

Ask HN: European online payment preferences? - gyardley

We're implementing online payments for a subscription service used about equally by American and European clients.<p>We've already decided, for this first iteration, that we'd prefer not to get a merchant account, and that it's acceptable to bill in USD. (I know this isn't an ideal solution for Europeans.)<p>I would prefer to use a service like Stripe, where we don't have to store credit card data but the payment itself feels 'native' - it seems to take place entirely on our own site.<p>However, the European developers I work with tell me something like PayPal would be preferable, because the payment forms are <i>not</i> on our site - instead, the user is redirected to a third-party service they're more likely to trust. They tell me that apart from a few large services, this is the way it's done in Europe.<p>This fascinates me, because in my head, redirecting to a third-party site for payment feels amateurish. But this may just be my preferences as a Canadian who's only worked in the United States, and lacks extensive experience dealing with Europeans.<p>So, my question, primarily for the Europeans: taking both European attitudes towards security and European attitudes towards aesthetics into account, do you think European small businesses would prefer to pay for a service on that service's website or on the website of a third-party service like PayPal?
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canatan01
Our company is based in The Netherlands and in our country there is indeed a
preference for established 3rd party websites. Everyone knows and trust those
payment providers; they already have proven their credibility. So when you are
company that no one knows yet (e.g. when you are not a household name), you
still can earn trust by implementing these 3rd party in your payment system.
Besides: consumers are used to seeing a 3rd party payment provider, so for
them this feels not amateuristic at all. iDeal, which is the most used payment
gateway on B2C sites, is also such an example (created by big banks, paying is
like logging into your ebanking account to transfer money).

But if you feel this is amateurish, try your best that it does not look that
way. Integrate as much as possible or do an iframe or whatever (I don't know
if this is possible security wise). But like I said, people in the Netherlands
(and by the way this also counts for the Belgiums who live in the Dutch
speaking part of Belgium called Vlaanderen) are used to redirects to 3rd party
site. I do not know how the other European countries do this.

Also don't forget to offer pages in all different European languages, because
not everyone speaks business English that well.

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dirkdeman
I don't think it's a matter of aesthetics vs safety, or onsite vs third party
(I'm Dutch). Yes, I agree that third-party redirects don't appeal to many
users, but the same goes for a payment form hosted on your site. You have to
understand that the credit card is a relatively new form of payment, where in
the US almost everybody has one. If we order something online, we usually pay
afterr we've received the shipment, or through a system called Ideal (in The
Netherlands, that is. Can't vouch for other countries), which is basically
some sort of API between the website and your own bank. Paypal isn't used much
by European websites, other than the ones targetting the whole world and some
shifty websites. fYI: most webshop CMS like Magento come with a built in Ideal
shopping cart.

The problem is that, while one economic region, Europe is still a collection
of separate countries. We all have our own banks, so the chances of one
European payment provider coming are slim to say the least. What I would like
to see is a universal payment provider with the same reputation as a regular,
trustworthy bank.

So to answer your question: it doesn't really matter if the solution is onsite
or third party, as long as it's trustworthy.

~~~
itsprofitbaron
Regarding:

    
    
      Paypal isn't used much by European websites, other than the ones targetting the whole world 
    

I completely disagree, in England _most_ websites allow the ability to Pay Via
PayPal even specifically stores which only sell to those in the United
Kingdom.

Referring to the economic region of Europe, and the fact that we all have our
own banks and...

    
    
      What I would like to see is a universal payment provider with the same reputation as a regular, trustworthy bank
    

Well PayPal actually is a _universal payment provider_ [1] as it has a
European Union banking license and is regulated as a _bank_ by the CSSF where
it was previously a Electronic Money Issuer which was approved by the FSA from
2004 until 2007 when it moved to Luxembourg. Actually because of that, UK
customers aren't able to obtain legal redress from the company in UK Courts.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/2808982/PayPal-
be...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/2808982/PayPal-becomes-a-
bank-to-fight-off-Google.html)

~~~
dirkdeman
Thanks for clearing that up, I was not aware that PayPal had such a big
presence in the UK.

What I meant with the second quote though is that, although I know PayPal is a
universal payment provider, it lacks the reputation that brick ´n mortar banks
have. Maybe this is different in the UK, but here on the mainland there are
some major trust issues with PayPal.

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traxtech
From my experience, in France, having someone savvy to enter it's credit card
data on a website that is not Paypal or a known bank is hard. Trust issues.

