
Pin Payments is Australia’s first all-in-one online payment API - Andrenid
https://pin.net.au/#
======
cletus
Wow, I'm a little surprised to see this for two reasons:

1\. Doing anything financial in Australia is hard. For better or for worse
(IMHO it's mostly better) there is strict financial regulation in Australia
(mostly due to the Corporations Act revamp under the Howard government as well
as the longstanding Trade Practices Act, which is one of the most consumer-
friendly pieces of legislation I think in the world).

I'd be interested in knowing the story and how high compliance costs are for
something like this.

2\. It was done (based on comments here) at least in part in Perth. Perth is
my home town and has become increasingly tech unfriendly for three reasons:

\- a lot of the bigger employers got bought out and consolidated their
software development over East;

\- the state as a whole is very focused on digging stuff up from the ground
(or under the sea to be pedantic) and selling it to the Chinese. The startup
scene is tiny; and

\- cost of living in Perth is terrible in wage-adjusted terms. Honestly it's
cheaper for me to live in New York (I moved here about 2.5 years ago to start
a job with Google). Housing is a huge part of it but food, utilities and,
well, everything is expensive in Perth now.

I'd certainly like to here more about the development story and the team (the
site is scant on details on this).

As for the service itself, I'll echo the comments of others and say the FX and
other fees coule make this quite expensive.

Still, good to see this coming out of Australia and good luck guys. I'm also
glad to hear about more tech things happening in Perth. I might have to check
out the meetups and stuff next time I visit.

~~~
DigitalSea
From Brisbane, Queensland here and it's a similar story here. The company I
work for is causing ripples in the Australian pond but as a whole the
Australian tech scene is way behind that of the states and other parts of the
world due to our tight regulations, expensive Internet connections and slow
Internet connection speeds.

For every successful Australian company I can think of, there are thousands
not so lucky. Atlassian and Envato are the only two companies I can think of
off of the top of my head who have had major success spawning web based
businesses in a country as small and somewhat lacking as Australia as
Australia is. Melbourne and Sydney are definitely two locations you're most
likely to start a successful business in. Good to see Pin tackling payments
because in Australia you have two options: Paypal or a propriety expensive
bank solution with horrible API.

~~~
jusben1369
Big Commerce?

~~~
joonix
Bigcommerce moved to the US (Austin), just as almost every successful tech
company (and tech individual) out of Australia ends up doing.

You can't blame Australia too much for that. It's a tiny market, and the US is
an abnormally large one. It's logical.

~~~
jusben1369
Did they really move though? My understanding are both co-CEO's are still in
Sydney. I understand they opened a major office in the US but what growing
Aussie company wouldn't?

~~~
joonix
That's possible, I'm just going by what someone at the company told me.
Haven't looked into it further.

------
marcloney
Congratulations to the guys at Pin!

As an Australian, I welcome this wholeheartedly. It has been extremely
frustrating watching the payment revolution in the states, whilst at home
there is next to no alternative to getting a merchants facility through a bank
up until now. It will also be nice dealing with an API that isn't stuck in the
90s.

~~~
kibibu
Braintree are in Australia, and their API is quite lovely these days.

edit: apologies, I didn't realize braintree required a merchant account as
well.

~~~
jacques_chester
Merchant accounts are a huge PITA.

You have to pay a bunch of money up front and then, if you're not a fish-and-
chip shop or similar, you'll probably be told "no".

Plus, each bank will ask if you've ever been knocked back somewhere else. If
you honestly answer that you have, guess how that affects your chances?

~~~
kaliblack
I started the process of getting a merchant account with NAB and quickly gave
up. They had a long check list of requirements that had to be completed before
the application was submitted. This included have the signup and subscription
processes fully working so they could test them.

Pin is very needed here.

------
jwilliams
I love that this is happening and this innovation is extremely important in
the Australian market.

However, if you're an Australian company that wants to deal exclusively or
largely in USD -- then you need to keep an eye on the cost.

Pin is offering $50/month ($9 promo atm) - then 3% and $0.30 on every
transaction. Then for foreign exchange there is "a retail foreign exchange
rate of 4% on top of the wholesale interbank rate at the time of the
transaction" <https://pin.net.au/pricing>

_Plus_ if you've got USD outgoings - e.g. paying for EC2 - you'll cop the
foreign exchange on the way out too.

