8 ms·

I won't pay on your website

131 points by vedantkhairnar 3y ago

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NavyG 3y ago
Does the vagueness of the error message have something to do with reducing frauds?
- tomschwiha 3y ago
  Usually yes. And there can be alot going on: https://stripe.com/docs/error-codes https://stripe.com/docs/error-codes I guess it's the same intention, why to not tell the user an email is already registered on your site. Could be used for personalized scam/fraud. However often you trade security for comfort.
  - NavyG 3y ago
    Yeah it does not make sense to pass on every error message to the customer but don't these error codes get logged on the console anyways?
- happymellon 3y ago
  Surely that's what 3D secure is for. I don't see how blocking error messages reduces the fraud. All of my accounts come with that enabled by default and will ping my phone app, so stealing my card number isn't enough. Card details + something I know + something I have.
- vedantkhairnar 3y ago
  Is there some way to understand if the payment page is a phishing attack?
Symbiote 3y ago
I was frustrated recently trying to book an expensive flight. My card was denied, and I retried several times — had I mistyped something? Should I have written "oe" not "ø" in "København"? Did it need me to make up a "state/province"? Eventually I gave up with that site, and tried the same booking on a different website. It immediately said "Your bank has declined the transaction. Either you have insufficient funds in your account, or the transaction is above the bank's limit for this card." Annoying, but checking on the bank's website revealed there was an unspecified limit. The first site would have got the sale (with a different card) if they'd given me a clear error message.
- edpichler 3y ago
  The generic error message is, sometimes, a strategy to hinder attacks, at the very cost of the user experience.
- earth-adventure 3y ago
  It's all to stop bad actors.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    Yeah that's basically it. Risk vs. reward, and there is probably a way to make it work, but what's the payoff? That said, a bikeshare should be able to help tourists / be low-effort. Otherwise I'll just uber.
- Nars088 3y ago
  I think there is a strong relationship between the average ticket size and payment experience. It is almost like it is the user's problem if the ticket size is high (hence the website need not necessarily invest in creating a good payment experience). Something like insurance websites. The ones that really seem to think about the payment experience are the ones that have low to medium average ticket size and high transaction volumes. It is in the website's best interest to ensure each and every transaction goes through
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
quickthrower2 3y ago
OG title “Why I won't pay on your website” Emphasis: Your
- samwillis 3y ago
  HN strips some words from titles when you first submit, I believe its to make them less click bait. The submitter can then immediately edit the title if it mucks up. This is a rare example of the small fraction where it makes the title more click bait.
bengale 3y ago
If you don't offer me Apple Pay and skip the whole payment step, you better offer something I can't get anywhere else because otherwise, I'm bailing.
- nine_k 3y ago
  Is using Stripe acceptable?
  - parker_mountain 3y ago
    Honestly, Apple has really knocked it out of the park. Stripe is okay and works well with autofill, but it's still extra friction. Yeah, apple might be doing something a little anti-competitive here.
    - nine_k 3y ago
      What if some of my customers use a non-Apple OS to access my site?
      - parker_mountain 3y ago
        That's not really at all how implementing Apple Pay works, and would not affect your non Apple customers. Also, even Apple users can opt to not use Apple Pay if it's offered on a site.
  - alasarmas 3y ago
    For parent, maybe. For me, no.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Stripe is the processor, Apple Pay is the method. Stripe supports Apple Pay.
    - Nars088 3y ago
      Stripe's link has a similar experience
dorianmariefr 3y ago
would you pay on checkout.stripe.com?
- vedantkhairnar 3y ago
  Stripe checkout is pretty clean and straightforward it's just not blended with the brand of the website (because it is hosted by stripe) which is fine mostly.
supriyo-biswas 3y ago
The HN algorithm strikes again, and makes it look like a anti-capitalistic rant whereas it’s really about the failure modes of payment pages.
- azangru 3y ago
  I thought it was going to be a security rant. I was expecting the author to say that he was hesitant to trust an unknown site with their debit card information, and was arguing for using something like the Stripe payment gateway.
nicbou 3y ago
