
Samurai: New Payment Gateway from FeeFighters - sjs382
http://feefighters.com/blog/meet-samurai-the-most-powerful-way-to-accept-payments-online/
======
pestaa
I'm not happy with PayPal, so I just got really excited when I heard about
Samurai from a company with a familiar name.

The note about beta stage is acceptable, it means that it _should_ not be used
in heavy production yet, but the Lorem ipsum placeholder text on the Python
API page just means it _cannot_ be used under any circumstances yet.

After my initial shock, this package does seem amazing, and I can't wait to
get my hands dirty with it; but please take the time to review and polish the
pages.

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wmeredith
Their heart is in the right place, but Lorem Ipsum in terms and conditions is
an obvious red flag and a beta label is not something I care to have on my
payment gateway.

Having said all that, I hope it turns out for them. I'd love some competition
to some of the terrible products out there.

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wildmXranat
Terms and conditions:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua...

Ah, I see.

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datadon
Far too many "Paypal killers" coming about which lack one thing that could
actually help them usurp Paypal...international support.

Stripe, Weepay, Samurai - all look amazing, but it is SO frustrating to seem
them all release their products and pretend they can challenge the likes of
Paypal whilst disregarding the rest of the world.

I know people are promising international support, but are they really going
to make the jump after everything gets all cosy with a US only audience?

I've recently deployed 2checkout (I'm UK based). It's not pretty and it's not
fully integrated with an API, but it's damn easy, doesn't require Merchant
accounts and people can pay you with credit cards or Paypal.

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agildehaus
After I signed up I was directed to the "get-started" page where I could
submit a test payment. It didn't work (sat on the pulsating "waiting for
token").

Eventually I figured out it was because I had not yet confirmed my email
address, but there was absolutely nothing on the "get-started" page which told
me I had to confirm my email before I could use that page.

Probably should fix that, because I had a strong negative first impression
when a simple test payment just sat there doing nothing :)

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lfittl
Is this US-only? (been dying for a good UK based gateway)

Also you should fix the layout of the upgrade screen:
<http://skitch.com/lfittl/f5rtf>

~~~
pestaa
Same question from another EU-country.

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dminor
Here's a question based on our current headache: our bank switched processors,
and now when we try to do AMEX refunds our gateway (Payflow Pro) returns an
error. The old transaction tokens don't work with the new processor.

How do you guys handle this situation?

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shimon_e
Hahaha... I should really be shouting this out...

If you are doing big numbers... sign up for Paypal in the UK. 1.4% for UK
transactions and 1.9% for other currencies/countries. You need to be doing a
considerable amount per month but you are basically getting wholesale rates
with Paypal processing for nothing extra. Google matches the lowest rate but
foreign transactions are 2.4%.

Just be careful for Paypal's conversion fees. They are 2.5%. You can avoid
them by adding foreign bank accounts.

Dealing with Paypal is not for everyone. That is why I don't use them anymore.
Got a more suitable service with another provider but it is not a service that
most people would be able to use.

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afiler
I have to say that your video is surprisingly beautiful given the subject
matter, though the voiceover is done in a style that sounds like a commercial
for a new wonder product that's both a floor wax AND a delicious dessert
topping.

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WrkInProgress
Here's another Canuck who can't wait for this to come to Canada.

It looks promising, although for a SaaS startup, once you add a recurring
billing provider like Recurly, it can be pricing for under $20 per month apps.

A quick note, the 8 minute tour from here
<https://samurai.feefighters.com/developers>

.. links to a youtube samurai movie clip via the image link and the 5 minute
rails demo from the text link.

~~~
pitdesi
Yup, it's a wrkinprogress ;)

We just launched into public beta. We aren't charging anyone because we know
there are rough edges on our site.

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vailripper
So is this a competitor to something like spreedlycore? I'm trying to find a
recurring billing provider which can handle multiple merchant accounts, and
the only thing close was spreedlycore, which handles the processing but none
of the recurring functionality. Nobody seems to provide a recurring billing
solution which supports multiple merchant accounts.

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jokull
Looks good. But what the hell is so hard about stating regional support
upfront? US online? International? EU? Canada? Come on!

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twog
Is there anyway to add recurring billing to this system? Can I manually
recharge the cards on a monthly basis?

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callmeed
Can this do/allow 3rd party payment aggregation? I can't tell if that's what
"intelligent routing" means.

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fduran
Signed up for Canadian announcement. Any competitor of PayPal is my friend.

You may want to delete the 'Lorem ipsum' paragraph in
<https://samurai.feefighters.com/developers/api-python>

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mfringel
Paypal is a finely-tuned fraud detection system that has a inter-personal
payment application bolted onto the side.

Samurai's friendliness to all comers will determine how quickly it must
necessarily turn into Paypal, as well.

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Stuk
One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the quality of the video. The
length, dynamism and content were all perfect! Nice one.

~~~
pitdesi
Thanks! I will give a shoutout to the guys who helped us with the video:
<http://demoduck.com>. They were a joy to work with.

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west
As a merchant, you should switch to "interchange plus" pricing as soon as
you're big enough. Forget the tiered stuff.

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jfricker
Seems to me that Dwolla.com is the way to go. Payment cards online are going
away.

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tylerrooney
Please come to Canada!

~~~
xutopia
It looks like they are already! I'm looking at their site and they have a
choice for US or Canada!

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esutton
one of the big things that helped propel paypal and square is the blended
rate. Not finding a way to include amex in your single rate is a mistake.

~~~
pitdesi
PayPal does NOT have single rate pricing. AmEx is 3.5%... See the disclosures
at the bottom of the page here: <https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/website-
payments-pro>

That being said, we'd love to do that but you need to be of a certain size to
negotiate with AmEx. Working on it.

Also - we are keeping the same rate for international credit cards, which is
something that the other guys don't offer.