All of these things chip away & can add up to quite a considerable overhead.

~~~
vacri
Th $50/month really is a trivial cost to any business larger than a couple of
people, particularly for a service which eases the intake of money. It's the
per-payment costs that you need to consider. A flagfall charge of 30c is
meaningless when your invoices are $1k, and very high when they're $10. 3% on
every transaction might sound a lot, but (I assume) that includes the credit
card company cut, which usually comes in at around 2%, so effectively it's a
1% fee for the service.

Forex is beyond me, and that's where it does get complex :)

~~~
jwilliams
The problem is the FX - and as others have pointed out, this isn't a problem
that is necessarily unique to Pin (However, Pin are providing a common retail
rate).

It's $50/month. $0.30/transaction. Then 3% and then another 4% for the FX.
Then maybe you pay your EC2 bill, or your Adwords account, or your oDesk
freelancer and that's another 4-5% on the way back.

If you're doing a large volume of small transactions you'll be racking up ~15%
just in fees. If you manage to change that to fewer larger transactions, you
might get that to 8-9%. However, even though the % is slightly healthier it's
now serious money ($1,000s). Once you get into that camp having a US entity
(or whatever) starts to pay off.

Meanwhile, your US-based competitors are doing a flat $0.30 and 2.9% with
Stripe (That's just off the bat! Your bigger competitors are using Braintree
and probably getting sub 2% overall).

Sounds like I'm hating on Pin. I'm not. Genuinely embrace that they're on the
scene. Payments in Australia have been a world of hurt for a long time. This
is a great first beachhead and getting this capability out there is
fundamental.

------
secoif
After paypal shutting down my account on a number of occasions while
organising campjs.com, we switched from Paypal+EventBrite to Pin+Tito and it's
been smooth sailing ever since. The Pin team has been a joy to deal with,
responsive to feedback and I highly recommend them. Congratulations to Pin.

------
thejosh
Been watching these guys closely for the past 8 months or so.

These guys are based out of Perth, Australia and offer some pretty compelling
prices, especially the email they sent them morning where their monthly
pricing went down to $9 a month (instead of $50).

They use ruby on rails, and offer a JSON API.bEE

~~~
buro9
Would love to hear their story.

For those who don't know, Perth is the most remote city in the world
(according to Bill Bryson), and has a population shy of 2 million mostly in a
sprawl that hugs the coast.

I spent over a month there and a couple of weeks exploring the area around
Margaret River, lovely place... but reading this, what strikes me is how hard
it must be to find support, raise money, and build a startup with reach in a
city of such remoteness and with only a limited pool of angels and tech
resource to call upon.

So... knowing the city and WA as briefly as I do, I think this startup would
probably have a good story behind it about the adverse environment (for
startups) in which they emerged and what it took to get to where they are, and
where they're going from here.

~~~
vacri
Perth is rolling in money - that's where the mining industry has boomed,
dragging the Australian dollar up with it. It's remote, but that doesn't mean
it's poor.

~~~
buro9
Is Perth rolling in money the way that London is? Here, the financial money
favours financial startups.

Perth is wealthy, but is the money mostly poured back into mining related
ventures?

~~~
vacri
Unlikely, given that London is rolling in money, and that Greater London is
ten times the size of Greater Perth. Though I really couldn't tell you what
the VC culture is like there, because I don't move in those circles :) I have
seen a few decent techs coming to Melbourne with places in WA on their resume
though.

~~~
SamuelKillin
There is a PHENOMENAL amount of money out in Perth. It may be small, but some
of the wealthiest in the world (and the world's wealthiest woman) live there.

Largely due to mining, Australia's average wage is around $70k but our median
wage is around $45k. Pretty crazy.

It's a similar atmosphere to Texas oil culture (I hear, anyway). Lots of
secessionists saying Western Australia is keeping the country afloat. This is
somewhat true (but not entirely), and they tend to forget 20 years ago WA was
a shitheap with nothing going for it.

------
djtidau
I have been testing with these guys as we get closer to releasing our service
and they have been great to deal with. Not having to worry about a merchant
account saved a lot of time when it came to paperwork and the integration is
very simple.

The payments sector has been awaiting a shakeup in Australia for some time
now, and Pin will definitely be a recognizable force moving forward.

Congrats on the launch and thanks for the lowered monthly fee!

------
z0s0123
"The conversion is completed at a retail foreign exchange rate of 4% on top of
the wholesale interbank rate at the time of the transaction".

So the actual pricing is more like $9/mo + .30 + 7% for any non AUD business.

We use Stripe, a Bank of America USD account and OANDA to move our USD -> AUD
with an FX commission ~ 0.1%.

