

Add recurring billing to your site. No coding, monthly fees, gateways. Code=HN - gpl1
https://www.pintpay.com

======
magic5227
Suggestion, you need a big fat section on your site that addresses why I
should trust you. Integrating a payment system might be easy, but switching to
something else if your system is shut down isnt. So my biggest concern moving
to something is, what if your product fails for whatever reason, how can I be
assured that I can leave easily and that I will get x days of advance notice.
Im sure you can plan for this but letting people know that you'll be around
for a long time and what happens in a worst case scenario will help.

~~~
Silhouette
> Suggestion, you need a big fat section on your site that addresses why I
> should trust you.

I can't upvote this enough, as a guy who's been actively researching recurring
billing solutions recently.

For the benefit of the OP, here are a few absolute dealbreakers that would
make me not even consider you right now. Please take them as constructive
criticism intended to be helpful:

1\. You appear to be two guys with Linode, running a business that doesn't yet
have a track record. IMHO, that means you need to be backed by either a large,
established company or a provable insurance policy that means I'm still
getting what's due to me if you go under. Remember, you are asking people to
trust you with one of the most important parts of their business.

2\. You ducked the PCI question, and apparently didn't even realise that you
had. You have just lost all credibility, probably for good if anyone
researching you ever finds this thread as it stands right now. I respectfully
suggest that, as a minimum, you post a statement here that makes it clear that
you do understand the implications of PCI and you know exactly where both you
and your prospective clients fit into the scheme of things. (As an aside, I
would be interested to know how you can possibly provide the service you seem
to be offering while using a shared hosting service and still be PCI
compliant.)

3\. On a related note, you don't mention anything about getting my customer
data out of your system if I ever want to move away. You need a robust,
straightforward process to do this, again including a guarantee that there
will be an opportunity for me to use it before you disappear to a tropical
island/under a bus/into bankruptcy court.

4\. Net 60? Ditto to what everyone else said. Additionally, saying it's for
fraud protection loses you points: if I'm using a service like this rather
than going straight to payment gateways and merchant accounts, using a service
that can offer robust fraud protection schemes and fight chargebacks on my
behalf is a major plus, which several of your competitors offer to a useful
extent. If you think you need to keep all of my money for 60 days (or even 30)
in case of chargebacks, I have to wonder how easy it is to game your system.

5\. If you don't have a robust API/callback system, I suspect you don't have a
product worth anything to most of your target market. Ditto if you can't
export comprehensive reports in a format readily imported into common
accounting software and/or provided to professional accountants.

6\. Given that you're up against relatively well established small-scale
opposition now and of course some Internet giants, your fees are
uncompetitive. If you don't have the power and the established reputation they
do, you need a lot more than a slightly lower rate to stand out.

7\. In due course, if you want to handle international transactions for
clients based in Europe, you'll need to be aware of the tax and data
protection rules, and you'll need to be able to give absolute guarantees that
everything you do will fall within those rules (for example, not transferring
any personal customer data outside the EEA). Being US-only is a deal-breaker
for now for many of us anyway, but you knew that.

I do wish you luck, as intermediary payment services have a lot of potential
benefit and more competition is good for all of us. However, looking at the
web site so far, my honest view is that you don't look ready for a public beta
yet. If you are, I respectfully suggest that your FAQ needs to be a lot less
chummy and a lot more to-the-point regarding the questions above so potential
customers like me can see that.

------
shazow
Here's some feedback:

* You should figure out a way not to require the payer to choose a password. Especially if they're already choosing a password on my service, now they're choosing two passwords. I understand that you're using this to handle plan changes and cancellation.

* Allow people to sign up for "free" products, too. This could potentially allow people to completely delegate their pricing pages to you, and you could be involved in the upsell process.

* Allow some formatting in the plan description. Specifically, I want to list things, which looks difficult to parse with a bunch of commas.

~~~
johndbritton
+1 on handling free subscriptions

------
shazow
This is exactly what I've been looking for: Something like Recurly or Chargify
but without hefty monthly fees that will eat at my runway before I even get
profitable.

Right now I'm using Paypal, and I can't wait to move to something else. It
seems Pintpay's fees (3.9% + 30¢) are comparable to Paypal (non-Pro), but I'm
fine with that premium as long as it's a better experience than Paypal. I want
a nice clean interface that doesn't take 60+ seconds to generate reports on my
currency subscribers.

As mentioned in another thread, the callback hooks are a must for me to
migrate my service (SocialGrapple) to Pintpay, but everything else looks
great. I eagerly await!

