
MasterCard's Simplify Commerce - sachinag
https://www.simplify.com/commerce/
======
greghinch
To play diplomat, I see a lot of Stripe loyalty / Mastercard hate already
brewing here, and I think that's a bit unwarranted. Stripe has certainly
earned their place as a cherished service, but I would venture to bet a lot of
devs worked quite hard on Simplify as well, so it'd be nice to see discussion
on the merits of the offering rather than preconceived notions of the
provider.

If nothing else, even if 0.05% isn't much, I'm happy to see if they can start
a bit of a pricing war here. If it drives payment costs down across the board,
all the better.

~~~
pc
(I built the first version of Stripe and work here.)

I think the unfortunate aspect of these clones is that they're lazy. I have
huge respect for anyone that innovates in payments -- I know how hard it is,
and I'd imagine it's even harder to do that as part of a larger company.

What I find disappointing is when a product copies _everything_ about Stripe
-- everything from Stripe.js to the "live/test" switch to the "1/2/3" getting
started pop-up when you create your account to the nomenclature of
"InvoiceItems" to the ordering of tabs in the account settings.

It's certainly MasterCard's (and anyone's) prerogative to do that, but I don't
think it's particularly worthy of support from other engineers and makers.

We should encourage each other any time we see great, original work --
creativity is hard, and new ideas are often delicate in the early days. It'd
be really cool if MasterCard did _that_ , but Simplify unfortunately doesn't
seem to have anything that's new. (Please correct me if I'm wrong!)

~~~
antr
The SV expectation/mentality that if someone builds something first they "own"
that space is unjustifiable. I'm not say you are saying that, but it is an
implicit attitude in the Valley.

Competition (or "clones") were around 100 years ago, continue to exist today
and will be around for the next 100 years. Today's innovation is tomorrow's
commodity thanks to competition. This is good.

Is it disappointing that MasterCard launched a similar service? Sure, I would
too be disappointed and I sympathise.

Having said that, stating that "a product copies everything" is not really
true. They can not copy execution, culture, customer service, customer
loyalty, etc. You have that on your side.

People think that Ford Motor was one of the first (if not the only) car
manufacturer in States in the early 1900s, but it was quite the contrary. The
car was a revolutionary technology: it had a combustion engine, it was fast,
etc. Over 100 car companies were launched in the early 1900s. All of them car
startups. When the technology goes in one direction it is difficult to be the
salmon that swims upstream, in the opposite direction. To tell those +100 car
startups to "go and innovate, I own the combustion engine on top of four
wheels" is simple unrealistic. Expect competition, that's my point.

How did Ford survive having less resources than many others? How did Ford
survive the great depression? Execution. It improved the assembly line,
vertically integrated to bring more production in-house, etc.

Stripe's case should be no different. Today's technology and innovation is
commoditised in months. Execution can't be commoditised. Don't expect
competitors to rest on their laurels.

~~~
markdown
> People think that Ford Motor was one of the first (if not the only) car
> manufacturer in States in the early 1900s, but it was quite the contrary.
> The car was a revolutionary technology: it had a combustion engine, it was
> fast, etc. Over 100 car companies were launched in the early 1900s.

There were over 1,800 automobile manufacturers in the United States from 1896
to 1930. Very few survived and only a few new ones were started after that
period.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufacturer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States)

~~~
adventured
A lot of the reason for the lack of very many new car companies for decades
has been due to insider sponsored regulations meant to target upstarts and
using political power to crush competitors (which of course has been tried on
Tesla in a variety of ways).

Not suggesting you didn't know that, but it's still worthwhile to point out.

------
rudros
Check out [https://www.simplify.com//](https://www.simplify.com//) (the double
slash ending is important).

~~~
joshrice
What was there? Just getting a 404...or is that your point?