~~~
chrismorgan
Would you be able to do a more complete writeup of what you did (setting up
EIN, getting a bank account, etc.) and all the implications (especially tax)?
I've seen one person do such a thing to a limited degree and I've got the gist
of the process myself, but I'd _really_ like to see more info about this sort
of thing.

There's one point in favour of Pin, though: easy setup. For side-projects,
$9/month and have an ABN is comparatively little, where going through creating
a merchant account alone---let alone the other requirements---is a big
deterrant and thus, I think, quite harmful to this micro/experimental online
business sector. My plan is basically use Pin while it's the cheapest and
simplest, then _when_ my business has demonstrated viability, go for the
cheaper, more complex option. (Naturally this is dependent upon having a
fairly-high-margin business.)

------
beefsack
Is it possible to have USD payments deposited in my account directly without
having currency conversion inside Pin? My bank account (Citibank Australia)
tends to be significantly cheaper when depositing in USD than when gateways
convert and charge their own conversion fee.

~~~
robryan
Yeah, seems to be industry standard to throw nearly one percent on top of any
conversion.

~~~
davidjohnstone
If I'm reading <https://pin.net.au/pricing> correctly, they're charging four
percent extra for conversion, which sounds like it means they end up costing
7% + 30c for payments in USD.

~~~
lukevdp
I've looked at a lot of options for accepting USD from Australia and 4% is
pretty standard for retail exchange rate.

I ended up going with a US entity + bank account, which is the best option of
a bunch of crappy options.

Pin looks good for small volumes

------
davidlumley
The temporarily reduced pricing means I can actually justify trying a few side
projects without investing too much into it. Thanks so much Pin!

~~~
chrismorgan
That was my feeling too. $600/year for what is at present a spare-time project
and not complete (thus, not ready to accept payments) was putting me off;
$108/year is sufficiently low that I'm pretty confident I'll be signing up in
the next month... then there's the added benefit of the incentive that will
give me to get something _worth_ paying for up quickly to make it financially
worthwhile. :-)

And then for any further side-projects... I'll already have the low-
maintenance account. Great!

------
dcw303
This is great news. I've been patiently waiting for Stripe to arrive, but I've
started to lose hope. Pin looks like it will fill that void. Can use a
standard customer savings account to receive payments?

~~~
thejosh
Yeah, just need an ABN.

------
sbennettmcleish
Great stuff! Good to see this coming out of Perth and hopefully they can get a
good foothold on the market from support of businesses here before the bigger
US/EU competitors (finally) arrive.

------
nwh
I don't understand the $50 a month fee, they're taking that on top of 3% and
30c a transaction.

Uh, and they also don't support 2FA on their login form; that's not going to
end well.

~~~
daurnimator
huh? "A monthly service fee of $9 gives you everything you need to accept
payments in your website or application."

~~~
davidlumley
The $9 a month is an introductory price valid for registrations this month
only. The original (and I suspect the price if you register next month) was
$50.

------
threeseed
I would still think that Braintree would be a better bet.

They abstract the bank part of the equation as well so you are just dealing
with a single entity for any issues that arise. Plus their pricing is a little
bit better:

<https://www.braintreepayments.com/pricing>

That said ANY competition is always nice. The real question though is how they
handle chargebacks.