Edit: Just found this comparison chart of your fees vs others (Recurly,
Chargify, Paypal Pro). Very handy: <https://pintpay.com/about/compare>

~~~
gpl1
Hi, yep, thanks for pointing out that link. Callback hooks are our top
priority right now and will be done soon. We'll keep you posted if you signed
up. Thanks!

------
noodle
we talked before via email, but i wanted to reiterate -- for me to really
integrate this into my site, i need an api available to tell me when a payment
was successfully processed. get that up and running and i'll see about pulling
this in.

~~~
shazow
For some reason I assumed that such an API or callback was available. The
things I take for granted.

Agreed, this is a deal-breaker for me as well.

~~~
gpl1
Yep, we're working on this now. We'll have that out shortly.

~~~
shazow
Any timeline for "shortly"? Are we talking days, weeks, months?

I'm planning a major new release soon and this would be an ideal time to
switch payment systems.

~~~
gpl1
webhooks / url postbacks within a week from today

~~~
limedaring
Awesome — you'll have me as a customer as well when that launches. :)

------
apinstein
Every merchant agreement I've ever seen doesn't allow you to charge payments
for third parties. This is to prevent fraud at a minimum, and I am sure there
are myriad other reasons.

I wonder if they arranged special terms with the merchant gateways or if they
are just trying to fly under the radar? There's gotta be a reason no one has
done this 100x before...

~~~
ryduh
I also wondered how they were doing this. I tried to do something similar with
donations for non-profits and got shot down.

------
sixtofour
If my project was farther along than a gleam in my eye at the moment, I'd
consider trying this.

But while I was considering it, one thing I'd wonder about is how serious and
long-lived the service will be. There's nothing to indicate that you aren't
serious, but I do wonder about this when I see a new service for something
important; will the service go away after I (and my customers) have relied on
it?

Do others have this general concern? Do you hesitate, or just go for it?

For site owners, do you think about this? How do you convey seriousness on
your site?

~~~
bond
Generally speaking every commercial business will stay alive as long as it has
customers and it's profitable...

------
kolinko
"You must be in U.S. to use this page."

What if I'm an American Citizen travelling to Europe? What if my company is
incorporated in U.S.? Banning IPs is uncool.

~~~
jasonlotito
Yeah, that doesn't matter. Being an American Citizen or being a company in the
US doesn't matter. As an American living abroad, I know the pain. It affects
not only payment processing regulations, but also copyright as well. For
example, despite being a Netflix subscriber, I cannot access Netflix while
inside the US.

------
bitsm
Are you guys PCI compliant?

~~~
gpl1
Good question. From the FAQ:

Do I need to worry about PCI Compliance?

Nope! By using PintPay, you never store credit card information on your
servers. In fact, that information isn't stored on our servers either.

(Edited.)

~~~
dandandan
You're on Linode and consider yourselves to be PCI compliant? Even though
you're not storing the cards yourselves (probably using tokenization on
Braintree or Authorize.net) you need to be compliant as the cards pass through
your servers.

------
RobIsIT
"Sorry, you must be in the US to use PintPay"

Ugh. I'm a Canadian. A Maple Tree just died because you made this a U.S. only
service.

~~~
dholowiski
Yup, me too. Google killed a ton of maple trees today too.

------
tzs
The "Compare" page shows PintPay as cheaper than the three competitors
compared to, which is good. However, it is also immediately apparent that all
three of the competitors have the same per transaction fee and lower
percentage charges than PintPay, so that PintPay only wins because the others
also have a fixed monthly fee. At a high enough volume, the higher percentage
rate at PintPay (3.9% vs 2.1% at Chargify and Recurly--a HUGE difference) will
overcome that.

The volume used for comparison is 150 customers a month, each paying $20, for
a total of $3000/month. That's only $36k/year, which is not much at all for a
business. Using the rates that PintPay gives for its competitors, Recurly
becomes cheaper at $3833/month ($46k/year), Chargify becomes cheaper at
$5500/month ($66k/year), and PayPal Web Pro becomes cheaper at $6000/month
($72k/year).

So who is the intended customer for PintPay? Most businesses that I can think
of that would need such a service are going to be doing over $46k/year.

------
gpl1
Hi HN readers, we're expanding the PintPay beta and allowing a few more folks
to signup. We've added a new beta code for the first 200 hacker news readers.
The code is "HN" (no quotes). Thanks!

~~~
jarin
Looks very nice, I like being able to design your hosted payment page. Does
the "thank you page" redirect pass along enough information to be able to
associate the subscription with a user account? Also, do you plan to do some
kind of URL postback for when a subscription's status changes?

I was a little bummed to see that your ToS doesn't allow adult, but I also
have a dating site client who will be needing subscription billing soon. :)

Edit: Ah, yeah the net 60 is kind of rough.

