
Samwers Clone Stripe - themichael
https://www.paymill.de/index.html
======
Gring
I don't get it. Why do US net startups very often make the same mistake of not
expanding into the whole world quickly?

It took eBay something like 4 years to go to Germany, by which time there was
a local clone there that proved to be uncatchable. The expensive result was
that eBay had to buy the clone (Alando) for 43 million dollars to become
relevant.

Kickstarter is still US-only. Stripe as well. So are countless others.

We're not talking about products that you need an huge infrastructure in the
country. This is mostly about translation, and not explicitly prohibiting
things.

The expenses seem miniscule to the possible upside. So why do all those fancy
startups hold themselves back?

~~~
runako
Some suggested reasons, to add to the others cited:

0\. You're obviously speaking mostly about startups that primarily interface
with moving money or physical goods. Regulations and infrastructure in these
areas are not insignificant operations. US startups working outside these
areas (e.g. Facebook, Zynga, Stack Overflow) don't stop at US borders.

\- Each market has its own customs, language, and tone. Marketing into a new
country cannot be an afterthought, or it will not be successful.

\- Language is a big deal. If you translate your website into German, you
create the expectation that your customers will be able to email you questions
in German and get help in German. You don't have resources for this unless it
is a necessary step on the path to success. Even Stripe's $20mm isn't enough
for this: remember that they are competing against very big, rich, public
companies like eBay and Amazon.

\- There is competition at home, in a very large, familiar, homogeneous
market. If you are based in the USA and lose the American market, you will
likely fail. (In fact, someone could become a competitor by starting the US-
only version of your service to take advantage of your distraction.) So you
need to win there first. Startups by definition have not won any markets yet.

\- Non-US markets in industrialized countries are in general not all that big
individually compared to the US market. Germany is like 20% the size of the US
market; the UK about 12%, and Australia 10%. So it's really hard to get any
major additional scale in one country, even after you jump through all the
hoops to launch there and service their customers.

\- US states are _big_ economically. A startup trying to scale can probably
get more mileage out of a big marketing push in a single state than by
launching internationally. One sample choice: launch in the Netherlands (~15
hour flight from CA, different language, customs, regulations) or make a big
push in Florida (~5 hour flight from CA, you're likely already in compliance
with all their laws, your website is already in their language, your support
staff speaks their language, etc.). Florida's economy is about the same size
as the Netherlands'. Texas (~3h flight from CA, 4 metro areas over 2m people)
has an economy and population roughly the size of Australia.

Startups need every advantage they can get to not take the default startup
path (failure). The bottom line is that launching outside the US is not a
barrier to ultimate success (your eBay example), but does introduce risks. So
it's not often going to be a priority.

~~~
kimmiller
To add to this list:

\- Being a market leader in your home market is much more important (and
usually cost effective) than growing internationally. Stripe still has a huge
way to go in terms of 'crossing the chasm' in the US, moving out of SV bubble
and in to the main-stream.

\- Geographical acquisitions when expanding globally aren't necessarily a
negative. Although they feel dirty, a lot of the time they can be a win/win
for both players (quick foothold in the market, market leading position, entry
certainty, local hires etc).

------
tzaman
That's actually great news, why would Europeans have to wait for an
undisclosed date Stripe gives (or rather, doesn't give).

~~~
drsim
I was initially appalled when I first read about the Samwar clone factory. Now
I agree, in cases like this they're filling a gap in the market.

~~~
rmoriz
The only gap is, that Recurly and Spreedly were not able to tell the EU
founders that their service is available and working perfectly fine with
European payment gateways.

They all have JS and REST-APIs and a lot more:

\- <http://recurly.com/>

\- <http://spreedly.com/>

~~~
dmarinoc
Nope.

Although Recurly could be technically used in Europe, it generates invalid
invoices (at least here in Spain).

We are switching away from it, and personally, I do not recommend it anymore.

