
Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup - thehammer
https://www.braintreepayments.com/blog/ignition-first-50k-on-us
======
zaidf
Works out to about $1,450 in savings if you process $50,000. I hope people
don't impulsively go with them _just_ to take advantage of this offer. In
fact, you probably don't want this offer to have anything to do with your
decision-making on the best processor for your needs. That decision is not
easy to undo - and will easily cost you more than the savings.

~~~
dangrossman
There's no commitment if you code against Spreedly instead of against
Braintree's API. Then, once you save your $1450, you can switch processors if
you're so inclined by changing just one token in your code.

Spreedly is a unified API for 58 payment gateways, a gateway-agnostic billing
info vault so your customer info isn't trapped in whatever processor you chose
at the time they signed up, and can alleviate much of the PCIDSS compliance
burden if you choose to point your payment forms to them instead of your own
server.

[https://spreedly.com](https://spreedly.com)

I've been using them for a few years now. If you have a lot of recurring
billing, knowing that you own that customer data instead of your processor,
and your processor cutting you off without notice (which ALL of them can and
have done to customers) won't interrupt your business, is peace of mind
Spreedly sells very cheaply.

~~~
Tohhou
Have you ever had to change gateways? They charge 2 cents on top of gateway
fees - would it be substantial for you if you went direct to the gateway? I
imagine less sales at higher prices it's worth it. Many lower price sales it
would be worth it to gateway hop manually cost wise.

~~~
dangrossman
> Have you ever had to change gateways?

Several times. And have lost customers in the process, since any customer info
stored at the gateway is lost and getting hundreds of people to re-type their
billing info in is a big undertaking and a big pain.

The cost of "hopping gateways" for any SaaS has little to do with the cost of
the gateway or the cost of development. It's all about customer retention.

When I left one merchant account provider which had ratcheted up its rates
every month for years to the point that continuing with them was absurd, the
gateway refused to provide my customer info to me or transfer it to a new
provider. It simply wasn't mine to have, in their view. That will never happen
again; even if I leave Spreedly, they will give me the info to take with me.

> They charge 2 cents on top of gateway fees

Whether it's a $29/month customer or a $2000/month customer, 2 pennies just
doesn't register. Let's say I have 500 customers that get charged each month.
That's $10/month in transaction fees from Spreedly. That would buy me... 2
more ad clicks from Google. Or the peace of mind that my business's billing
info and cash flow can't disappear overnight.

~~~
lbarrow
You wouldn't lose customer data if you left Braintree:

[https://www.braintreepayments.com/landing/data-
portability-p...](https://www.braintreepayments.com/landing/data-portability-
policy)

~~~
btown
What are some examples of qualified providers that will accept this type of
data?

~~~
dangrossman
It says they'll accept a public key from the merchant, which is you; you don't
need to find a provider that'll work with the data in whatever format it's in.

The "attestation of PCI compliance from a qualified provider" line refers to
companies like these:
[https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/approved_companies_prov...](https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/approved_companies_providers/)

Anyone with a merchant account to accept credit cards online already has a
relationship with at least a QSA, and is already getting a quarterly
attestation of compliance after completing a questionnaire and security scan
of their server environment; it's required by PCIDSS and merchant account
providers enforce it, typically providing an account with a QSA for a non-
optional annual fee and imposing another fee if you fail to remain compliant.

It's just a formality having them forward that attestation to Braintree before
they hand you the data dump.

------
jtchang
Pretty cool. I love the competition in the payments space right now. My bet is
that Braintree is seeing some serious competition from Stripe and others.

One thing to keep in mind is that 2.9% + 30cents is relatively high. If you go
to Authorize and negotiate they will lower the price if your volume is high
enough. Stripe will also negotiate once you hit a certain volume.

One thing I really want to do is take on the micropayments space. No one has
really managed to do it well. Think about how much it costs to charge someone
a dollar. The cheapest way is paypal. But what if you want to take a
Visa/Mastercard? You are at their payment network's mercy. In order to really
challenge that you need to make your own payment network. And then get banks
onboard. And get through all the regulation. Yikes. If anyone is interested
though contact me.

~~~
tomasien
That last paragraph is spectacularly spot on - that's why I started
knoxpayments.com - connecting people directly into their banks. No fees on
micro, $0.18 on everything else - flat.

Just won Best Enterprise at Launch 2014, and we're moving fast toward solving
this problem for folks!

