
PayPal Alternatives for Startups - thereyougo
https://startupstash.com/paypal-alternatives/
======
superasn
Some payment processors on this list are 100 times more evil than Paypal and
do all the things you hate about Paypal but worse.

Story time: The biggest offender in my limited experience in dealing with some
alternatives is 2checkout. Please please stay away from it. They can make up
any excuse and shut you down with a two word excuse (we were told "digital
locker" for a saas site which created html5 animations and our account was
shutdown without notice (with no way to appeal) also locking out all customers
and their payment info.. at that time it was like Paypal so they had all the
cc info not us). Lost thousands of dollars per month and had to email users by
hand to switch to Paypal.

So do your due diligence and read reviews before signing up and trusting
anyone on the list

------
croisillon
You know the famous spam "hello office, your password is [redacted] and I
recorded you watching pr0n"? Well, I received such messages about my
TransferWise password, so I obviously informed them, and what did they do?
Simply shut down my TransferWise account. Would not recommend.

~~~
joering2
At least they haven't kept your 35,000€ when en-route to a recipient. They
send me an email explaining that my type of wire is "too much of risk for
their appetite" (real quote). All good, so just return me back my money. I had
to threaten them multiple times with going after them in UK (their legal HQ)
for almost 14 days until they returned my money back. Not to mention that a
service provider (very good one) that I owed money will not work with me
anymore since their invoice was overdue for 2 weeks.

Absolutely stay away from TransferWise - educate yourself (Google is your
friend) how much fraud they perform on daily basis, as internet is full of
horror stories from people who attempt to use them because of their low fees.
Absolute scumbags.

~~~
welly
Conversely, I've used them on many, many occasions over a number of years -
not for the sums you're talking about although as much as a few thousand AU$
and never had so much as a problem. I'd still use them.

~~~
jeddf
+1 that is my anecdotal experience also, started living between uk and us,
conducted many international transfers over 5 years with no issue, was having
a much harder/more expensive time with other services (I think mostly paypal)
before that.

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vortico
This is a good list, but many customers (i.e. more than 50% in my experience,
especially if they're non-US) prefer to pay with PayPal rather than bank
cards. Some don't even have bank cards. So if you use a service on this list,
be sure to choose one that supports PayPal as a secondary payment method, like
Shopify or Braintree, otherwise you could lose potential customers.

I also find it funny that Braintree is on this list, since it's entirely owned
by PayPal since 2014.

~~~
JoshTriplett
What's the underlying reason for people wanting to use PayPal? Hooking it up
to their bank account (yikes) and not having to have a credit card?

Are there analyses available on what type of products/services have this
problem, and what customer base primarily wants PayPal?

I refuse to do business with PayPal, due to the many _many_ horror stories of
them holding money hostage, issues with charitable donations, utterly opaque
dispute resolution, etc. (I've had issues with them myself, as well, trying to
make donations.) I'd love to know alternatives, not just to the _features_ of
PayPal (for which there are many), but for serving the _customer base_ of
PayPal.

~~~
vortico
>What's the underlying reason for people wanting to use PayPal?

That's a good question, and here's what my customers have said. My company's
market is digital products at around $10-100. Not saying everything here is
justified, but the fact that a customer thinks these things should be
justification for you to cater to them. (Customer-is-always-right principle.)

\- Credit cards are hard to obtain in my country, but PayPal is easy enough.

\- The last time I had a credit card, I spent it all at once! So all I have is
PayPal now.

\- I have USD in my PayPal account, but I don't think my credit card works
with USD.

\- PayPal is safer because it offers some protections against fraud.

\- I don't trust to give a company my credit card number, but I trust that
logging into PayPal at a paypal.com URL is fine.

\- I have extra money in my PayPal account that I can spend, but I shouldn't
spend from my checking account.

\- PayPal is easy to sign up for. I don't have to walk into a bank or make
phone calls.

~~~
hakfoo
Some people have money in their PayPal stored-balance component, and it's
easier to spend it out than to have them credit it back to a bank account.

I suspect some people use it as an "off the books" account in family/spousal
relationships. They'd have a fit if the credit card had a $300 charge, but
they don't even know you had $300 in PayPal balance from selling stuff on eBay
and can go to town.

------
nonconvergent
Venmo is Paypal. Alternatives are provided without context as why you'd seek
one out beyond mostly similar transaction fees.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
From the perspective of a consumer, this might be penny wise, pound foolish.

When I buy a product from a company I am not familiar with, I look for the
PayPal button. This is especially true if the product is some type of
subscription. There is no way I am buying a subscription to something other
than through PayPal.