~~~
rmoriz
well. you could do your own invoicing if you're not satisfied with the pdf
they generate. Stripe and Paymill don't do invoicing, too.

~~~
wulczer
Ouch, that's a big minus from the point of view of an European company - not
having to look for another app to generate invoices or futz around with
generating your own was nice.

The specific issue with Recurly that we had is that they silently changed
their platform to perform VIES validation on all VAT numbers. While this makes
sense for transactions with entities from outside of the merchant's country,
validating VAT numbers for German-to-German or Spanish-to-Spanish transactions
is silly. Not only do such transactions always get charged VAT, but it's
possible that a given string is a valid VAT number and yet is not present in
VIES. Since you will pay (and therefore charge the customer) VAT for same-
country transactions anyway, you don't care if the number that the customer
provided is valid according to VIES.

This change has cost us a little wave of support tickets and an ugly
workaround, in preparation for moving off Recurly.

I firmly believe that a company that gets online recurring payments right in
Europe will become a money-printing machine in no time.

~~~
daemon13
Did I understand you correctly that:

1\. Recurly is right to add VIES validation for out of country transactions.

2\. They shall not implement this feature for in country transactions.

???

~~~
donald_draper
Those are special cases for Germany and Spain (I implemented that stuff for a
german webshop that has to make the same exception). I'd guess it's the same
for Spain.

German customers who buy in a german webshop have to pay VAT and then claim it
back later in their tax return, because the german tax authorities don't allow
that exemption beforehand.

------
aristidb
That's a bit bizarre, because one would expect a German clone to support the
payment variants that are far more popular than credit cards in Germany.

EDIT: The biggest payment variant I was thinking of is direct debit (German:
Lastschrift), which is highly convenient. However, wiring the money before
getting the goods is also surprisingly popular here. Many people just don't
have credit cards. (I do, but I also use some US services like Github which
only allow credit card payments.)

~~~
rmoriz
because nothing works like a credit card. e.g. the popular direct debit
payments can be charged back very easily + you just have to search for an
valid account number (= fraud).

The only payment method that works with recurring and more or less
"final/instant" transactions is credit card.

So there is no alternative for SaaS or in-app-payments to credit cards (or
some direct debit risk mitigation business like paypal)

~~~
white_devil
_the popular direct debit payments can be charged back very easily + you just
have to search for an valid account number (= fraud)._

This sounds highly doubtful. Care to explain?

~~~
rmoriz
in Germany, direct debit transcation currently need an account number and a
bank id (BLZ). Or BIC/IBAN (see Wikipedia).

There is no validation except some nummerical tests. You can enter the number
of some charity or your landlord when doing an order at e.g. Amazon.

To deal with that risk, every bank account holder has the right to chargeback
transactions without giving a reason. That's why banks typically keep a lot of
the money you invoice for a grace period of approx 6-8 weeks. And companies
like Otto have their own credit check companies…

tl;dr if you instantly deliver items or services, direct debit is not safe.

~~~
Luc
> There is no validation except some nummerical tests. You can enter the
> number of some charity or your landlord when doing an order at e.g. Amazon.

That is... simply not true. Or perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are
saying. There isn't a bank in the EU that will allow you to make a transfer
from an account that's not yours (authenticated by whatever means - card
readers, digipass, RSA keychain gadgets that display a new number sequence
every minute, etc.).

~~~
rmoriz
direct debit ("Lastschrift") is kind of a reverse transaction. You tell your
$own bank to collect the money from an account of your customer at $other bank

~~~
Luc
Oh right, I see, my mistake. I didn't know Amazon used this. In Belgium it's
only used (afaik) by 'trusted' institutions, like utility companies. And as a
customer you still need to authorize them the first time.

------
rmoriz
Looks like they're a PHP shop and only offer PHP client libs yet. Seems they
didn't even understand the message Stripe has in kinds of developer focus.

Also: Why would I use a payment service of _the biggest copy cat company in
the country_? To deliver them my revenue numbers on a silver plate so they can
decide if they should "enter my market"?

They don't even openly publish the upcoming fees and just want you to "vendor
lock-in" (or dig around to find the transaction fees somewhere hidden on their
site). really sad :(

~~~
charlesdm
I want European credit card billing _NOW_. Sadly, the only support german
companies it seems. :-(

~~~
ph0rque
An opportunity to clone the clone in other European countries?

