

Ask HN: Cheapest way to process $10 credit card payments - the_cat_kittles

I am trying to figure out how to process payments for an iphone app. This involves choosing which gateway, merchant, and card input (jumio / card.io / all the different magnetic strip readers / others?) Most charges will be around 10 USD. Does anyone have advice on which gateway, merchant and card input method to use? What other things should influence my choices? There will be no recurring billing by the way. Any advice helps, thanks!
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dangrossman
Two options:

1) Square, because they have no fixed fee per transaction. 2.75% means 27.5c
per $10 charge. It's not really something you integrate with an app, but with
talking of swiping, it's not clear what the use case is.

2) PayPal micropayments. At 5% + $0.05, it's 55c per $10 charge. PayPal has a
card-swipe reader the same as Square, but people can also pay with their
PayPal accounts, or you can take full control over the payment interface by
implementing the PayPal Pro API in your app.

Both are less than the 2.9% + $0.30 offered by Stripe, Braintree, or most any
low volume MOTO merchant account.

I don't think anyone can recommend what the best input method is without any
knowledge of what your app is or who your customers will be.

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the_cat_kittles
how can square offer a lower % AND no fixed transaction fee?

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dangrossman
Because Square is not a MOTO processor, it's a card-present processor. You
can't use Square to take payments on a website. The interchange fees for card-
present transactions are less than 1/2 the average fees for card-not-present
transactions. If they're paying 1% but charging you 2.75%, that easily covers
the fixed fee you're comparing to.

They shouldn't be compared to PayPal, Stripe, etc. but to the standard
merchant accounts brick-and-mortar stores get.

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dholowiski
>Payments for an iPhone app - are you selling this directly?

If it goes through the iTunes store, you're required to use Apple's payment
system.

Are you looking for the cheapest, the easiest or some combination? Stripe
seems like a no-brainer.

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halis
Stripe?