~~~
gpl1
good questions -- we're working on an api and postback right now during the
beta. Should have those up soon. But yes, we'll support URL postbacks for all
kinds of subscription changes (new sub, changed sub, etc). The net 60 is just
during the beta and we would consider lowering it for anyone we approve/verify
as a legit merchant.

Edited.

------
chopsueyar
This looks pretty interesting. I was using membrr with opengateway for an
expressionengine membership site (which requires a merchant account).

Pintpay looks like a great way to test the waters without needing a merchant
account.

Best of luck to you guys!

~~~
gpl1
Thanks chopsueyar!

------
shawnee_
After reading the story of self-publishing whizkid Amanda Hocking

[http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2011-02-09-ebooks09_...](http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2011-02-09-ebooks09_ST_N.htm)

I was inspired to start writing again. Rebuilding emphastic.com, I really
wanted to find an easier way to integrate some kind of self-publishing eBook
payment system, and this looks test-worthy.

In general, the timing is excellent, too. Google's Samsung Android tablet, the
iPad2, etc.; the audience of digital readership is almost ready to eclipse the
ebook-ready available content.

~~~
runevault
If you're looking to self publish I'd just focus on Amazon, B&N (if in the US,
otherwise publish there through Smashwords), and Smashwords. Sure it's 70/30
split, but you also get on their lists of also bought if you can manage enough
sales. I haven't heard of any author making major money self pubbing through
their own website, it's been primarily through the major ebook retailers.

It's what the big players like Hocking, Konrath, John Locke, and more do to
make a living writing.

~~~
mceachen
+1 -- and having gone through publishing a book on Lulu and Amazon, both
services are fine to get dead-tree versions of your book into the hands of
your readers (and you don't have to build a payment solution -- or anything
other than the marketing verbiage).

------
magic5227
Another thought, you should speak in general terms how you can offer a lower
rate than a lot of other companies. Its another component people will
question, are you not charging enough to stay in business (for example)?

------
barmstrong
Great idea! On your compare page it looks like there is no need to sign up for
your own merchant account which is a big win. So I assume you are using your
own? Was curious how you managed to set this up, since I know operating as an
"aggregator" of funds is considered higher risk and is harder to get. Do you
mind mentioning which provider allowed you to set this up (BrainTree, etc) and
how difficult it was to qualify?

Thanks!

------
martinkallstrom
Sorry if this question was already asked before: Does it work if my startup is
in Europe? Does it work regardless of where on the globe my customer is?

Thanks!

Also, no matter what the answer is, it should be in large lettering on the
front page of your service.

Update: And in your FAQ as well.

~~~
speleding
If you're not yet in Europe you should consider starting there. I'm in Europe
and the only option I have for my SaaS service is PayPal, for some reason all
the other processors require a US merchant account (which you can't get
without presence in the US).

I agree with most of the criticism that has been said in this thread already,
but if you can fix that your key selling point for me is "no merchant account
required", you should target outside the US where that matters most.

------
mikiem
Holy smokes... Way too expensive! If you are gonna go on the "we aren't
PayPal" then maybe you can get away with it, but really, wow! I have to go see
if you are double or triple what we pay PayPal. Either way; bad. PayPal fucks
up and cancels "subscriptions" too often, and that makes work. However, and
extra couple percent in fees can pay a billing person. Call me when you have a
sliding price scale. Best wishes.

------
cynix
Any plans to make it available outside the US?

------
mwbiz
If you have a high monthly revenue the 3.9% is pretty steep. The $60/month for
paypal get's wiped out above $6k per month. It may be good for a small, low
dollar value businesses, but as one commenter mentioned, net 60 days is BS.

There is no free lunch, payment processors get you one way or another.

------
gpl1
We'd also like to add CNAME support so you could have pro.yoursite.com show
the payment page you make on PintPay. We're also working on an api and webhook
/ URL postback for info about changes/notifications/cancellations on
subscriptions. A lot still to do during the beta!

~~~
aeden
The problem with using CNAME records in this way is that the resulting page
would not be protected under SSL. Even if the resulting POST is, there are
reasons to ensure that page 1 is also under SSL, such as verification that the
page comes from who it says, that it wasn't altered during transmission, and
simply as a matter of perception. With a CNAME record unless the domain holder
provided you with an SSL certificate _and_ you are able to do multi-homed SSL,
then you're going to have to run in under normal HTTP, and with a payment
system you really do need all of the pages under SSL.

------
marcamillion
My only issue with this solution is the hosted page. I don't want to hand-off
my transaction to a third-party generic page - no matter how good the rates
are.

But looks like a solid offering for those that don't mind that one kink.

------
rishi
Hey Guys - this is pretty cool. On your homepage I would focus on how easy it
is to use rather than the price point. Since almost all services are lower
than 3.9%.

Good luck - looking forward to seeing you guys take on the world.