~~~
charlesdm
That just seems silly. However, a Stripe equivalent for the whole of Europe
would be great. Clone or not.

------
aquaphile
There are _so_ many payment startups, so Paymill is the least of Stripe's
worries. Just an ad-hoc list that have been recently funded:

Approve.io Ogone Zuora Recurly Stripe gocardless.com (Royal Bank of Scotland)
blinkpay/blinksale (no funding) Buck (fka Billing Revolution) Gumroad Dwolla
Braintree ZenCash WePay Bango Clover PayOne (fka PaymentOne) Isis (verizon,
At&t, etc.) Fee Fighters' Samurai Bump Pay BeamIt LEaf Dynamics Corduro
Paydici Jumio Paymetric MiCash HelloWallet iZettle Card.io PayLeap BluSynergy
PayTap Payleven TraxPay MineralTree CurrencyCloud Square LevelUp ZipMark
Paymill

~~~
biafra
BTW: Payleven is also a Samwer (Rocket Internet) incubated company. Payleven
is obviously a Square clone.

------
furyg3
Fantastic. Maybe this will put some fire under Stripe to launch in Europe...

------
helipad
Only seems to support German bank accounts at the moment (not any European) -
though they're not terribly difficult to open.

~~~
rmoriz
consider alternatives:

\- <http://recurly.com/>

\- <http://spreedly.com/>

\+ WireCard.com as gateway/acquirer. Works for all EU countries.

~~~
simonbrown
also:

<http://chargify.com/>

<https://cheddargetter.com/>

~~~
rmoriz
to my knowledge Chargify does not support a Euro-based gateway.

------
herval
On a related note, they also cloned Square in Brazil and Europe
(payleven.de/.com.br)

------
nekopa
For people thinking about international expansion as just translation: beware,
here be dragons.

When I moved (back) to Europe 8 years ago, I used my web skills to help make
some extra money on the side (I'm an English language teacher because I love
it, but it doesn't pay for holidays and toys :) and there is so much more to
developing multilingual sites. Think more along the lines of multicultural.

That color on your call to action? That's our color for cowardice. Ед завыл
бела два won't fit on that button. (sorry to any Russians here, I just typed
out randomly on the keyboard, but it illustrates the point) most of our
customers like to go to the post office to pay for products; oh, and our
country's POs are still based on old communist operational principles.

This is without all the different regulatory matters involved. Try iterating
quickly when a country's national bank has to vet all the founders to issue
the proper licenses... International expansion can mean a lot more than just
translation.

[edit] formatting

------
shell0x
Sure, startups & companies should operate worldwide, but the Samwer business
model is really scummy. I could understand if they would build the clone with
the background to avoid monopols, but they just try to fill a niche market
with a stolen idea and make money with it. Just look at
<http://www.lazada.com.my/>, an amazon clone for countries, where amazon
doesn't operate(d) yet. They even use the same layout. I wouldn't say that
cloning something is bad in general, if your main focus lies on the extension
of an existing idea, but the Samwer brothers nearly copy the idea 1:1 without
innovation and creativity and sell it to the mother company later. Thats a
really bad motivation for the real entrepreneurs, who try to be innovative.
Startups should really start worldwide, to avoid that these copycats make
further money with their ideas.

~~~
yen223
As a Malaysian, I know more people here who use Amazon.com than those who use
Lazada.com.my, even though Amazon doesn't technically serve our country.

Branding and the first-mover advantage are very important.

~~~
shell0x
Interesting, thanks for bringing this up. Does amazon.com charge extra money
for the delivery to Malaysia or do they ship for free, because they doesn't
serve Malaysia(yet)?

~~~
yen223
International shipping to Malaysia is almost definitely not free.

------
mjbellantoni
They've even copied someone's logo!

    
    
      http://www.launchbit.com/

~~~
Carioca
Well, in their defense, the Samwers' incubator is called Rocket Internet, so
it's more like they're copying themselves.