As a buyer, I know PayPal has my back, and that I can see and easily cancel
any subscription.

So, if you go with the alternatives, be aware there are likely millions of
consumers like me who you are missing out on from the start.

~~~
purerandomness
Interesting. For me, it's the opposite. I think of PayPal as evil, deceptive
(think of the currecy conversion opt-out mechanism) and how many content
creators got hurt by PayPal freezig their accounts.

I'm relieved when I see a company found another way and doesn't make me use
PayPal when paying.

~~~
Trias11
Consumers love PayPal because it’s more friendly to buyer (than to seller).
Thus supporting PayPal is beneficial to vendor.

For vendor it makes sense to exercise caution: not leaving large balance on
PayPal account, attach only intermediary bank account to PayPal to prevent
PayPal tapping into your funds at will and have reserved accept payment method
in case PayPal gets awry on you

------
YeahSureWhyNot
I was recently at an annual meeting of local fisherman where they had to pay
dues but the platform they use for their website and due payments had stopped
using paypal insisting on accepting payment thru cards only. guess what, 80%
of the people said paypal worked just fine and its not our problem, its either
cash or paypal, we aren't handing over our credit card info to another online
website. I was shocked but that seems to be the norm in non-tech circlss

------
octosphere
I like the nod to Coinbase. For me there needs to be more emphasis on paying
with cryptocurrency as a legitimate form of payment. All these gatekeepers
listed here can freeze your money at any time and you have to wade through
paperwork and boring calls to support-desks to get your money back. With
cryptocurrency the trust is already built with smart-contracts and there is no
middleman to decide whether payments are released or not.

~~~
jMyles
> I like the nod to Coinbase.

> the trust is already built with smart-contracts and there is no middleman to
> decide

These two statements seem to be contradictory. Coinbase is certainly a
middleman.

I like (and use) a lot of Coinbase's offerings, but I think it's also a good
time to start promoting a more truly distributed view of the merchant service
side for payments.

~~~
siruncledrew
IMO, Coinbase is in the same bucket as Paypal because _they_ will decide to
block transfers or freeze accounts if a violation of the User Agreement is
presumed:
[https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/190...](https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1905680-does-
coinbase-freeze-accounts-)

Coinbase also has internal wallet blacklists so transfering to any of those
could lead to account issues (ex. Wallets associated with marijuana products,
online pharmacies, or in OFAC countries).

------
captn3m0
Paypal alternatives for mostly _american_ startups.

~~~
zegerjan
Adyen not even getting mentioned, very surprising as it handles most payments
for Netflix and Spotify.

~~~
no1youknowz
Adyen won't talk to startups. They are not interested at all.

The current state of the market for European players in the payment space, is
that it's not startup friendly.

Take companies HQ in Europe like Worldpay (London), Adyen (Netherlands),
WireCard (Germany), Fidor Bank (Germany) and Mambu (Germany).

Not one company wanted to talk to my startup.

No problems with US based players. They are more than happy to work with
startups and will actively work with you to become a unicorn.

After all, the higher transactions the startup does, the more money they earn.

~~~
skrebbel
Mollie is Dutch and definitely talks to startups. They're similar to Stripe in
many respects.

[https://www.mollie.com/](https://www.mollie.com/)

------
rkho
Going through this post and some of the other "X alternatives" posts on the
site, I can't help but feel like these articles are just being content farmed
by someone with no prior experience using these recommendations.

------
zokessss
As a cautionary tale. It's a good idea to say AWAY from Veem as well.

I received my salary via veem. First few transfers were good. I got the rate
they mentioned on there homepage.

But later, they started giving me absurd rates and said there homepage
currency converter tool is broken and what they are transferring to my bank
account is final rate.

There was absolutely no way of finding out the rate you were going to get
paid.

Absolute bait and switch

------
jammygit
I read over and over how companies skip PayPal or remove PayPal and are
startled by the lost business. (No direct experience though)

For example, [https://fman.io/blog/paypal-vs-stripe-for-small-
businesses-i...](https://fman.io/blog/paypal-vs-stripe-for-small-businesses-
in-2019/)

------
jameslk
I'm surprised Zelle isn't mentioned here. It's owned by the major banks and
allows for business account transfers without fees. I use it to pay some US
contractors. Most free services (e.g. Venmo) don't support business transfers
and have low monthly transfer ceilings.

~~~
streptomycin
I don't think it supports business transfers.

