

Ask HN: Favorite payment processor? - StavrosK

I've been thinking of starting a small project that needs to charge money, and PayPal doesn't cut it (I need to be able to place a hold on $1-$2 at a time and then either release or keep it a few days later).<p>I've been looking at various processors and am slowly beginning to realise why PayPal is used by so many people: Every other processor requires my family medical history to sign up for (and most don't even support vendors outside the US)!<p>Sagepay, for example, requires me to apply for a merchant account at my bank, then apply for a sagepay account, then hook everything up in some obscure way I don't understand, and that's <i>before</i> I even get a quote on how much it will cost.<p>There are various startups that add subscription management on top of your payment processor, but I don't need subscriptions. I just need a simple way to hold $1 from a person's card and then release it (hopefully with no charge) or keep it.<p>Does anyone know of a payment processor that would fulfil my needs and not require my firstborn in exchange?
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frisco
Braintree: <http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/>

Libraries out of the box for Ruby, Python, PHP, .NET, and Java:
<http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/gateway>

~~~
maccman
Another +1 for Braintree, they've been excellent.

~~~
StavrosK
The only problem is their high fees ($75/mo minimum, $35/mo fee, 2.29% + $0.30
per transaction). They're an absolute killer if you want to accept
micropayments of < $100 a month, initially...

EDIT: They aren't even available outside the US :/

~~~
jasonkester
$100/month is not a lot of money. If you're a business, and you want to
process credit cards, that's what it will cost you.

A good definition of "hobby" is anything where a $100/month expense eats into
your profits in a meaningful way.

You're right about micropayments though. Apart from AWS, I don't know of
anybody who offers a good way to do them.

~~~
noodle
1) you can get it done with paypal and not have $100/mo in fees.

2) paying $100/mo but making less than $100/mo violates the principles of
bootstrapping.

~~~
jasonkester
To clarify, Paypal is fine for hobby projects, where you don't mind
sacrificing a bit of professionalism for a cheap and easy payment solution.
And where it's not the end of the world if they freeze your account.

You can survive in that mode while your hobby transitions into something that
brings in a few hundred dollars a month and pays for your beer.

But once you graduate to a real business, you need to get a real payment
processor. It's not a step you can skip, and it will cost you $100/month.

~~~
noodle
i don't disagree, i'm just pointing out that the space between $0 revenue and
a few hundred bucks doesn't have a better solution.

everyone has to start somewhere.

------
compumike
PayPal can now do the pre-authorization thing under their Adaptive Payments
API (see <https://www.x.com/docs/DOC-1419>). We did exactly what you're
talking about (one-time preapproval, and then either charge or cancel after a
few days) for a project earlier this year. You do have to explicitly apply to
PayPal for access to these advanced APIs, but we found that process to be
quick and painless. The API is relatively clean.

When we were working with it earlier this year, the end user had to have a
PayPal account, which might be a barrier. However, my understanding is that
this is no longer required
([https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2010/06/it%E2%80%99s-official-...](https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2010/06/it%E2%80%99s-official-
guest-payments-is-now-live/)).

~~~
StavrosK
Thank you, that seems to be the best solution so far.

------
apalmblad
It sounds to me like you need to do pre-authorization transactions to do the
hold. When looking at gateways, check that their API supports it, and how long
you can do the preauth for.

I use Beanstream for processing, and they aren't too bad. I've also heard good
things about the API for braintree.

------
swombat
In the UK, I've happily used SecureTrading. They provide great customer
service. I wrote an ActiveMerchant plugin for them too:
<https://github.com/swombat/active_merchant>

~~~
auxbuss
Hard to evaluate, though, as they don't publish any pricing. Not that I could
find. Suspicious minds might conclude: What have you got to hide? Also, it's
disingenuous to claim rates lower than the competition without publishing
them.

~~~
swombat
We said we came from Protx (which we did) and got matched pricing, i.e. a low
fee per month up until 250 transactions., then 10p per transaction.

------
bayareaguy
Some time ago I recommended Kagi, FreshBooks and Amazon
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=115741>

------
jpspeno
PayPal's Website Payment Pro isn't too bad. I've used it for 5 years and it's
been mostly hassle free. I don't have experience with any others however.

------
dstefanov
Any thoughts on FastSpring <http://fastspring.com> ?

------
raerae7133
Take a look at Wirecard and Cybersource - both support non-US vendors.

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bobf
Amazon payments?

~~~
pledgingto
To be more precise, Amazon Flexible Payments Service
(<http://aws.amazon.com/fps/>)

~~~
StavrosK
Thanks, their website is a bit hard to navigate, they only emphasized simple
payments and Amazon checkout.

~~~
mvip
I can't seem to find if it's only available to US/UK users, or if it can be
used for clients world wide. We're based in the US and are currently using
Google Checkout (which works great), but would like to offer our users an
alternative.

~~~
StavrosK
It says somewhere they can be used by _customers_ in many countries, but the
_vendor_ can only be in the US, I think.

------
to
i always liked moneybookers. sadly nobody uses them. why? \- more countries \-
better support \- account and linked bank accounts are not chained to your
location (im german living in america with an austrian bank account: paypal
fail - german adress with austrian bank not possible same with us address. its
the god damn EU i can open accounts where ever i want as citizen of the EU) \-
higher limits \- way less bullshit

~~~
StavrosK
Wait, seriously? We can open accounts anywhere in the EU?

~~~
to
look at your passport. it says european union on it for a reason.

------
madaxe
Basically, any "serious" PSP is going to want a stack of information from you
before you can start trading. PayPal shut down and suspend accounts on a
regular basis because they basically only fraud screen you _after_ you're up
and running, which is why their barrier to entry is so low, and why they're
such a wretched hive of villany and scum.

SagePay do have some kind of deal where they do the whole merchant account bit
for you, but will require a fair bit of info before they'll let you trade.

Other good ones in the UK, however : Commidea, SecureTrading, Ogone,
GlobalCollect, ServeBase, and Paypoint.net. Out of all of them, I'd recommend
Paypoint, Sagepay, and Commidea on a par - basically, pick whichever fits your
pricing model - all three have nice XML APIs, Commidea is kinda "enterprisey",
but very competent, and Sagepay falls on its ass at least once a week (they
had a 5 hour outage last week, which caused merry hell over here).

~~~
StavrosK
Thanks for that, I have no problem providing info if they're clean about what
they need (to do X, we need Y from you). Sagepay has all these convoluted
wizards that ask you if you have Y, not if you want to do X...