~~~
kondro
Braintree require you get an NAB merchant account and, if you want to support
USD then you have to also get the NAB foreign-currency accounts.

~~~
elithrar
> Braintree require you get an NAB merchant account and, if you want to
> support USD then you have to also get the NAB foreign-currency accounts.

Which, to me, are not-insubstantial barriers. Pin might not be as competitive
on price (barring the $9/m intro offer), but just being able to supply a
regular account to handle their deposits is convenient.

On a somewhat related note, I'm currently forking Drone.io's go.stripe
library[1] for Pin Payments, given the extreme similarity of the Stripe & Pin
API's. If anyone is keen on helping, get in touch or send me a pull request:
<https://github.com/elithrar/go.pin>

[1]: <https://github.com/drone/go.stripe>

~~~
ra
Totally. I don't know how it is in the US, but in AU braintree doesn't even
compete with eway + your choice of bank.

IMHO Pin lowers the barrier to entry for accepting CC, which is most welcome,
and long overdue in this country.

------
cstrat
Signed up even though I don't have an immediate requirement for this service.
Great to see some local innovation in the financial space.

------
nodesocket
First, congratulations to the Pin team. However I wonder about the longevity
of companies that are essentially Stripe clones in unsupported countries.
Their business essentially depends on the fact that Stripe is not currently in
Australia. Once Stripe announces support for Australia, why would anyone
choose Pin over Stripe?

~~~
coopdog
Apparently our financial regulations are an obtuse, onerous nightmare to deal
with. I imagine even just getting setup here is a big head start. Google
Merchant have been expanding for years but are still ignoring Australia, so
thank you Pin

~~~
primitur
How to get Stripe in Australia, set up Pin, $$$-big (locally), BRANDBRANDBRAND
(its an Aussie thing), and then .. when big enough, the sharks come calling,
throw out the chum ..

------
WatchDog
The website claims that they are backed by the government but doesn't go into
any detail. Can anyone clarify?

~~~
bentoner
Yeah, they might want to reword that. I think they mean that they got a grant:
[http://www.commercialisationaustralia.gov.au/OurParticipants...](http://www.commercialisationaustralia.gov.au/OurParticipants/Pages/Southern%20Payment%20Systems%20Ltd.aspx)

------
capex
If Stripe was thinking about moving into the Australian market, Pin would
provide them a ready-made solution. All things equal, this startup has a high
chance of getting acquired/ merged.

------
rmccue
There's not much documentation that I can find on it, so, do you need a
merchant account for this, or will any bank account work?

~~~
regecks
I believe you also need an ABN to begin charging live customers.

~~~
kondro
This is an Australian law requirement anyway for charging anyone for anything.

~~~
vbrendel
Strictly speaking, no. In Australia, businesses cannot pay suppliers unless
they have an ABN, otherwise their payment will be subject to Fringe Benefit
Tax (FBT). You can take money as an individual without ABN however. With
PayPal this is already possible. You can run a small operation eg on ebay but
as soon as you call it a business you should get an ABN, but then you also
have to pay income tax on what you make.

~~~
kondro
Which actually effectively requires you to have an ABN to charge anyone in
Australia. Without it, anyone you were selling to would be required with
withhold 48.5%. How does an individual do that?

~~~
evolve2k
This is how:
[http://www.ato.gov.au/businesses/content.aspx?menuid=0&d...](http://www.ato.gov.au/businesses/content.aspx?menuid=0&doc=/content/19178.htm&page=3&H3)

------
markdown
I hope this pushes <http://www.paymentexpress.com/> to up their game.

~~~
toast76
Don't even get me started... PaymentExpress demanded we sign a 3 year contract
to move off their "starter" plan. This is after them stuffing up our recurring
billing for 6 weeks late last year. Cost us thousands.

Told them to jam it, in the process of moving to Pin as we speak.

------
ppradhan
this is stellar, sterling and capital, all at the same time. I was days away
from signing up with eWay. Maintain the modern API and take good care of your
customers, I'll refer you to everyone I know and your customers will ensure
you'll remain in business for a long while. Welcome!

------
barrydahlberg
I wonder what the chances of them getting this to us in NZ are...

~~~
gbpin
I can't give you an ETA, but the chances are high.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Any way we can lock in the $9/mo pricing for when you launch in NZ? As others
have said, it would be awesome to have available for side projects!

------
WatchDog
So this exact post was made almost exactly a year ago.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4078334>

~~~
shimms
Closed alpha testing vs public availability?

Progress, not the exact same post.