~~~
rudros
Ahhh, they shut it down already. It was a page with links to login to their
JBOSS admin pages and such. You needed passwords, of course, but still, not
the sort of thing you want clients to randomly stumble across.

~~~
rurounijones
Bloody hell, that is an instant, trust destroying, security cock-up. You can
set JBoss to bind to a separate IP address (i.e. one not publicly accessible
etc.) for all management functions, it is a simple configuration change.

------
mattparcher
Something that caught my eye: the name "Simplify" is pretty close to "Simple",
the online bank service.

Different products entirely, I realize—but heck, Simple’s twitter handle is
even @simplify.

~~~
justinreeves
That was actually what drew me to the headline. I saw "Simplify" and thought
it was about my bank.

------
kawera
_At this time, however, the merchant must be a U.S. business_

Oh well...

~~~
sideproject
With clones of Stripe poppin' up everywhere, I think the niche advantage would
be to be able to scale the service to a number of other countries where this
type of service is either expensive or unavailable (please come to Australia!
- I know there is "pin", but we wouldn't mind a cheaper alternative without
any monthly fees!)

~~~
lbarrow
Have you looked at Braintree? We're charging 2.4% and $0.30 in Australia, with
no monthly fee.

~~~
thejosh
Does it work similar to PIN/PayPal where you hold the money then deposit the
money into a bank account or do you require a merchant account?

~~~
lbarrow
We work with you to get you set up with a merchant account. Unfortunately, the
application process isn't instant yet like it is in the US.

------
pvnick
I wouldn't trust anything that comes from Mastercard or Visa directly. I would
_much_ rather have the companies' idiosyncrasies and politics abstracted
through a 3rd-party service like stripe or balanced. That's just my kneejerk
reaction, take it or leave it.

~~~
CoachRufus87
Why not? Millions trust them with one their most important assets: cash.

~~~
ericd
On the merchant side, the picture is a lot less friendly than the consumer
side. With a traditional merchant account, there is basically a march of
monotonically increasing fees here and there that add up, and are only brought
back down a bit when someone wins against them in court.

------
zt
I find this to be a really interesting business decision for MasterCard.
MasterCard cannot offer this service directly on their information systems
because of there own rules and the antitrust consent decree.

So what have they done? They've built a wrapper around Priority Payments
Services, an independent sales organization of Wells Fargo. (For reference,
Stripe is also an ISO of Wells Fargo Merchant Services).

Which is all a long way of saying that MasterCard went pretty far out of there
way to build this system. They must really see value in selling directly to
merchant developers.

There is another possible story here: maybe the ISO wanted to compete with
Stripe, they built the system and site, and asked MasterCard for their
branding.

~~~
foobarqux
Mastercard can see almost exactly how much Stripe is growing, I don't think
they needed to be very perceptive in "seeing value in selling directly to
merchant developers".

~~~
zt
Not to be flip, but I haven't found that MasterCard or Visa are particular
great at data analysis. Additionally, I would be surprised if MasterCard could
easily figure out the information you suggest from the data they get. I could
be completely wrong, but I've seen them have enough trouble figuring out
interchange charges -- their core business -- let alone random analytic facts
about (so-called) competitors.

To my immediate recollection ISO 8583 (the standard set out for credit card
transactions) doesn't have much info on independent sales organizations (a
different ISO acronym). This is all to say that the transactions are through a
merchant account set up by Stripe for each particular merchant at Wells Fargo
Merchant Services, then through First Data and only then hit MasterCard.
Again, I'm not certain, but I'm not sure its a question they can easily answer
from their data.

------
diggan
As usual, there is no information at all on which countries that is supported,
I guess this is only supported in USA. Maybe I'm the only one outside of
America...

Edit: Yeah, after registering, confirming my email and trying to apply for a
full account, I know that it's only for America. Sigh...

~~~
sleepyhead
"At this time, however, the merchant must be a U.S. business."

[https://simplify.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1173591-s...](https://simplify.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1173591-some-
of-my-customers-are-located-outside-of-the-u-s-can-i-still-use-simplify-
commerce-)

~~~
diggan
Cool, in Support -> Home -> General, couldn't be more visible. Tried searching
for "country" in the support-area, no hits, no more time spent searching.

