

Ask HN: Merchant account and payment gateway for subscription-based web apps? - _pius

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on merchant accounts and payment gateways like Authorize.net, Paypal, Braintree, etc.
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zain
Feel free to look at any of the plethora of past threads about this.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=526517>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=200920>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=175186>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=344030>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=389692>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198502>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470128>

Also, you might find the site <http://searchyc.com/> useful for finding
answers to these and other common questions.

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ericb
Braintree has a very high monthly fee (200 a month min) and so does not seem
good for startups (they seem to forget about the fact that startups _grow_ ).

I tried to negotiate with them... They came down to 100 min which was still
more than double my other options. At this point when I said it was higher
than I was comfortable with, the sales rep started asked me "what would you
propose?"

I wasn't sure how to answer that, but when I finally answered "how about
matching or nearly matching the minimum given by x" (which was around 40 a
month minimum) and I'll sign up today. At that point, the salesperson sent me
a miffed-sounding response saying they can't go below the 100 a month minimum
(why ask what I propose, then?) and walked away from the negotiation. YMMV.

edit: checked my emails with them and edited for accuracy

~~~
maccman
Braintree may have a high minimum monthly fee - but I don't think you should
skimp on quality when it comes to a merchant/gateway account.

Just try searching for competitors in Twitter - you'll quickly get a
indication on the type of customer support they provide:
<http://search.twitter.com/search?q=authorize.net>

So far I've found the people at Braintree to be friendly and extremely
helpful.

Also, if you don't see your business rising above the minimum monthly fee then
it's probably not really worth your while. After your first 20 customers or
so, you'll be paying exactly the same as most of the other gateways.

~~~
ericb
It isn't a matter of not rising past the minimum monthly fee--it is a matter
of the burn rate while ramping up when you're bootstrapping. Shortening the
runway is a bad thing.

If their sales person hadn't blown me off, I might have settled on them after
looking around. As it was, I decided to hold off opening the account until we
were farther down the road with development.

------
izak30
Merchant Account with local bank + Authorize.net has been our choice

~~~
izak30
Also: Previous Thread <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=175186>

~~~
_pius
Thanks a bunch for the info and the link to the older thread.

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coopr
None of the above. Don't deal with all that hassle (and a major hassle it can
be!) and use <http://www.zuora.com> instead - they are cheap for what they
save you!

~~~
_pius
Interesting, thanks for the info. Is their pricing still as high as the other
threads mention? (e.g. $1k/month)

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Automatt-2
We decided to forego the merchant account and instead have been using Amazon
Simple Payments with success. They've been excellent at closing transactions.

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brm
looks like its new but very curious to see what kind of results this
progresses with: <http://transfs.com/>

~~~
jkrall
@brm: TransFS.com is my startup, and I seriously considered posting a response
to this thread a couple of hours ago... but I didn't want to spam HN with
self-promotion.

Indeed we are new, having launched in beta about 6 months ago. However, we
have a number of aggressive processing bidders on our site... and I honestly
believe that our marketplace offers some of the best pricing out there,
especially for new merchants. We are always improving the product, and have
plenty of work to do, but our customers have been very happy overall with the
comparison shopping experience that we offer.

As my co-founder put it in an email to one of our potential customers today:
"TransFS is the second startup for both the cofounders of our business (Sean
and Josh) and we are radically passionate about helping business owners get a
fair shake and reduce the way-too-high profits of the credit card processors."

Anyway, thanks for the mention!

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rksprst
TrustCommerce got some good recommendations on the 37 signals blog.

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swombat
SecureTrading, in the UK, has second-to-none customer service.