[https://www.zellepay.com/user-service-
agreement](https://www.zellepay.com/user-service-agreement)

"The Service is intended for personal, not business or commercial use. You
agree that you will not use the Service to send or receive payments in
connection with your business or commercial enterprise. We reserve the right
to decline your registration if we believe that you are enrolling to use the
Service with your business account or to receive business or commercial
payments. We further reserve the right to suspend or terminate your use of the
Service if we believe that you are using the Service for business or
commercial purposes, or for any of the uses identified directly below."

~~~
jameslk
Maybe it depends what kind of account you have? Zelle is offered directly
through my business bank account interface and it's what the bank recommends
using as an alternative to ACH and wires.

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tadeusz_wojcik
Anyone running small online business in a EU? How do you handle VAT? I'm
currently researching it, will probably end up using Paddle.com (they charge
5% plus 0.5$) but would like to have some alternatives that similarly handle
VAT across EU with better UX ideally.

~~~
nik736
I built it myself with Braintree for processing (PayPal, Cards)

------
anthonyoduu
There is a compelling case for a marketplace solution that allows startups and
businesses to exchange currencies with each other and have their payments
processed via a central counterparty that is regulated. Perhaps, VertoFX
([https://www.vertofx.com](https://www.vertofx.com)) can help some of you on
this thread with your FX and international payments needs. The good news is
that VertoFX is built for businesses; therefore, it is well equipped to handle
large transactional volumes.

------
akkad3a
I can't believe it's 2019 and startups are still accepting terms of service to
receive value.

Crypto-currency is here and removes all of these trusted 3rd parties that can
and will shut you down for any number of reasons, not to mention their
outrageous fees, chargebacks, and incompatible APIs, which make it painful to
migrate to another provider.

If you can, ditch this system and build for the future.

[https://github.com/btcpayserver/btcpayserver](https://github.com/btcpayserver/btcpayserver)

------
chrischen
PayPal gets a lot of negative publicity from a handful of high profile
temporary freezes.

~~~
vezycash
>handful of high profile temporary freezes

This is willful blindness. If these issues were indeed temporary, no one would
complain.

Those high profile cases were temporary because of the PR storm they raised -
just like it does with Google. People wouldn't mind much if PayPal didn't also
steal their money.

~~~
chrischen
If you honestly believe paypal is in the business of stealing a couple hundred
grand from a few overnight success stories then you may be the one suffering
from willful blindness.

~~~
abc-xyz
It's probably got less to do with PayPal purposely stealing from their
customers, and more to do with PayPal's software freezing accounts of innocent
people, and PayPal not being willing to allocate the resources necessary to
prevent this theft.

~~~
giancarlostoro
My thing is... How is it that it is now paypals property? How is that legal? I
sure hope someone who lost 100 grand sues them for their money back plus lost
income due to account freeze. We need to see more legal outcry over what
basically ammounts to theft. I may even figure you could sue for defamation
depending on the why of your account being frozen. If they claim anything
negative. Plus it gives your entire enterprise a bad name without reason.

~~~
carapace
PayPal owes me $200.

I had received ~$200 from friends to start a video game project. They froze my
account. I did everything they said to do to get it unfrozen: sent photocopies
of my ID, etc. Still frozen. No human interaction.

Two years later I get a letter from the state comptroller saying that PayPal
had been trying to reach me to give me my money back, and if I wanted it to
call a certain 800 number (of PayPal's, not the state), otherwise it would
revert to the state. I called the number and they asked me, "Do you want to be
mailed a check, or can we just credit your PayPal account?" Since the account
was still frozen (as far as I know, I haven't tried to log in to it in years)
I said send me the check.

That was the last I ever heard about it.

No check was forthcoming.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Wonder what would happen if you send a letter back to the current state
comptroller. That sounds pretty awful, but wow, it eventually just magically
goes to the state somehow. That sounds just as odd as it disappearing,
especially since it's been "frozen" for years, one could say gaining interest
for money that's not their own.

~~~
freeone3000
In Texas, at least, "unclaimed property" goes to the state comptroller, who
holds it on behalf of the person for some years in case they claim it. My
dealings with them were fairly straightforward (but weirdly insecure?) to
reclaim a security deposit I had forgotten about.

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gitgud
It's funny how items 6 (2checkout) and 7 (Stripe) are almost identical in
style. I believe Stripe was the original and 2checkout completely lifted their
design...

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jpomykala
Paddle.com

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sbhn
Liberty reserve

~~~
ohyeshedid
No.[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Reserve#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Reserve#History)

