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Please, please, anyone, if you are getting started in online payment processing, don't do it yourself. Use a service that already handles the VAT and fraud dete

Please, please, anyone, if you are getting started in online payment processing, don't do it yourself. Use a service that already handles the VAT and fraud detection issues. Then, when you've proven your product, and got substantial sales, you can write your own. Maybe. The author of the article spent weeks and thousands of euros to implement a payment system. And yet he had only a handful of customers.

jlongster 11y ago
Well, he used Stripe, so he didn't write his own. Personally I wasn't aware that there was such a high fee for a chargeback. Is that because Stripe doesn't handle fraud well? Seems like most of his time was spent dealing with tax issues, which you'd have to do regardless of how money is actually transferred.
- stevoski 11y ago
  Good point. I consider using Stripe a "do-it-yourself" solution, which requires manual coding. As far as handling EU VAT, Stripe offers nothing, and you need to manually implement this. I meant that you should use a service last FastSpring or Avangate initially, which require no coding, and completely take care of VAT.
  - vfdfv 11y ago
    Do you know if Braintree handles EU VAT in an automatic way? I've read the article below but I'm not totally sure what to make of it: https://www.taxamo.com/braintree-announce-partnership-taxamo/ https://www.taxamo.com/braintree-announce-partnership-taxamo... I am definitely not interested in hand-coding a solution.
    - thibaut_barrere 11y ago
      I don't know about Braintree, but I can report that for my SaaS app (https://www.wisecashhq.com https://www.wisecashhq.com, currently priced in $ but France-based), I used Recurly (https://www.recurly.com https://www.recurly.com) which handles EU VAT very nicely (including VAT changes happening in 2015). I use them together with Stripe as my gateway, it generates proper invoices and applies the rate of the buyer's country unless a valid VAT number has been provided. They also provide a stripe-like js library so that the credit-card number doesn't go through my server. With regard to VAT MOSS report, they do most of the checks, I only wrote a little ETL script using http://www.kiba-etl.org/ http://www.kiba-etl.org/ to create a break-down of the related amounts for each quarter and each country, which I then submit manually to the VAT MOSS French website. So in my case, this is fully automated, and I'm pretty happy with this :-) Feel free to email me if you have questions.
      - djm_ 11y ago
        This is the setup (Recurly + Stripe) the article is complaining about though, it doesn't protect well against fraud.
    - Taxamo 11y ago
      Hey, this should help: http://support.taxamo.com/customer/portal/articles/1781966-how-does-taxamo-integrate-with-braintree- http://support.taxamo.com/customer/portal/articles/1781966-h... and more detail here: https://www.taxamo.com/doc/payment_providers/braintree/ https://www.taxamo.com/doc/payment_providers/braintree/
- joelhooks 11y ago
  We use stripe for egghead.io and process lots of payments. Chargebacks happen, but it isn't terribly significant for us. Our subscription fee is higher, so perhaps that helps.
thomseddon 11y ago
He did (stripe): https://remysharp.com/images/jsbin-stripe-fraud.png https://remysharp.com/images/jsbin-stripe-fraud.png
bluecalm 11y ago
Not much choice here (Poland). You can use payment gateway (say PayPal) but no luck with VAT and ridiculous VATMOSS regulations like being required to keep 2 pieces of evidence of customer location (say address and IP) which for example PayPal doesn't give you access to (you only go the address).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- samuellb 11y ago
  I use PayPal for donations to an F/OSS project (which are subject to VAT in my country). This is how I "solved" the VATMOSS problem: 1. Generate different PayPal buttons for different countries (depending on IP). The country of the IP is included in the receipt. Currently I only have Sweden and "other". 2. For other countries, I'll manually ask the user to confirm the transaction (the intention is to make it count as a manual transaction, so I can simply use 25% VAT of my country). If the user doesn't respond I'll have to issue a refund. Foreign users are _very_ uncommon in my case, so it works for me (my software is specific to my country anyway). I'm not even VATMOSS registered, only VAT registered.
mattront 11y ago
We use http://paddle.com http://paddle.com (they're based in UK) for payment processing. They take care of VAT and fraud prevention. There's no need to implement these services yourself.

