
Forge - an easy way to accept payments online, powered by Balanced (YC W11) - jareau
http://blog.balancedpayments.com/balanced-powers-forge
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tvladeck
At the bottom they lay out the charges. All of us can do the arithmetic, but
their example works out to 6.4% of a $20 sale!

And of course once you back out the overhead and direct costs of selling, the
amount of your potential profit that eats up is some multiple of that.

They charge 2.9% + $0.30, and then 2%.

Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30.

So they are approximately 65-70% (2/2.9 = 0.69) more expensive, depending on
your average charge.

~~~
kevinholesh
You are correct. We are more expensive than Stripe if you're just looking at
money.

But we look at it from a time and capital perspective. With Stripe, you have
to code and maintain your own payment solution on the backend and your own
checkout form. You also have to worry about a million other things like
emailing your customers when they place an order, and handling refunds. If you
don't have the coding skills to build that yourself, you have to hire an
expensive developer to build and maintain that for you.

If that extra 2% cost savings is worth it to endure the hassle above, then
Forge isn't for you. We're aiming at people who don't want to deal with all
that and would rather concentrate on growing their business doing things like
launching a new product and marketing their current ones.

~~~
nicksergeant
If you want to stay competitive, you'll probably need to drop your fee down to
1% to match <https://spacebox.io/> (which is powered by Stripe)

~~~
kevinholesh
We're purposely not trying to compete on price. There are always going to be
cheaper solutions out there.

We're aiming to be the best. We're aiming to be the absolute easiest checkout
process and the simplest experience for the merchant.

~~~
nicksergeant
Understood. Good luck :)

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runaway
The word "forge" seems to me an odd choice for a company that deals in
finance. Three of us here independently saw negative connotations when it
comes to money, security, trust, etc. but nobody else has brought it up yet so
perhaps it's just us. Best of luck to them.

~~~
kevinholesh
That's certainly a valid point. We're trying to convey that you're forging a
lasting online business and doing the hard work to be independent from a
corporate job.

If the name turns out to be losing us business, then we'll have to address it.

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dylangs1030
A few points:

Why is this different (in a worthwhile way) from existing payment options?
Like Stripe?

What else can you cite that Paypal does wrongly _that you can implement
correctly_?

I don't mean to be critical, just asking hard questions. "Taking on" big
companies like Paypal has been a de facto way to bring attention to projects
since the early 2000s, but it's hard to actually achieve that level of
eminence and market share. Being good isn't enough.

~~~
kevinholesh
Designer at Forge here.

Those are both great questions. We're aiming Forge at people who cannot write
their own backend payment processor to use Stripe, and only know basic HTML.
If you have the skills and the time to code and maintain payment processing
and a checkout form, then Forge isn't for you. We're aiming it at non-techies
who want to sell something online.

PayPal certainly has its advantages, but we're trying to solve two main
problems: the checkout experience and the withdrawing of funds. The checkout
experience on PayPal has 5 or 6 steps and redirects you away from the
merchant's site to complete a payment. Ours is on one page and is embedded
directly in the merchant's site. Click "buy product", checkout form pops down,
fill out 6 or so fields and click "buy now." Done.

Also, we automatically deposit your profits into your bank account every
Friday. Our goal is to get this down to the next-day. You sell something
Tuesday morning, ship it Tuesday afternoon, and the money is in your bank
account on Wednesday morning.

~~~
dylangs1030
Thanks for the quick reply Kevin.

Will you also be implementing a hardware system for the iPhone/iPod like
Square? Or are you going entirely online?

Paypal has a card reader as well. Just a thought.

~~~
kevinholesh
We don't have any plans to make a hardware system for taking payments. Only
online.

Square is not a business I want to be up against right now :-)

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trungonnews
Are you guys doing the exact same thing as Stripe Checkout?
<https://stripe.com/docs/checkout>

~~~
jordanmessina
Stripe checkout button only sends a charge token to a backend that you have to
write. A backend that needs to trigger the actual charge and everything that
goes along with that, like generating emails and receipts.

Forge takes care of all of that so you don't have to worry about it.

~~~
trungonnews
Ah. Thanks.

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jbrooksuk
Yet another Payment processor which doesn't work outside of USA/Canada. I hate
being in Europe.

~~~
kevinholesh
Believe me. We're bummed about that too. We're working as hard as we can to
get into other countries, but we had to start somewhere.

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sabalaba
Stripe is going to be a tough organization to compete with. I wish you the
best of luck.

~~~
dylangs1030
Forge and Stripe are technically not applicable to the same audience.

Developers are attracted to Stripe for extensibility and customization through
coding.

Non-technical users will like Forge because it's non-technical and quick to
start up, in a "just works" sort of way.

~~~
kevinholesh
Couldn't have said it better myself.

