

Ask HN: European startup looking for a service for recurring billing - davidvanleeuwen

We love Stripe, Samurai, Braintree and services like that. Unfortunately, they're not available for companies  outside of the US.<p>Most people say that we need to use Paypal. But we prefer to work with Stripe for example, because it really looks like a great service and a service with a refreshing way of working with payments.<p>Does anyone know or have experience with using a recurring service that is accessible for European companies?
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mendable
If you are in the UK with a UK bank account, you are going to need a UK
gateway and merchant account - unless you relocate. It's just part of the
"know your customer" anti-money-laundering deal that all western countries
have between their governments and their banks that make it difficult to set
up abroad. It might be possible, but it's just extra headache.

I would suggest looking at Recurly as your integration endpoint for a few
reasons:

1) Multi-currency. Some people claim it's "expensive" as as $200/mo add-on,
but the extra conversions from geo-targetting visitors with their native
currency make this a no-brainer, especially for UK companies.

2) Data portability. You can leave Recurly in 5 years if you want to write
your own recurring billing app or switch to somewhere else and they will give
you your data.

3) Not having your customer's CC details held at the gateway (Recurly are best
described as a value-add intermediary) means you should be able to easily
switch out gateways later on. This is a key architectural choice that I don't
think people pay enough attention to, and Recurly really don't promote it
enough. Chargify etc do not do this, instead they store your customer's
details at the gateway and have no power to retrieve them ever again.

4) Supports VAT.

The down side to Recurly is their API is a bit messy. Their hosted payment
pages and "transparent API" appear to be next to useless if you want to also
record extra information (e.g, username) as part of the signup process in a
seemless way.

With regards to payment gateway, pick any payment gateway from here:
<http://recurly.com/features/payment-gateway-support>

The truth is, it really doesn't matter. As long as it is working, and your
bank/merchant account doesn't put a hold or delay on your income.

Don't stress about the transaction fees. People get too hung up on a
percentage point, with the frame of reference that "when we've got $10m in
revenue, that 1% is worth $100,000)", but honestly, when you get to that
point, you will have enough business savvy to re-negotiate or look for a
better deal then. When you don't have any customers, it _really_ doesn't
matter.

~~~
rmoriz
Recurly supports <http://WireCard.com>, a large German gateway which is able
to serve all EU-based corporations.

~~~
fstephany
That's what we are using for our app (<http://laskuapp.com>). We are based in
Belgium. The process with wirecard was quite long but went smoothly and the
people we were in contact with were super friendly.

------
rmoriz
Use <http://recurly.com> with <http://WireCard.com/> as Gateway.

Works fine in the EU!

(WireCard AG is a German based credit card gateway owning a "full" bank
license. It's also a public traded company regulated by strict German banking
regulations)

~~~
ashleyw
What's WireCard like price-wise? Doesn't seem to say on their website.

~~~
rmoriz

        setup 149,00 EUR (seems to be negotiable)
        monthly 19,00 EUR
        per transaction 0,25 EUR + 3,45% (Visa, MC)
    

that was pricing in 2010, may have changed for new customers.

just ask their customer support and tell them, that you will use recurly.com
which means less technical trouble for all people involved (PCI compliance
etc).

------
jot
We use Chargify with Payment Express hooked up to Barclaycard and American
Express merchant services. It works great.

We lost $750 of sales (50%) in our first month because we didn't think Amex
was important. It turns out that Amex is the card of choice for US businesses.

~~~
chrisfarms
Same setup as Jot here (Hi jot)...

Had zero trouble with Payment Express (known as Direct Payment Solutions to
the UK banks). Only thing that is maybe not ideal is the time difference,
Payex. are in New Zealand and so email-threads can take several days if you
don't ask questions at 1am.

------
colin8chSE
I'm the founder of Simplified Ecommerce and we support international Merchants
from almost everywhere.

There's a lot of really great companies in the space, I think we offer
something unique. (www.simplifiedecommerce.com)

Get to market fast

\- Get started within a day, without long complicated merchant account
applications.

\- Copy & Paste integrations with "Buy Now" links

\- Instant security and PCI Compliance - Merchants never touch sensitive data

\- Easy recurring subscription billing and one-time payments

\- Customizable hosted payment pages that match your website and branding,
with no CSS knowledge required.

\- Simple straight forward pricing that includes everything in the payments
stack.

Grow without limits

\- Built in Affiliate Marketing

\- Portable data from day 1(all customer data is stored in our level 1 PCI
compliant tokenized vault)

\- Add your own merchant account any time - we're a gateway, certified and
integrated with most US and some international processor networks

\- Switch merchant accounts seamlessly - all your data, reporting,
integrations, custom payment pages, affiliate relationships... remain intact.

We have a history of over 10 years in the payments space, contact me anytime
if you have any questions- colin at SimplifiedEcommerce.com

~~~
Kliment
So how come you can do this and the others can't? How do you deal with the
problems listed elsewhere in the thread?