jlongster 11y ago

Well, he used Stripe, so he didn't write his own. Personally I wasn't aware that there was such a high fee for a chargeback. Is that because Stripe doesn't handle fraud well? Seems like most of his time was spent dealing with tax issues, which you'd have to do regardless of how money is actually transferred.

stevoski 11y ago
Good point. I consider using Stripe a "do-it-yourself" solution, which requires manual coding. As far as handling EU VAT, Stripe offers nothing, and you need to manually implement this. I meant that you should use a service last FastSpring or Avangate initially, which require no coding, and completely take care of VAT.
- vfdfv 11y ago
  Do you know if Braintree handles EU VAT in an automatic way? I've read the article below but I'm not totally sure what to make of it: https://www.taxamo.com/braintree-announce-partnership-taxamo/ https://www.taxamo.com/braintree-announce-partnership-taxamo... I am definitely not interested in hand-coding a solution.
  - thibaut_barrere 11y ago
    I don't know about Braintree, but I can report that for my SaaS app (https://www.wisecashhq.com https://www.wisecashhq.com, currently priced in $ but France-based), I used Recurly (https://www.recurly.com https://www.recurly.com) which handles EU VAT very nicely (including VAT changes happening in 2015). I use them together with Stripe as my gateway, it generates proper invoices and applies the rate of the buyer's country unless a valid VAT number has been provided. They also provide a stripe-like js library so that the credit-card number doesn't go through my server. With regard to VAT MOSS report, they do most of the checks, I only wrote a little ETL script using http://www.kiba-etl.org/ http://www.kiba-etl.org/ to create a break-down of the related amounts for each quarter and each country, which I then submit manually to the VAT MOSS French website. So in my case, this is fully automated, and I'm pretty happy with this :-) Feel free to email me if you have questions.
    - djm_ 11y ago
      This is the setup (Recurly + Stripe) the article is complaining about though, it doesn't protect well against fraud.
  - Taxamo 11y ago
    Hey, this should help: http://support.taxamo.com/customer/portal/articles/1781966-how-does-taxamo-integrate-with-braintree- http://support.taxamo.com/customer/portal/articles/1781966-h... and more detail here: https://www.taxamo.com/doc/payment_providers/braintree/ https://www.taxamo.com/doc/payment_providers/braintree/
joelhooks 11y ago
We use stripe for egghead.io and process lots of payments. Chargebacks happen, but it isn't terribly significant for us. Our subscription fee is higher, so perhaps that helps.

thomseddon 11y ago

He did (stripe): https://remysharp.com/images/jsbin-stripe-fraud.png https://remysharp.com/images/jsbin-stripe-fraud.png

bluecalm 11y ago

Not much choice here (Poland). You can use payment gateway (say PayPal) but no luck with VAT and ridiculous VATMOSS regulations like being required to keep 2 pieces of evidence of customer location (say address and IP) which for example PayPal doesn't give you access to (you only go the address).

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
samuellb 11y ago
I use PayPal for donations to an F/OSS project (which are subject to VAT in my country). This is how I "solved" the VATMOSS problem: 1. Generate different PayPal buttons for different countries (depending on IP). The country of the IP is included in the receipt. Currently I only have Sweden and "other". 2. For other countries, I'll manually ask the user to confirm the transaction (the intention is to make it count as a manual transaction, so I can simply use 25% VAT of my country). If the user doesn't respond I'll have to issue a refund. Foreign users are _very_ uncommon in my case, so it works for me (my software is specific to my country anyway). I'm not even VATMOSS registered, only VAT registered.

mattront 11y ago

We use http://paddle.com http://paddle.com (they're based in UK) for payment processing. They take care of VAT and fraud prevention. There's no need to implement these services yourself.