

Ask HN: What payment gateways do you use for your app? - shadowz

I guess the question is more toward the Canadian HN entrepreneurs. Since Authorize.Net require you to have a merchant account in US, we, Canadians, can't use it. What are your choices for merchant account/payment gateway (in terms of building a web app)?
======
agmiklas
We use Beanstream for our Toronto based company. One nice thing about them is
they support something like authorize.net's CIM feature, so you can do
recurring billing without having to store CC numbers yourself.

One thing to be aware of, though. It is nigh impossible to get a USD American
Express merchant account in Canada. If you plan to charge exclusively in USD,
this can be a real problem, as you won't be able to take AmEx. We're soon
going to go through the hassle of setting up an account at authorize.net or
Braintree so we can take AmEx -- too many of our customers insist on paying
either by AmEx or cheque.

For more info about the USD-AmEx-in-Canada problem, see:
[http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/2008/09/25/freshbooks-now-
acc...](http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/2008/09/25/freshbooks-now-accepts-
amex/)

Note that it is possible to use a US payment processor for a Canadian company.
The two things you need to do are:

a) Get an EIN (we haven't yet done this, but apparently it isn't too
difficult, even for foreign corporations)

b) Open a chequing account at a US bank. We've done this using Harris Bank
(<http://harrisbank.com>). Since they are a subsidiary of BMO, they are used
to opening accounts for Canadian businesses.

~~~
shadowz
wow, I did not know about the AmEx problem in Canada. Looks like there's more
battling to do after setting up my merchant account/payment gateway. Did you
guys look at PSIGate at all or did you just go with Beanstream?

------
huhtenberg
> _Since Authorize.Net require you to have a merchant account in US, we,
> Canadians, can't use it._

Actually we can. The do however require that you open an account with Global
Payments Inc and these guys have seriously sleazy sales tactics. They break
down their fees into a multitude of categories and groups, and it is fairly
unobvious what combination of these fees you are going to hit most frequently.
It took me literally a week of back and forth emails with them to get an idea
of what the average transaction fee would look like. It was really like
pulling a tooth.

I have also dealt with Moneris. _Extremely_ arrogant. They are really big and
they basically do not care. They are also the most expensive of all that I
have talked to.

Lastly I spoke with VersaPay and they first quoted me fees that were frankly
exorbitant. Only after I told them the Global Payments fee level, they brought
theirs to the comparable level.

In the end I haven't gone through with any of these, but if I were to pick one
now I would probably give VP a try.

YMMV, etc.

------
kbrower
I am using paypal, and I would definitely not use them again. They are holding
30% of our order values for 90 days...
[http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/...](http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/archives/2009/08/paypals_reserve.html)

------
dasil003
We use Braintree. They have a secure vault similar to Authorize.net CIM for
storing credit cards safely without PCI concerns. Also, they were the only
payment gateway that could give us true multi-currency support. Apparently in
most cases you need revenues at least in the 7-figures to swing that, but
Braintree set up USD, EUR and GBP for us on the cheap. Note that some payment
gateways will claim to support multi-currency, even though what's really
happening is they are just doing an exchange rate conversion and the customer
gets nailed with an unexpected conversion fee from their bank.

~~~
dhyasama
I just looked at the Braintree site. It looks like they provide very developer
friendly services which is rare in the industry. The listed rates are high
though. If anyone goes with them, keep in mind it's the industry norm to
heavily negotiate those.

~~~
dan_manges
Our (Braintree's) pricing is actually very competitive. It probably looks
higher because we disclose all our fees. Nearly every provider we know of
obscures fees both during the sales process and in the monthly reporting
statements so merchants never really understand what they're paying. Here's an
example of pricing trickery <http://bit.ly/9NSZCa> . Prospective customers
regularly do thorough pricing comparisons and we are consistently among the
most competitively priced. Our objective has always been to provide the best
value in the industry for a fair price.

