have to be PCI compliant to use Paymill, due to our "javascript
bridge" solution. In short: the payment details never touches your server,
removing the PCI compliance requirement.

~~~
michaelfairley
Any merchant that accepts credit card payments must be PCI compliant. Even if
cardholder data never touches the merchant's servers, the merchant still falls
under the scope of SAQ A[1].

1:
[https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/pci_saq_a_v2....](https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/pci_saq_a_v2.pdf)

------
heeton
Looks like I'm signing up with these guys then! Just this week I asked the
Stripe team when their UK launch would happen.

------
toomuchtodo
Can I use PayMill to except payments from clients in the EU if I'm a US-based
business?

~~~
jpkrohling_jpk
Your company needs to be registered in one of the countries we support. Other
than that, payments can come from any country.

~~~
davidkatz
I see you mentioning 'Israel' in your terms of use, but can't select Israel in
your countries interface. Can I use PayMill as an Israeli company? Thanks.

~~~
jpkrohling_jpk
Yes. It's missing in the language switcher because of a technical problem, but
you can find Israel on the activation form.

------
j2labs
Rocket is at it again.

------
gojomo
Is this Samwer-linked?

------
vinhboy
I really like the way they are presenting their API. A simple example is
better than an entire of page of documentation. Kind of how w3schools does it.

------
jdangu
The activity of a Payment Service Provider is heavily regulated in EU, a
license is required - But no mention of this on the site.

~~~
jpkrohling_jpk
Sorry, but what kind of license are you talking about? In order to use
Paymill, you just need to have a company registered in one of the countries we
are present (31, at the moment).

~~~
exim
Where can I see the list of supported countries?

~~~
jpkrohling_jpk
We have it both in our Terms and Conditions page (hint: Belgium is missing
there, but that's a mistake) and in our activation form.

~~~
exim
Thanks. Any plans to add Georgia?

------
Luc
I still don't see how Stripe and PayMill are different from companies like
SWREG that have existed since the time of Compuserve. Why is everyone so
enthusiastic about Stripe? I honestly don't understand.

------
DodgyEggplant
Good. Stripe waited for Intl forever

------
TheSmoke
holy shit, they support turkey. yay!

~~~
omarkassim
I was blown away by that too. Then it made sense considering it's Rocket
behind it!

~~~
TheSmoke
and which is why now i cannot use it even though they support turkey.

------
rmoriz
they still only support Euro currency.

~~~
d0mme
Nope, we also offer currencies which are supported in your country as well as
USD/EUR and other way round, if you contact us directly at
support@paymill.com.

~~~
rmoriz
Your website is outdated/wrong as it says the opposite.

~~~
d0mme
Yes, correct. We're gonna fix it today and make a live deployment tomorrow. ;)

------
mylittlepony
_This connection is untrusted.

The certificate is only valid for the following names: .paymill.de ,
paymill.de_

<http://i.imm.io/Lcpp.jpeg>

Anyone else getting this error?

~~~
d0mme
We're working on that, thanks for the hint. We noticed that problem on
wednesday, should be fixed at the beginning of the next week (from 12th on).

Alternatively you can hit our website with paymill.com without entering https
in your URL.

~~~
mylittlepony
I tried that but I'm being redirected: <http://i.imm.io/LhSg.jpeg>

------
yakshay
The site has German words on some pages even though I've switched to the
English locale.

~~~
chmike
Looks like half backed

~~~
jpkrohling_jpk
Would you mind sending an email to support@paymill.com with where these are
happening? The original content was in German, and we tried our best to
translate it, but something might have slipped (as you noticed).

------
droelf
Holy shit, bootstrap buttons, get me out of there ...

~~~
oakwhiz
Bootstrap buttons don't look that bad. What really matters is the quality of
the service and APIs.