------
kristofferR
I let my customers chose between PayPal Subscriptions and 2Checkout.

Both work okay, but I would absolutely prefer a method that didn't involve
redirecting my customers to unknown domains and interfaces like Paypal.com and
2Checkout.com.

~~~
dangrossman
It's a bit of a stretch to call them "unknown domains" in 2011. PayPal has 232
million accounts in over 190 markets, and anyone that's ever bought something
on eBay knows them. People on all my websites have a choice between using a
credit card right on the site or checking out through PayPal, and on every one
of those sites, they choose PayPal more than 50% of the time.

~~~
kristofferR
If you are talking about the US market, you are right. In the Norwegian
market, the one I'm operating it, it is certainly not that way. Very few
ordinary "non-geeky" people have heard about Paypal here.

------
mahcode
Would it be possible for you to open a US account with an online bank and have
all online payments go there? Or would this be a big no no?

~~~
marquis
It's near impossible to open an bank account in many countries (specifically
developed countries) without residency. I would also expect that if a US bank
account was being used the IRS might question about taxes, as payment is
occurring in the US, as far as they are concerned?

------
moomerman
I'm working on <https://subsify.com/> to try and fill the gap in recurring
payments for UK and EU businesses. At the moment we're only partnered with
SagePay as a Payment Gateway so if that sounds good to you get in touch.

~~~
martinkallstrom
You need to work on your presentation. Replacing "try", "working on", and "if
that sounds good to you" would go a long way. Like this:

"I have developed <https://subsify.com/> which is a service filling the gap in
recurring payemnts for UK and EU business. We currently support SagePay as
Payment Gateway, which will fulfill the needs of most people. I would
encourage anyone struggling with recurring payments in the UK to get in touch,
we will probably be able to help you out."

------
BSousa
I already mentioned in the other thread: <http://www.saasy.com>

No direct experience with the service but same guys that offer Fastpring (non
recurring) which I recommend!

~~~
samwillis
They seem quite expensive at %5.9 + $0.95

~~~
filipcte
You don't need a merchant account with them and they have subscription
handling built-in.

------
rlivsey
We were using Spreedly to abstract out the payment gateway side of things for
our subscriptions.

However, to use them you need to be able to disable CVV checking using
PayPal's "advanced fraud management filters". The same applies for Recurly and
other similar services AFAIK.

Unfortunately PayPal wouldn't let us do this as we don't have enough trading
history etc... so until we get a merchant account we're having to use PayPal's
own recurring billing APIs.

We'd love for there to be a viable alternative to PayPal, Stripe's API looks
gorgeous in comparison.

------
primigenus
Have a look at this series of posts we wrote on our blog:
[http://blog.handcraft.com/2011/01/looking-back-on-the-
quest-...](http://blog.handcraft.com/2011/01/looking-back-on-the-quest-for-
payments/) \- we looked at Fastspring, Chargify and Spreedly and ultimately
settled on Spreedly and Ogone (and a merchant account with AmEx). Spreedly is
the processor most like Stripe of the above list.

We're in the Netherlands (like you?). Hit me up on twitter or our blog if you
need any more info.

------
sborsje
We're also using Adyen. The support is pretty good, the
API/website/documentation/customization options are all terrible. But it's one
of the few PSPs that provides support for lots and lots of payment methods
(like: VISA, Amex, MC, PayPal, but also a lot of local stuff like iDeal, Mr.
Cash, etc.)