------
jackbravo
If MasterCard can create an international version of this product before
Stripe, then this will be big.

------
tlrobinson
BTW MasterCard has a whole bunch of other interesting APIs available:
[https://developer.mastercard.com/portal/display/api/API](https://developer.mastercard.com/portal/display/api/API)

------
sachinag
Complete competitor to Stripe and Balanced and Braintree.js. Just a teeny bit
underneath pricing for all - 2.85% versus 2.90%.

~~~
rsync
... which is a fairly terrible percentage rate. Even a small processor should
be able to get under 2%, provided you don't have a lot of fraud/chargebacks.

There's a tremendous amount of froth in those rates.

~~~
dangrossman
2% is below CNP interchange on a lot of card types. For example, it costs _the
processor_ 2.95% to charge a Platinum MasterCard or 2.05% to charge a World
MasterCard card as CNP. A processor charging less than interchange is taking a
loss; it's paying the merchant more than it'll get funded by charging that
card.

The flat-rate pricing these new aggregators offer at 2.7-2.9% already builds
in taking a loss on some cards by making it up on ones with cheaper
interchange rates. To go below 2% flat rate and make a profit is near
impossible. The only place you'll find that is somewhere like PayPal, with
$100k/mo or more in volume and a negotiated contract, and they can get away
with 1.9% because many of their payments are balance-funded or ACH-funded at
nearly no cost.

2.2-2.5% is much more realistic and you'll still need a minimum monthly volume
to get it.

Or we can all set up retail stores and abandon this e-commerce stuff. Rates
are much lower when you can swipe a physical card. The real profit-taking is
happening in those card readers you can pick up at Staples/BestBuy/etc from
Square/PayPal/Intuit/GoCardless where they're collecting 2.7-2.9% and paying
half that in interchange.

~~~
No1
You would think that MasterCard could charge significantly lower fees on
MasterCard transactions since they're, like, MasterCard and all... Clearly,
they're not interested in competing based upon price.

------
zanny
Give me your bitcoin address and we can have a transfer in minutes for a few
satoshis or within an hour or so for free.

(blahblahblah, usd, ponzie scheme, cbx halting transfers, grandmothers)

------
joelrunyon
Jumping on this thread for a flyer.

Any stripe devs know if it's possible to integrate with infusionsoft.com? That
integration would make me so, so happy.

~~~
jkuria
I completely agree. And with 1ShoppingCart too. I considered using stripe but
they didn't integrate with any of the popular shopping carts that handle
affiliate marketing type of features. So I have to pay for two merchant
accounts and a load balancing gateway. I also live in fear of my funds being
frozen any moment or losing sales if I go over my processing limit.

------
levosmetalo
US[A ONLY | ELESS].

------
jusben1369
0.05% is a tiny amount. This is the first shot though across the bow on
lowering the transactional rates set by Stripe, Braintree etc.

------
gesman
It is only supported in USA. I'm in Canada. Next please ...

------
aquark
I'd like to see one of these 'API friendly' companies compete more in the
physical space to.

Basically something equivalent to Square with a Stripe-like API and lower
rates for swiped transactions.

------
kylelibra
The entrenched payment companies are definitely scared of competition, but by
launching clones of their competitors they show they still don't get it.

~~~
agilebyte
I think that their target audience are (mom & pop) businesses (about to go
online) happy to trust the Mastercard brand, not programmers that get uppity
about seeing yet another clone & complaining about an API.

------
jwilliams
Restricted to US individuals and companies only... I'm not sure why sites
don't call that out from the get-go.

~~~
sangaya
It is not restricted to US individuals, just US Businesses. "Using Simplify
Commerce, you can create payments with credit and debit cards carrying major
card brand logos for customers anywhere in the world. At this time, however,
the merchant must be a U.S. business."
[[https://simplify.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1173591-s...](https://simplify.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1173591-some-
of-my-customers-are-located-outside-of-the-u-s-can-i-still-use-simplify-
commerce)]

------
jusben1369
"Sign up and develop. When you're ready to go live, tell us a little about
your business."

