

Alternative to Paypal "Buy buttons" for European-based companies? - Nicolas___

Paypal is the clear leader in the "Buy button" field...it's easy, quick, and it just works. And also, you can use it if your company is based in Europe (mine is).<p>But the company's policies and reputation makes me wonder if I really want to work with them as a partner. Paypal seems to have a history of freezing accounts without much of a reason. I don't want to face this situation, no matter how small or big my business account balance happens to be.<p>Dear HN fellows, do you know/use/run a service that provides "Buy buttons", that can be used by non-US companies ? Thanks in advance.
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ig1
I did a pretty thorough review of the players in this market, and although
there are alternatives they're all worse than Paypal.

The chances of Paypal suspending your account depends a lot of what you're
doing with it, if you're operating in the b2b space or if you're selling a
product then you shouldn't have any problem.

Most of the companies that have had accounts suspended have tended to be doing
non-standard things (asking for donations, acting as payment middle-men,
etc.), if you're going to be doing something weird get Paypal to ok it upfront
and put a note on your account.

You can also sweep money from Paypal to your bank on a daily basis to minimize
the impact.

My second choice after Paypal would be 2co, although 2co have some pretty
bizarre requirements on the UI of your purchase screen, which in practice a
lot of vendors just ignore. But it made me hesitant about using them.

Depending on the nature of your customer base Amazon or Google payments might
work for you as well (but these both require your customers to have an account
with the respective provider).

~~~
econgeeker
I've used amazon payments, google checkout, and paypal.

Paypal ======

Note, I refuse to use the euphemism "freeze your account" because that is not
what paypal does. Paypal steals people's money.

PayPal will steal your money for all kinds of reasons, including the people
who buy from you. You don't even have to be doing anything "weird" (unless
selling people software online is weird.) When paypal stole our money, one of
their demands to get it back was that we provide an invoice from the
manufacturer of our software proving we had enough units to fill customer
demand. This invoice had to be paper based, and we needed to scan it. It
needed to be signed in blue ink by someone at the manufacturer. I kid you not,
those were paypals demands.

We're selling software that we created, we're the manufacturer, and it is
downloaded so, it is "created" the moment someone buys it. There is no risk
that we'll run out of inventory. We'd been doing good sales, we had very happy
customers, and no complaints.

Our crime? One of our customers had paid someone else via paypal, and that
other person turned out to be a scammer. Paypal, when they went after that
scammer, looked at everyone who paid him, and then everyone else those people
had paid and then stole the money in those accounts as well. This was clearly
an automated process and apparently happened instantaneously. It was clear
from trying to talk to the "support" at paypal. by the way- attempting to work
with paypal to resolve these things means dealing with people about as bright
as the local DMV and MUCH less interested in helping you. As far as they are
concerned, because their software decided so, you're a scammer trying to rip
them off. They have no interest in actually telling you anything about what's
going on. They just make arbitrary demands in the hope that eventually you'll
give up.

Paypal was completely irrational, and dishonest. They lied to us many times.
We did things they demanded and they just ignored it and then made more
demands, or demanded the same things again.

As far as I'm concerned, Paypal boosts earnings by stealing their customers
money. The only thing unusual about our account at that point, compared to
previous periods, was we had left more money in it, since we'd not been
withdrawing it to our bank account for a couple months. So there was a nice
sum of cash for them to steal.

Amazon Payments ===============

We used Amazon at a different point in time. One day, Amazon just deleted our
account, completely! Again an automated fraud thing, but they recognized the
error. They mostly made things right. There ware a couple kindle books that
had been purchased that they promised us a coupon to let us buy again and
never delivered, but that's not a problem. Amazon's customer support was
really disorganized and vague in their communication- they would often give us
instructions that started with "Log into your account" when the account itself
had been deleted. By trial and error we were able to figure out what needed to
be done to get mostly everything back to where it needed to be. So, amazon,
not really well organized, but not out to steal your money.

Google Checkout ===============

Used them for quite awhile. No real problems. No hiccups.. well, I think there
was a problem with one order but we were able to resolve it, between us and
the customer. Fortunately didn't ever have to deal with google "support"
(since in my experience with other google products there isn't likely to be
much.) Google's policies were much better than paypal, and they ran a tight
ship that ran very well.

We looked at 2CO as well, and in our research they seemed to be a good place.
If I needed to do this again, that would be my first choice, though I'd keep
google checkout as a possibility, the real issue being more which one looked
like a merchant account and which one looked like a branded pay button to our
customers.

~~~
ig1
I'm not sure I fully understand your story, but Paypal's normal policy for
suspended accounts is that they'll hold the money for 180 days before
releasing it to you (this should be in your suspension email).

~~~
Nicolas___
The problem is that many legit people with perfectly legit businesses have
seen their account frozen for 180 days without any reason and without any
human being to discuss the issue with. All they could do is wait and hope they
get their money back at some point.

To some it might be just an issue, but to me it's a problem that would lead my
company to bankrupt.