~~~
primitivesuave
Wow! Thank you for sharing your startup. I see what you're doing and it's
really a brilliant idea - it would work very well for payment funnels where
consumers trust the brand.

I don't see any developer documentation though - is this intentional, or did I
miss the link somewhere?

~~~
tomasien
Is that intentional - heck no! It's a massive and glaring omission in our
offering!

No but seriously, I'm banging away at documentation right now - the problem is
it wasn't clear what exactly we needed to document until we launched and got
the deluge of customer feedback that we've now gotten. It's now become clear
that we're missing some critical features (for a lot of people) and that's
it's not clear how to integrate it. Live and learn!

Essentially though, for 1 to 1 payments, you'll just sign up, sync your bank
account, and you'll get a JS snippet and an HTML div. Put those on your site,
feed the JS a payment amount, and when someone clicks the button - they'll
pay, and you'll get the money. Then, at the end of the payment, you'll get a
payment ID that you can store and use our entirely undocumented API to
retrieve information you need later.

~~~
vamega
Hey, I just tried signing up and the site says I need to enter a referrer. Any
chance you could let me see what this is like?

~~~
tomasien
Use the code "LAUNCH"

------
higherpurpose
In case some of you aren't aware of this, PayPal acquired BrainTree a while
ago:

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/26/paypal-acquires-payments-
ga...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/26/paypal-acquires-payments-gateway-
braintree-for-800m-in-cash/)

~~~
yuhong
There is this comment about it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6455951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6455951)

------
eli
For a moment I thought it was the first $50,000 in _fees_ not transaction
volume. Still pretty cool and will probably get me to try them out.

------
eKIK
I'm delighted for all potential US customers to get such a nice deal thrown
their way - nice one Braintree! Too bad the offer doesn't extend to Europe,
but I can appreciate the complexity in setting up something like this world
wide.

I'm currently in the process of going live with two sites using Braintree, and
everything has been great so far. Excellent Python API, documentation and
extremely quick, knowledgeable and friendly support.

My previous payment provider experience has been with Cleverbridge, Digital
River and Paymill...and so far Braintree has managed to surpass them in every
single way. YMMV but for my use case Braintree has been a great fit.

Keep up the good work!

------
LukeHoersten
They ran this promotion before too. I tried to use it but later was told I
couldn't because I'm a 3rd party payment aggregator. The trouble is they never
said TPPA couldn't participate anywhere in the promotion. I felt tricked. I
continued to try to set up processing with them as a TPPA but it was this long
drawn out and manual process. The CEO ended up contacting me to apologies and
see what the problem was. He told me they didn't disclose the TPPA restriction
on the website to make it "simpler". After many phone calls with them I was
never able to get set up. Stripe just came out with Stripe Connect and I was
up and running in a matter of minutes. Not to mention support at stripe has
never been so bad that the CEO had to contact me. In fact I think stripes real
edge is their excellent support. I would never use anyone but stripe after
seeing how bad it can be. Note I have no affiliation with either company. I'm
a Chicagoan and want to see Chicago companies like Braintree succeed but boy
what a poor job they did. Definitely not with $1500 IMO.

~~~
lbarrow
(I'm an engineer at Braintree.)

Hey Luke, we had an internal discussion about what happened with RaceMetrics
and came to several conclusions about what we could do better. The
restrictions on who can use Braintree and who can't now are listed here:
[https://www.braintreepayments.com/faq#restricted-business-
ty...](https://www.braintreepayments.com/faq#restricted-business-types)

Your experience with us was before we launched our Marketplace product, which
eliminates the need for many people to onboard as a TPPA. If you were to apply
now, things would be a lot better.

------
thehodge
Every startup in the US at the moment which is a shame, same rules as last
time

------
workhere-io
As a European who was disappointed that Stripe isn't in my country yet, I was
pleasantly surprised to find out that Braintree is every bit as easy to use[1]
(took me a half hour to set up a test transaction website), and it's even
cheaper than Stripe. (Edit: Seems Braintree's European pricing differs from
their US pricing. Braintree's European pricing is 1.8% to 2.6% (everything
included) which is considerably cheaper than Stripe).

The only downside I can see is the approval process which in Europe takes 7-10
days.

1)
[https://www.braintreepayments.com/docs/python/guide/getting_...](https://www.braintreepayments.com/docs/python/guide/getting_paid)

~~~
apexauk
(I work at Stripe, based in the UK.)