~~~
gpl1
Hi thanks for the feedback. Here's a quick price comparison:

<https://pintpay.com/about/compare>

But yeah, we hope to add a lot more value in the future than just handling
billing.

~~~
chow
Kudos on providing a price comparison page, but it's somewhat misleading that
you're including Authorize.Net set up fees in the "Per Month Costs". Isn't
that more reflective of first month costs?

Also, why wasn't Spreedly included?

------
kmfrk
This looks great, and I love the design and simplicity of your site.

With Goodsie and now PintPay, e-commerce is going to be a blast. Maybe you
should look into partnering with them? I'd love to have everything in one
place.

~~~
gpl1
Thanks a lot kmfrk! Also, Goodsie looks really cool, will have to check them
out.

------
vladd
I found it sneaky that it's not mentioned in the frontpage pitch, I had to
look down in the FAQs to find it:

"Unfortunately, to sell subscriptions on PintPay, you will need to be within
the United States."

------
ErrantX
Just on the design of the page for the moment - I'd consider having a simpler
"demo image" at the top of the page. I was distracted into reading the text
and wondering what QuietWrite was :)

------
sandeepshetty
Not having names and pictures or your physical address on your about page and
just referring to yourself as "we" is a big trust issue for me especially for
a product handling payments.

------
seanx
Why USA only? Makes it unusable for me:(.

------
erics
I have a Coworking space in Mexico, but run my business from the US. Does that
work?

------
pknerd
I would accept any payment system which works for my country

------
jkkramer
Allowing subscriptions to be charged yearly would be nice.

~~~
gpl1
Great idea! The reason we didn't include this is because yearly automatic
subscriptions causes chargebacks, due to people forgetting about an annual
charge. Something we might implement is a renewal type annual feature, which
will remind customers to renew.

------
blantonl
Holding payments with a Net-60 term? That hurts.

~~~
gpl1
Hi, the net 60 is just during the beta period and really there to combat
fraud. I assure you it is not to help "bootstrap."

We intend to lower it later to 30 days. Edit: if you email us at
feedback@pintpay.com we would consider lowering that number from 60 for
approved/verified merchants.

~~~
blantonl
Thanks for the response. Many of the other comments are now putting this into
context.

However, realize that if I were to switch to your service I might see a huge
disruption in our business' income. Even 30 days could be tough for some
considering Paypal makes our money available _instantly_.

We bring in approximately 80% of our income through Paypal, and have rolled
our own subscription management service. We are also actively looking to
migrate that to Recurly in the 3Q of this year.

In that context, how would you differentiate yourself from Recurly and the
others (Chargify etc) ? If it is regards to having your own payment gateways,
that's great! But I'd be seriously worried about fraud since Paypal (and other
payment gateways) have extremely mature fraud protection programs that have
matured over many many years. I'd love to hear further how your offering
matches up against that.

Thanks!

~~~
18pfsmt
I used your service to listen to the fire fighters last fall during the fires
west of Boulder. Great service, thanks!

------
bad_user
US only.

------
ddemchuk
Guys, net 60 payment on other people's money is absolutely absurd, beta or
not. It's obvious you're attempting to bootstrap by using the cashflow of your
clients payment processing to grow, but that's not ok in this niche. Raise
capital or self fund and do Net 7 max.

~~~
gpl1
Hi, the net 60 is just during the beta period and really there to combat
fraud. I assure you it is not to help "bootstrap." We intend to lower it later
to 30 days.

Edit: if you email us at feedback@pintpay.com we would consider lowering that
number from 60 for approved/verified merchants.

~~~
linked
I see two problems with this strategy: a) New developers still see "60 days"
and say "Fuck you!", you should emphasize the _shortest_ available payment
schedules on your site (make the "anti-fraud" period seem more like a short
hurdle to get over) b) 30 days is still too long for verified publishers;
while it's a reasonable "new account" rate (for after your beta period), if
I'm verified and doing volume on your service, I expect Net-7 or daily.

But what do I know, I'm just a developer who's looking for a recurring billing
platform for my indy service.

~~~
gpl1
You raise some excellent points. I guess all I can say is this is just the
messaging during the beta period for our initial users. We will definitely
change/fix this messaging before launch though to address the issues you've
raised. Once we verify/approve a merchant, we could definitely lower the time.

Edited.

