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As an European, my biggest wish for most SaaS vendors is an alternative to credit cards payments. SEPA Direct Debit or normal bank transfer after the invoice wo
by dtech 9y ago
As an European, my biggest wish for most SaaS vendors is an alternative to credit cards payments. SEPA Direct Debit or normal bank transfer after the invoice would be a godsend.
Credit cards are much more uncommon in Europe (people use debit cards, business get invoices paid through direct debit), and using credit cards for ongoing operational expenses is unheard of. This has caused a lot of friction with the accounting department of the companies I've tried to introduce some SaaS.
Usually, the solution is that one specific member of staff gets a personal corporate credit card and has to do tedious declarations and administration.
- leesalminen 9y agoAs a SaaS vendor with customers in the EU, bank transfers have been a huge pain for us. We have to log into the bank website to confirm we’ve received an amount. Then we have to match it up with an invoice, mark it as paid, etc. Conversely, with a debit/credit card that’s all automated. No manual labor involved. Could we automate international bank transfers? Probably. But customers end up using a debit/credit card because it’s the only option offered. We recently rolled out ACH bank transfer payments (US only) and offered an amazon gift card for anyone who wanted to switch. <5% of our customer base utilized this option.
- wilgertvelinga 9y agoEuropean accounting and/or invoicing software can automatically read in your bank statements, detect paid invoices and mark them as paid, no manual work!
- vitro 9y agoChoose a bank with API. My bank has it and it is easy to automate this process.
- leesalminen 9y agoAny recommendations?
- vitro 9y agoCzech Fio banka is the one I use, http://fio.cz http://fio.cz Allows you to create read only or full access tokens.
- Promarged 9y agoAfter PSD 2 directive comes into effect (expected 2019?) all European banks will have to have an API.
- tixocloud 9y agoActually we’ve been prepping for 2018 launch.
- Bombthecat 9y agoWho is we? :)
- vetinari 9y agoThe world is small... I always liked Fio, they had documented API and you could do whatever you wanted even in ages, when other banks insisted on using their software.
- Bombthecat 9y agoSoon or later all banks in Europe because of psd2. You might also want to check out figo and fidor.
- fyfy18 9y agoGoCardless (YC S11) allow you to accept direct debit payments across Europe: https://gocardless.com/ https://gocardless.com/
- fludlight 9y agoThis is not available for businesses based in the USA[1]. Also, the maximum amount for a single transaction is €5,000, which is inadequate for many (most?) B2B SaaS products. [1] https://gocardless.com/faq/merchants/international-payments/ https://gocardless.com/faq/merchants/international-payments/ [2] https://gocardless.com/faq/merchants/ https://gocardless.com/faq/merchants/ edit: link #2
- thaeli 9y agoEven in the US, I can't pay a $5000 invoice on a credit card. That's over the threshold where either they accept a purchase order, or we can't use them at all.
- galvin 9y agoYou may want to look into the SEPA direct debit system. It lets you send a file to your bank to request transfers and they send you back a file with the results. You have to register for a debitor identifier and ask your customers for permission to debit their accounts first but overall it works well and can be automated. It's the standard way to do direct debits in Europe.
- vetinari 9y agoDirect debit doesn't work with all companies, it certainly would not work with ours. It gives too much control to outside parties.
- dtech 9y agoWithin SEPA direct debit, you can reverse a charge if it was unwarranted. In my experience, it's a lot more common and accepted than credit card business payments in Europe.
- quickthrower2 9y ago> have been a huge pain for us Opportunity, business idea seekers!
- moreless 9y agoThis! In a world where very startup tries to deal with "sexy" problems like ML, AI, blockchain / distributed ledger, ... there is a lot that can be done to just ease the problems real enterprises have. This is for sure one of them - payment processor which takes CC and SEPA, with proper API and automations.
- nik736 9y agoStripe offers SEPA
- zerostar07 9y agowell blockchains are about payments
- gingerlime 9y agoStripe offers SEPA in Europe, but I believe it’s still in Beta. We integrated it, but after having some trouble with the equivalent of chargebacks, we measured customer adoption compared to credit cards and PayPal in Europe and didn’t see a big shift. We pulled it out. We’re a B2C though so it could work for B2B more reliably I imagine.
- Silhouette 9y agoafter having some trouble with the equivalent of chargebacks Would you share more details about this, if you can?
- GordonS 9y agoI'd also be interested to know more about this - I would have thought such behaviour would be comparatively rare for B2C.
- GordonS 9y agoGah, sorry, just ignore me, I mixed up B2B and B2C!
- gingerlime 9y agonot sure if it fits easily into a HN comment, so feel free to drop me an email. Things might have changed or improved since. Generally, it's way too easy to reverse a SEPA payment for a customer (up to 8 weeks if I recall after purchase). It led to some, admittedly rare, cases where we can issue a refund to a customer and then they'll reverse the payment as well. So we ended up with negative revenue to the same amount of what we charged, which can be up to 190 EUR. So we'd actually refund 190 EUR and then lose another 190 EUR + Stripe chargeback fees on top. Ouch. There was little or nothing we could do about it apart from begging the customer to transfer the money back to us... On top of that, there were chargeback fees even if the bank, rather than the customer, reversed the charge. This happens not too infrequently (IIRC around 5% of transactions). If this was a credit card transaction, the bank would simply decline the charge. With SEPA it's not as simple... The charge gets through, supposedly, and then bounces with a chargeback fee...
- fredsted 9y agoI think it depends on the country. Here in Denmark, everybody has a credit card – actually a "Visa/Dankort" – where our own type of card (Dankort) is combined with a regular Visa CC. However, those under 18 either have a Visa Electron or MasterCard, which are debit.
- dtech 9y agoI was mostly talking about business customers though. Do all businesses have company credit cards for operational expenses in Denmark? Interesting that people in Denmark use a credit card, although Wikipedia seems to imply it implies as a debit card inside Denmark? [1] I know debit is definitly more common in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dankort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dankort
- cerved 9y agoI rarely had problems with customers using a credit card. Had to be sub $10k/month otherwise we did an invoice. Invoice weren't difficult, just required a little more effort.