Our pricing in EU countries where we've launched (UK + Ireland) starts at 2.4%
+ 20p (we've revised pricing for each country when we launch out of beta). We
regularly give volume pricing well below 1.8% - so at both ends, considerably
cheaper than the range quoted above.

Also, which country are you in? Stripe is available in full production-ready
beta in France, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Sweden and
Finland, with more countries in the coming weeks - keep an eye on
[https://stripe.com/global](https://stripe.com/global) for updates.

You can sign up and start using Stripe to process live transactions instantly
in all our beta countries - this is a key requirement for us as we expand
globally.

~~~
workhere-io
I'm in Denmark. Any idea as to when Stripe is coming to Denmark?

Will merchants be instantly approved, or does it take several days/weeks?

~~~
apexauk
Soon! Want to drop me an email? ay@stripe.com

------
palidanx
I'm a current Braintree customer, where my start-up integrates to their
services via our custom cart. I can't really compare them to their other
competitors, but one of the things I really like is the ability to call them
and ask questions about my business workflow.

Often times, I get their 2 cents before I change my business workflow, or I
get crazy unexpected scenarios I need help on (mainly involving vendors
getting new credit cards).

I appreciate them going beyond the call of duty with helping me with things
outside the traditional technical api questions. I just hope the paypal
acquisition won't change things...

------
jaunkst
Braintree isn't a bad choice, not the best but better than most. Their
documentation and needs for more complex stratiges for domain logic is
lacking. Stripe has one of the best documentations I've seen as far as payment
gateways go and how it can fulfill most business needs. As far as MVP products
go I grade each api on documentation and flexibility. 1. Stripe, 2. Braintree,
3. Custom gatwate solutions such as shopifies gem. Im sure there are many more
solutions but as a developer without a huge background in payment processing
solutions this is my assessment.

------
jpincheira
"for any U.S.-based startup", then I closed the tab. But great, good option
"for any U.S.-based startup", they seem like a fair and cool payment gateway.

------
asenna
I am working on a marketplace project right now and I was wondering if anyone
can suggest an international payment processor other than PayPal. Braintree
Marketplace would have been perfect but it is currently only for the US. The
same goes for Balanced Payments and several other options.

(My project involves freelancing and finding small projects - Sign up page at
[http://www.ladr.io/](http://www.ladr.io/) if anyone interested)

~~~
jusben1369
Check out MangoPay.

~~~
asenna
We are based in the US and I don't think we will be eligible. From their FAQ -

Am I eligible to use MangoPay?

All companies registered in the European Economic Area can use our solution.

~~~
Celinelz
Hi I'm the founder of Mangopay. You can process payment in € $ £, and 7 other
currencies on Mangopay. But you are right, you should have a company
incorpored in Europe. Feel free to contact us! C.

------
steerj92
I think this is a really great way of enticing new startups. Yes it's to get
them more business, but for once it actually brings a good benefit of $1400+
for startups.

I would use Braintree for things like this.

------
jasonkester
Existing customers too? The signup button sends me to a form for new
customers.

Do I really have to cancel my account and open a new one?

~~~
klynch
Kristi from Braintree here. Happy to help. Just sent you an e-mail.

------
chourobin
Important note, I believe this doesn't include marketplaces.

~~~
klynch
Hi, I work for Braintree. This is open to marketplaces as well, and payouts
are always free.

------
kaa2102
Fantastic! That's a great way to delight your customers.

------
yashg
Non US, non EU merchant? Sorry no cookie for you. :(

------
alecsmart1
Which countries do they support?

------
lerouxb
...for any U.S.-based startup...

------
firefox
Use it for the first $50k then switch to Stripe..

~~~
michaelmior
Probably not worth your time to save ~$1,500 unless you use an abstraction
layer like Spreedly or you're really short on cash.