<http://www.rocket-internet.de/>

~~~
lobster_johnson
I don't see the Samwers' names on any of the Rocket Internet pages. Are you
sure they are connected?

Edit: Never mind, googling "rocket internet samwer" shows a lot of
connections. Still surprised there is nothing on the Rocket Internet pages.

------
s04p
I'm not a big fan of the Samwers, and try to avoid using any of their
services. And this time I might end up using their service. I simply have no
option. This is not only proof of their lightening fast execution, but also
how all others fail.

German/European startups: fail. None of them were interested to get into this
space. They all want to become the next payment / mobile solution and all had
no interest about serving the biggest platform- web.

Stripe: fail. I know how startups work. I know that expanding is not easy. But
they have raised $20 Million. You could pay a local team of 10 a year, and
would have not even spent 5% of your funding. There is just no excuse. German
developers wanted stripe BADLY.

German / European banks: total fail. They completely lack of any vision, and
are busy enough staying alive.

------
webignition
This is great news. I'll be adding subscription payment options to my UK-based
startup in a few months.

I'd love to be able to use Stripe and I hope that the introduction of Paymill
brings Stripe support to the UK more swiftly. If not, I can use Paymill.

------
dudurocha
I would love a Stripe Clone in Brazil. It's really annoying and expensive to
set up payment in web apps here in brazil.

Somebody knows what would take to clone a startup like these? Besides money?

------
r3m6
Everybody is taking about Stripe. But how is Stripe different from
existing/established services like Digital River or Plimus?

------
nathan_f77
Well, that was inevitable. I don't care if it's Stripe or someone else, I just
want a service like this for New Zealanders.

------
habosa
The best part about Stripe is, and has always been, their amazing
understanding of developer needs and their top-notch customer service. No
copy-cat can provide that at the same level as Stripe. Helping a website
accept credit cards is only half of the equation.

------
nemesisj
I wrote a blog post asking for this to happen in the UK awhile back.
[http://peebs.org/free-business-idea-for-a-united-kingdom-
sta...](http://peebs.org/free-business-idea-for-a-united-kingdom-start)

Glad to see it starting to happen in Europe!

------
andy_boot
<http://www.izettle.com/>

Have been around for a while too

~~~
andy_boot
Actually these guys are like Square not Stripe - getting my payment companies
confused.

------
seanmccann
I think this is great! I assume Stripe didn't have imminent plans to launch in
Germany anyway. Looks like they have a rate of 2.95%, which is pretty good.
Especially for outside the US.

------
ExpiredLink
This just a payment provider like many others. The only difference I see is
that they use a 'REST-like' API instead of the usual Web-Service API.

------
newlogg
The Samwer's are effectively a tax on innovation.

They contribute nothing new, only cut into the potential profitability of web
innovators

~~~
g8oz
They are delivering value to people around the world. Those people now don't
have to wait on the expansion plans of companies which don't have
globalization built into their DNA. Also they are a live example of what
relentless execution looks like.

------
gawker
Now that Europe has had this, where's Canada? Am I still stuck with PayPal as
my only viable option for payments?

~~~
estel
* Germany has this. Doing payment processing in a range of countries is hard.

~~~
gawker
My apologies for the mistake. Yeah, it's hard which is why I think the
brothers are just doing a great job of exploiting opportunities.

------
seivan
Will never be as good as Stripe. Mostly because Stripe is coded by it's
founders, get support questions answered by their founders who will even teach
you how to use git. :)

~~~
richardw
That stuff is great, but doesn't help EU customers if they can't use it. So at
present this thing is already better than Stripe, because "90% of success is
showing up". The repeated message from EU countries is "get here, we need
you", and the repeated answer is "we'd love to, but can't yet". That's handing
the business to Samwers on a silver platter.

I'm in South Africa. I can't even begin to imagine how long it'll take Stripe
to get here.

(btw, didn't downvote you)

~~~
NonEUCitizen
You should start the South African Stripe ?

------
ojr
This is a beautiful twitter bootstrap site...

------
Nikkki
Stripe is now in hot pursuit ;)