Supporting a local payment method (iDeal in our case) is a pretty big deal in
our case, since it accounts for +50% of our total revenue. Don't underestimate
this if you're planning to launch a European SaaS business!

~~~
rickmb
Same story here, I can pretty much confirm this word for word.

Especially the broad support of payment methods is crucial, and pretty much
makes up for all of Adyen's shortcomings in the implementation department.

------
jamesmoss
I'd also like to know this. PayPal as a primary payment gateway should not be
an option for any startup.

What laws stop companies like Stripe, Recurly etc from easily launching in the
EU?

------
frankrrr
We use Adyen's recurring payments: <http://www.adyen.com/>

Works OK for us, but could be better if you see Stripe for example.

------
joshcrowder
We have and are in a similar situation. Our setup at the moment is. HSBC
Merchant Account, SagePay Gateway and Recurly for recurring billing. Its a lot
of middle men and really isn't that great of a solution. I'm just about to
setup Barclays EPDQ. It looks good. 3% charge and £10 per month for the
privileged.

------
patrickgzill
I have been usinng WHMCS.com's billing system for a few months. It has modules
to handle many payment systems, and handles recurring billing.

You still have to have a merchant account; but, you have the potential to save
2-3% of each sale, since you will be dealing with the payment processor
directly.

------
davidroetzel
I am also looking for something like this. The best I could come up with so
far is fastspring.com. They offer their services to european customers and
even handle european VAT.

I have not had a chance to try them out, though. Maybe someone has some
experience to share?

------
davidvanleeuwen
It's hard to find out what other startups (from Europe) use for billing. Can
anyone give any examples?

I understand that the rules are different and that most of the banks here are
probably old-fashion, but isn't there a way to work around al those problems?

~~~
petercooper
A slightly unconventional, but doable, approach for businesses aiming at the
US market (or otherwise working primarily in US $) is to incorporate a
subsidiary in the US and handle billing there.

~~~
davidvanleeuwen
Is it actually possible to start a subsidiary as an European citizen?

~~~
mhd
You don't have to be a resident to incorporate, although (as always) the laws
often are quite arcane. If I remember correctly, taxation differs massively
depending on whether your European company owns the US corporation/LLC or
whether individual persons do.

You have to register with a state, and Delaware seems to be the preferred one,
as they're basically a tax haven. The Liechtenstein of the US…

------
gizmo
Who has experience with Ogone (in combination with Atos, EMS or Paysquare) or
Chronopay?

~~~
jamesmoss
I looked into Chronopay, it seems a bit shady. Their co-founder was arrested
recently too [http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/06/chronopay-co-founder-
arre...](http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/06/chronopay-co-founder-arrested/)

------
heman
I would recommend Zuora. They have muliple customers in EMEA. Tata
Communications, Reeb Business, etc. They also have service and sales reps
located around europe. www.zuora.com

~~~
heman
*Reed

------
will_lam
Hmm.. I believe <http://Zuora.com> might be able to help as they have a
European office as well.

------
mise
We use 2checkout.com for recurring subscriptions.

------
horatiumocian
What about Avangate (www.avangate.com)? I don't know too much about them, so I
am not sure if they are what you're looking for.

~~~
soitgoes
I've used Avangate. Pretty straightforward to setup; no prerequisites for a
gateway or merchant account.

------
peeplaja
We're also using Adyen, and it gets the job done. Downside: it keeps like 10%
of your revenue as a deposit.

~~~
ez77
For how long?

------
jonnotie
I think the problem is that the companies in Europe have individual rules.
America is just one country.

~~~
Marciplan
I lol'd

~~~
jonnotie
What do we know! We're European! Obviously I meant the US :)

------
jonnotie
We need this!

------
pitdesi
We are trying to get Samurai (<http://samurai.feefighters.com>) into Europe.
We don't have a firm timetable just yet though. If you'd like to be notified
when it happens, please enter your email address here:
[https://docs.google.com/a/transfs.com/spreadsheet/viewform?h...](https://docs.google.com/a/transfs.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dDZrMVI1YVVGT0NhSmpQbl80Q0o5Z2c6MQ&ifq)

~~~
davidvanleeuwen
But what is so difficult to make it available in Europe? I don't really grasp
what the problems are. And is there any way we Europeans can help, besides
saying that we want to use your service.

~~~
runako
Every time there's a post on HN about a new business that's the new hotness
but which is not available outside the US, there are a bunch of posts asking
why. Here are some possible answers:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3027066>

Another way of looking at it is that by creating the [insert country here]
clone of [insert cool service here], you could probably start a niche business
pretty quickly by serving the need unmet by the service you're cloning. This
worked great for LoveFilm in the UK, who cloned Netflix.

~~~
rmoriz
Rules of Business: If there is a market in Europe, some european copy cat will
fill the gap if the US based company is too slow.

~~~
danmaz74
Addendum: And then very likely the most successful European copycats will get
acquired by a the same US company when it really wants to expand abroad...

~~~
mhd
If they did something interesting, i.e. are worth acquiring. More likely, they
still sit on a month-old feature set of the original and then are sued out of
business – or just ignored.

~~~
rmoriz
never saw that "sue out of business" in Europe.

There is just no way to protect "your business idea" unless you deliver +
expand fast. If the German copy-cat industry is faster, you just lost and have
to pay a lot (groupon).

I personally don't like copy-cats but that's the way it currently goes.