~~~
esutton
paypal used to until around a year ago when Amex forced them to stop. that
said i'm a fan of what you guys do

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hop
Works with Shopify?

~~~
seanmccann
I'm sure it will work in Shopify once somebody adds it to active_merchant.
Probably will take a few weeks to months.

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pitdesi
Hey guys, to answer the most popular question: Samurai is not yet functional
for merchants outside of the US (but it does take international cards). The
original FeeFighters product (comparison shopping for merchant accounts) is in
Canada though, so you can still get a great deal on a merchant account
(<http://feefighters.ca>)

Samurai will eventually get there at some point. Likely first in Canada in the
next month or 2 and then we'll explore Europe. There is SO MUCH DEMAND for
international that it's overwhelming. We really wish we could help out... the
truth is that each country we enter is really complicated and we have to tread
carefully because we need to ensure that our partners are great, that we can
provide round the clock support, etc. We just aren't there yet.

Fill this out and we'll let you know when we launch in Canada:
[https://docs.google.com/a/transfs.com/spreadsheet/embeddedfo...](https://docs.google.com/a/transfs.com/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dGh0bHdEMlZ1cVZsbE50djhVbjlHN2c6MQ)

And this one for Europe:
[https://docs.google.com/a/transfs.com/spreadsheet/embeddedfo...](https://docs.google.com/a/transfs.com/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dDZrMVI1YVVGT0NhSmpQbl80Q0o5Z2c6MQ&ndplr=1)

Also - for an overview on credit card processing (if you are wondering what
the hell a gateway or processor is, etc) - check out our ebook (note this was
written pre-samurai): [http://feefighters.com/ebooks/what-is-credit-card-
processing...](http://feefighters.com/ebooks/what-is-credit-card-
processing?force_download=true)

~~~
maushu
So, yet again another easy-to-use & modern payment gateway that doesn't work
outside of the US.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to check these links since I already know
it's going to be the same. I will not hold my breath for international support
either.

~~~
mdemare
I've stopped bothering.

Anyway, payment processing is a solved problem in the Netherlands. Which other
countries have sensible, cheap payment, easy-to-implement solutions that are
widely used?

~~~
gizmo
A solved problem in the Netherlands? What payment processor do you recommend?

The options I have looked at in the Netherlands all seem really bad or run on
ancient technology. You can't even get Paypal Payments Pro, Amazon payments or
google checkout. You can't get Braintree or any of the other web 2.0 payment
processors.

Ogone looks sort of OK, but I don't know of any others.

~~~
joelhaasnoot
We use MultiSafePay, which is a "online checkout" solution (you're routed to
their site with your template if you have the most expensive plan). They
support credit cards, but that's based on acceptance by their processor,
PaySquare. The problem boils down to, just like Canada mentioned above, there
are only two or three credit card processors. Even Ogone uses PaySquare or
Atos Worldline in the Netherlands (they, like FeeFighters have different
relationships in different countries). Ogone is a spinoff of Fortis bank, so
is quite "bank minded".

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pitdesi
Re: Terms. We added them in yesterday but it hasn't been deployed yet...
you'll see them soon. In the meantime: <http://feefighters.com/terms-of-
service>

------
pitdesi
Another question is on recurring billing: At this point, we've we are making a
conscious decision that recurring billing logic should be outside of the
gateway... none of the gateways handle it particularly well and it is actually
kind of a tricky problem. We are working on getting samurai connected to
recurly, spreedly and chargify, all of which are good for that.

~~~
agildehaus
Honest question: If Recurly/Spreedly/Chargify/CheddarGetter is satisfactory
for my recurring billing, why would I need Samarai? I'd likely just bring a
merchant that has its own gateway to one of those services.

I'm currently looking at places like BrainTree which do it all (merchant,
gateway, recurring) as they look far more enticing than gluing together a
bunch of companies.

I suppose I'm new at this, but it's all very confusing. Why should I choose
you + some merchant + some recurring billing service over BrainTree?

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
I can't speak to BrainTree, but I have been with Chargify + Authorize.net for
a while and I'm very pleased with Chargify in particular. I'm not super
thrilled with A.net, as I'm completely vendor-locked with their card vault.
Plus, their web interface is pretty crappy.

Samurai's costs and their (i think?) support for data portability are a big
plus.

If I could get Samurai + Chargify and port over all my existing A.net
customers, I think I probably would. Unfortunately, that's kind of academic at
this point, as A.net is a black hole AFAIK.

~~~
nirvdrum
Chargify is partially to "blame" here, too. They push the vault stuff off to
the gateway, which leads to your vendor lock-in. Recurly, on the other hand,
works fine with Authorize.net and has no such lock-in. I'm in the position of
supporting both right now as I migrate away from Chargify.

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mkramlich
From an entrepreneur/inventor's mindset, there's one good thing about the
pain, confusion and idiocy around the mainstream legacy payment/banking
systems in the world: it represents a _huge_ opportunity to deliver something
better, something smarter and more friendly. In 2011, with current technology,
and without having to worry about legal/bureaucratic compliance/inertia, it
can and should be pretty easy for humans to send electronic payments to one
another. Take Bitcoin for example. While far from perfect, it is one step in
that direction. Though anybody that can help make the mainstream
payment/banking system a little better, like Samurai/FeeFighters, or
BankSimple, even incrementally, is doing a good thing as well.

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noduerme
Oops. I just called them and asked if they do business outside the US. I
should have read the damn comments, lol.