~~~
dhyasama
I work at a provider (PowerPay) and completely agree about obscured fees. The
rates I was referring to are posted on your site and do seem a bit high to me.
With that being said, there are a ton of variables involved in pricing an
account, so it was a bit unfair of me to bash your prices. I suppose that is
why most providers don't list rates on their sites.

------
rmanocha
Anybody here know good payment gateways for us folks outside the US??
(specifically India, in my case)

~~~
rmanocha
To be fair, there are a few options out there (see
[http://www.pluggd.in/review-of-payment-gateways-in-
india-297...](http://www.pluggd.in/review-of-payment-gateways-in-india-297/))
but from the quick research I did, they have really high transaction rates
(upwards of 6%).

If no better options exist, this might be an opportunity for an entrepreneur,
though figuring out and complying around the laws might take some doing.

~~~
paraschopra
Setting up a payment gateway is really capital intensive business

------
swombat
Based in the UK, we use a Barclays merchant account and SecureTrading as our
payment gateway. SecureTrading is great as they provide excellent customer
service. Their payment gateway set-up is a bit funny (involves setting up a
java gateway), but it works.

I've written an ActiveMerchant plugin for ST:

<http://github.com/swombat/active_merchant>

------
retroryan
I am trying to figure out if I want to accept credit cards on my site, instead
of sending the customer to a different site, how I can become PCI Compliant.
It sounds like for a low volume of transactions you just have to answer a
questioner and keep decent security precautions. Is that true? Also does your
host have to be PCI Certified or can it be any VPS host like linode?

------
bendtheblock
I was about to post the same Ask HN yesterday, but for other UK. Anyone have
any recommendations?

We usually use PayPal or Google Checkout, but our clients often want to use
their business bank's merchant service e.g. Barclays EPDQ. This can sometimes
pose a problem, as we use Ubercart and have to find/develop the necessary
adapter modules.

------
perplexes
Wish we were using BrainTree, as evidenced by a coworker exclaiming that he
found a bug in their dev sandbox, and they fixed it in a few minutes and sent
him a nice email thanking him. So, anecdotally, they sound great.

Authorize.Net is otherwise stable, though poorly documented, and works when
their datacenter isn't on fire.

~~~
tamersalama
They look great - but - seems that they require a US presence

------
qeorge
In the US, but we've used PayPal's direct payment gateway (Websites Payment
Pro) for a number of client sites, and its been great.

The rates are very reasonable ($30/month, 2-3% + $.30 per transaction), and
the only weird requirement is that you have to offer PayPal as a checkout
option (and we would anyway).

~~~
shadowz
I'm looking for a subscription model so unless PayPal has a recurring billing,
I can't use it. Thanks for the tip anyway.

~~~
rscott
I'm pretty sure Paypal does have recurring payments. I think they call it a
subscription payment.

~~~
qeorge
AFAIK this is not available through their gateway - you have to send the user
to PayPal.com and even then I believe they have to use a PayPal account to
subscribe.

If there's a way around this I would love to know.

~~~
jcoby
subscriptions are available through the direct api (your site) and express api
(paypal hop) if using websites payments pro. however, if you offer direct,
paypal requires that you offer express as well.

payments standard only supports something similar to express, although it's a
totally different beast.

~~~
qeorge
That is awesome, thank you.

------
JoshTriplett
TrustCommerce (<http://www.trustcommerce.com/>) seem like good people. In
particular, they seem very FOSS-friendly; see
(<http://www.trustcommerce.com/opensource.php>).

------
shrike
Amazon has a very strong subscriptions/reoccurring billing system with a nice
of API for subscription management.

[https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business?sn=devfps/adv...](https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business?sn=devfps/advanced)

~~~
trefn
We use Amazon FPS at Mixpanel and it's okay. The fees are certainly low.

However, you have to send your users offsite to a co-branded page to get them
signed up, which is a pain in the ass. They also _have_ to have an Amazon
account, which many businesses don't (if you're a B2B startup).

------
jaddison
If you're looking for a Canadian company, look to Beanstream:

<http://beanstream.com/>

They're based out of Victoria, BC - my hometown! They're supposed to be good,
although I can't speak from personal experience.