~~~
ig1
If you're doing regular sweeps into your bank account then you hopefully
wouldn't have much money suspended.

I've also not had any problem getting someone to talk to, their European call
centre at least seems relatively clueful and friendly. Although I've only
spoken with them about raising limits, etc. and not about account suspension
so obviously that case might be different.

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hartcw
I run a UK based company, and use three different 'Buy buttons' on my website
- that is: 1\. Paypal 2\. Google Checkout 3\. Fast Spring

I've not had any problems with any of them. Paypal and Google Checkout are
comparable in price, I think its about 4% cut.

FastSpring is a bit more, about 8% I think, but it has the benefit of handling
tax complications - ie. it checks where the seller is, and charges VAT
accordingly. Plus it handles currency conversion so the buyer can pay in their
local currency.

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colin8chSE
For digital goods and subscriptions try Simplified Ecommerce. I'm the founder,
here's the basics:

<http://SimplifiedEcommerce.com/aboutus>

Integrations as easy as PayPal "BuyNow" links, beautiful customizable payment
pages, affiliate marketing like ClickBank and recurring subscription billing
without any programming or complicated API's.

International companies are welcome and receive weekly settlements via Bank
Wire (US companies settle with ACH/ direct debit to their bank account).

You can get started right away without going through the long, complicated
pain of applying and qualifying for a merchant account. Then as your business
grows if you get a merchant account, the transition is seamless, as easy as
submitting your new merchant account credentials. All your integrations,
products, subscription plans, affiliate relationships, custom payment pages,
data, reporting... stay intact.

and YOUR customers' data is YOURS, securely stored in our PCI level 1
compliant tokenized vault and is fully portable.

I'd love to hear your questions and feedback!

Colin@SimplifiedEcommerce.com

~~~
Flam
For the love of God, can your site give pricing info when I click on the
pricing section??? Thank you

~~~
colin8chSE
We're in Beta and working with each new customer closely, getting their
feedback and developing what we think is going to be fair pricing when we
officially launch.

If you don't have a merchant account, our pricing will be around 7%,
competitive with Clickbank, Plimus, Fastspring, etc.

If you already have your own merchant account, our pricing will start at about
$70/month and $0.25.txn, competitive with Recurly, Chargify, etc. We're a
payments gateway too, so you avoid those additional fees.

------
yread
I hope that one will emerge similarly to how Thawte was created to avoid
cryptography export restrictions. And the founder could get very rich too and
spend the money on something as cool as Ubuntu, too.

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petercooper
Sort of. <http://www.clickbank.com/> works fine for European vendors
(certainly UK, at least) and they have a good affiliate system built-in. The
key downside is you must very specifically define your 'products' through them
- you can't just set up arbitrary calls to take arbitrary amounts of money, as
you can with your PayPal buttons.

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fastspring
FastSpring is all-inclusive and works with companies all over the world. Order
pages are translated into 18 languages, end customers can pay using foreign
currencies, VAT is properly collected when required, etc. For SaaS services,
try SaaSy.com

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grimen
Keep you eyes open on Merchii.com - launching the beta soon. Enables secure
e-commerce on _any_ website in a few minutes. The pitch on the site now is not
the entire picture.

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marquis
The horror-stories of Paypal are because of the massive market that this
company has. Considering the sheer number of businesses and individuals using
this, it's natural that offences get publicised. Personally I have no problem
using Paypal at all, and as ig1 notes I'd only expect issues if you fit into a
pattern of suspicious activity (sudden large transactions etc).

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citricsquid
There's a reason people still use Paypal even after all the horror stories:
there is no alternative.

~~~
slowpoke
And alternatives cannot gain ground because everybody uses paypal. It's a
vicious circle. And one of my favorite examples for why monopolies are bad.

~~~
pavlov
I don't see where the monopoly is. Customers are free to switch to a better
payment processor by just changing a few links on their website.

If someone offered European customers better service than Paypal at roughly
the same price, I'm sure it would be popular. But it turns out that handling
transactions in 30+ countries is pretty complicated and fraught with
bureaucratic problems, which is why Paypal remains the only option.

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roberts_vc
What about <http://moneybookers.com> ?

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matthall28
I highly recommend AlertPay.com

It's PayPal minus the pain

~~~
addandsubtract
I was just skimming through their docs and came accross this:

>One major drawback with Advanced Integration is that anyone can see the HTML
code for your "Buy Now" buttons, which means that a third-party can tamper
with the item variables and make fraudulent payments if they so choose. [1]

Um, no... wtf?

[1] [https://dev.alertpay.com/en/integration-tools/html-
integrati...](https://dev.alertpay.com/en/integration-tools/html-
integration/integration-best-practices-guide.html)

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vampirechicken
www.2checkout.com

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hm2k
You could give coinb.in a go if you wanted to accept via bitcoins rather than
USD or EUR.

<http://coinb.in/>