It's actually more of a "PayMill" model than a Stripe model. So they allow you
to begin development but they don't actually promise immediate on-boarding.

~~~
ceejayoz
Stripe does exactly the same thing. You have to enter some business details
like tax ID, sales volume, etc. to go live.

------
rdl
Given that they permit weapons and pornography, if they're otherwise just a
direct clone of Stripe with the MasterCard brand, they're pretty awesome. I'd
be fine if it cost 3.5%, but it's actually cheaper too.

------
chiph
Looks like they don't handle recurring charges for you. So you'll have to be
the one to hold onto the card number and jump through the PCI compliance
hoops. Or go with a card vault service.

~~~
hmind
Is it not this?
[https://www.simplify.com/commerce/docs/tutorial/index#recurr...](https://www.simplify.com/commerce/docs/tutorial/index#recurring-
payments)

~~~
chiph
Whoops. Didn't see that. Thanks.

------
larkarvin
This is cool, but much cooler if they will support businesses outside US. it
seems i'm stuck with paypal and Payment gateway in the Philippines are way too
pricey for our business

------
angersock
Jesus, this looks kind of like a desperate in-house hackathon product pushed
live before the execs could kill it.

(Props to the development team! You still need better docs though. :( )

~~~
jacquesc
This seems a bit cynical. Either Mastercard is changing their organization
around from the top, or there happened to be a rogue product team that managed
to fight their way through the bureaucracy to launch something cool.

Either way, props to em.

~~~
subsystem
[http://blogs.computerworld.com/it-leadership/21657/how-
maste...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/it-leadership/21657/how-mastercard-
restructured-it-innovation)

------
kephra
Its still stupid credit cards.

Most eCommerce sites have a profit margin of less then 10%, often around 5%.
Charging 2.85% + $0.30 kills most business ideas.

------
csdreamer7
Are there any chargeback fees? (For those who don't know a fee in addition to
the chargeback which is usually $25.)

~~~
NKCSS
See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5955772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5955772)

~~~
csdreamer7
Thankyou!

------
kiyanforoughi
2.85% fees? Such a rip-off.... Braintree is much better/cheaper and offers so
much more.

------
NKCSS
Can't find anything about chargebacks, wonder if they are free :)

~~~
larkarvin
$12 for charge backs
[https://simplify.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1173584-h...](https://simplify.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1173584-how-
much-does-it-cost-to-use-simplify-commerce-)

------
mehulkar
Seems identical to stripe?

------
LukeHoersten
Their website design looks like a hardware store site design.

------
eightyone
"Deposits are made into your account in two business days in most cases."

This is awful copywriting. There's not even an asterisk with more information
or anything.

------
dutchbrit
Do they also accept Maestro debit cards?

~~~
jusben1369
US only.

------
techboots
So what's the consensus on this? I'm looking to integrate either Stripe or
Simplify... which service do I go with?

~~~
nwenzel
Stripe knows how to innovate. Simplify knows how to copy. Go with Stripe.

------
alphamale3000
Yes! We'll save 0.05%! That's 500$ for every million in sales. You must have
huge sales to justify a switch.

~~~
memset
If you're doing a million in sales, you should negotiate a rate with your CC
provider which will be far lower than the list price. All of the providers -
Stripe, Braintree, PayPal, Authorize.net, and most likely these guys - will
negotiate a rate with you, and if you're doing any volume you ought to give
them a call and ask.

When you call, they will ask you two important things:

1\. What is your current volume (if you're looking at switching from someone
else)

2\. What is your chargeback rate? (How often do angry customers call the
credit card company to issue a chargeback against you?)

If you are growing and have increasing transaction volume, and you aren't
defrauding your customers, then you can absolutely get a lower rate than
you're paying now.

This is true for so many things in business - the list price means nothing!