~~~
tyrelb
I'm in the process of setting up Beanstream - seem like nice guys out there!
And they give test accounts, etc. Very friendly. When you call the 1800
number, someone answers the phone!

~~~
shadowz
Let us know after you get everything running. I'm counting on this as an
alternative to PSIGate now.

------
asmithmd1
I use these guys: <http://www.paysimple.com/> They walked me through getting a
merchant account and charge $30/month for the gateway with an API, credit card
vault, subscription billing on credit card or ACH

------
AlexBlom
Have you tried ringing the banks direct?

Back in AU (I now live in Canada) I was able to get a pretty good deal and
system from my local bank. I have no idea why it was not promoted online but
their merchant facilities did the trick!

~~~
shadowz
My business bank account is with BMO, so I tried to contact their own solution
called Moneris. Their sales rep didn't know what I was talking about. They
tried to push me to use virtual terminal and other stuff that usually retail
uses. In the end, the sales rep said she'd have to talk to the manager to see
if they have anything like what I want. So that pretty much failed.

~~~
rstocker99
We use Moneris. The product that covers what you want is eselectplus. You can
get info on their API here <http://www.eselectplus.ca/en/downloadable-
content>. They are pretty clueless. We went with them because at the time
(2006) they were the only company we could find that would support Canadians
that had recurring billing. Their API isn't complete. We actually have to do
screen scraping against their virtual terminal to compensate for missing APIs.

------
DeusExMachina
Although I still did not build any web app, for my software I'm using
FastSpring and, if I'm not mistaken, they should be usefull also for
subscription based web apps.

Very good support and very good interface. It works very well.

------
mattew
Is there anything like Authorize.net CIM in Canada? The CIM piece is awesome
because you don't store any credit card information on your server, which
takes all the PCI hassle out of the equation.

~~~
shadowz
That's exactly what I want to know. I definitely do not want to deal with PCI
compliance. Sadly Authorize.net doesn't support banks in Canada.

~~~
jonah
Solutions like CIM only simplify PCI compliance. You're still handling the
card info, just not storing it. To completely get away from handling card data
you have to send your customer over to another site like PayPal to enter their
payment info. A sub-optimal user experience.

That being said, it's less likely for someone to sniff the info as it passes
through your server's RAM than if it was stored on disk.

------
notaddicted
I (Canadian) have an account on <http://www.internetsecure.com/> \-- I haven't
used it yet so I can't advise, but it's one for your list.

------
nreece
Have a look at Recurly as well: <http://recurly.com>

We use PayPal though.

~~~
wheels
Recurly, Chargify, Spreedly, et al don't actually handle the merchant account
for you so you still need an account at Authorize.net or similar.

~~~
sachinag
This is true but if you use Recurly you can swap merchant accounts as you need
as they store your CC numbers. That plus TransFS is a powerful combination.

------
wwsculley
Try out <http://www.boku.com/publishers/> for mobile payments

------
arashbarati
My first consideration was paypal, but after doing the same thing you doing, i
came up with 2checkout.com

------
poutine
e-xact: ruby on rails based group out of Vancouver, check out their hosted
checkout product which is what we use so we don't need to store credit cards
ourselves and avoid all that PCI BS:

<http://www.hostedcheckout.com/>

~~~
mock
I've used e-xact for a few different projects. Never had any problems with
them, and they're relatively developer friendly (I wrote the
Business::OnlinePayment::Exact module on CPAN).

------
spencerfry
We use Chase Paymentech, but probably switching to BrainTree after speaking to
them several times.

------
jacquesm
I use virtual access, not cheap but very good.

full disclosure, run by friends of mine.

------
pjharrin
I previously used psigate, although I'm not sure I would recommend it

~~~
shadowz
I was actually in contact with them recently. Did you receive bad service? I'd
like to know before I go with them.

~~~
pjharrin
There was a bit of a hassle with them. Setting up the account was rather
annoying.

------
officemedium
Authorize.net's CIM with custom app for flexible rebilling.

~~~
mrtron
How has that gone? I am looking into a similar setup.