Another big one: expecting local information from international customers. My phone number starts with +49 and is longer than a North American phone number. This prevents me from renting a Bixi bicycle in Montreal. You know who likes to rent bicycles? Tourists like me. In any case my card failed with a generic error, both at the payment booth, and in the mobile app (after working one time). Another one was a stand up paddling booking website. I shouldn’t need a Canadian postal code to rent something (especially 10km from the border) yet here we are. In any case it was impossible to select the field on my phone, so I dropped out. I wonder how much business they lost to this single bug. This sort of stuff happens when you ask for data that you don’t need, and validate it beyond your needs. I fight tooth and nail with colleagues to reduce the size of forms to avoid this sort of friction and bugs. EDIT: oh and IBAN discrimination, which is illegal but happens even on government websites
- tommiegannert 3y ago
  A hotel in Sweden used an external booking system for breakfast slots (remnants of CoVID, I guess). To receive breakfast, I had to provide name, email address and a phone number. And read a ~15 phone-screens ToS. Strangely, no one pointed out the obviously fake email address or phone number when I had the breakfast. Perhaps it wasn't needed after all.
  - kwanbix 3y ago
    Ah, the ToS. I sometimes download a game in my Xbox Series X and the TOS is crazy long. What the fck for?
  - noirscape 3y ago
    Oh that crap is super common on restaurant wifi too around here. The funny thing is that they can't actually validate the email address so most just accept whatever (sometimes with a small extra filter to avoid stuff like a@a.com).
    - red-iron-pine 3y ago
      In 8th grade, long ago, my buddy created a hotmail account: deepthroat50005. he thought it was based on Metal Gear Solid's reference to the Watergate thing. Didn't get the other connotations -- at least not at first. He disowned it, and we laughed about it for a while. I still use that email for anything that requires an email but I DGAF about. Hasn't been rejected yet...
JCharante 3y ago
> (bonus points for the dropdown on expiry date) I hate dropdowns for the expiry date. Let me just enter 01 TAB 22, I don't want to click on dropdowns then scrolldown.
- jcotton42 3y ago
  Unless the form has been horribly butchered, that should still work, since the browser will select from the dropdown as you type, so long as the dropdown is focused.
  - planede 3y ago
    1. It's not intuitive that you can type in a dropdown. 2. It's not always obvious if a dropdown is focused or not. It's orthogonal, but focus doesn't always cycle in the obvious order of input fields with nothing in between. As for the field, couldn't it be a text field with a small down arrow within for a dropdown option?
    - Etheryte 3y ago
      Every native dropdown in your OS supports typing to select an option. While it might be arguable if it's intuitive, it definitely is a common pattern.
- Etheryte 3y ago
  I mean, there's no reason you can't have it both ways? So long as the dropdowns are not some broken custom widget, you can use dropdowns the same way.
- parasti 3y ago
  For me, ideally, you don't need to TAB, because the input focus switches automatically.
  - tommiegannert 3y ago
    If you implement this, please make sure any auto-refocus has visual clues, e.g. looking like a single input field, and behaving like a single field (a TAB moves to the next logical form field). When inputting license keys in programs, and there were dashes in them, it was always fun encountering an auto-focus across split textfields where you didn't expect it, so you accidentally skipped a field and had to redo it.
yawnxyz 3y ago
For our microbiology conference event, I just programmatically created a bunch of Stripe Payment Link options for every combination, and used our site to open up the payment link. We record the event using a webhook back into our Airtable. Though I'm not a huge fan of opening up a new window for payment, this turns out to be much easier for us, implementation-wise. Plus, the Stripe Payment Link UI is able to handle most of the errors and payment methods, add discount codes, etc.
yieldcrv 3y ago
> making payments online should have been solved for well beyond doubt in 2023 but Apple Pay in browser checkout is pretty great
dan_mctree 3y ago
If you only offer creditcard payments and want international customers, you will missing out on a lot of customers. For example in the Netherlands, iDeal is the standard of payment and many Dutch customers do not have other payment options easily available.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
  Trying to support international payment methods in general is a nightmare and the Dutch system is one of the most idiosyncratic. Not saying it's bad for users, but I remember integration of support across different banks being daunting (this was several years ago so things may have improved).
- zx8080 3y ago
  Does it mean that mostly, they don't have any Visa or Mastercard?
  - jvdvegt 3y ago
    Indeed. Our debit cards are visa/mastercard, but such cards have numbers like NL01BANK012345678901 (IBAN). Credit cards have no additional benefit in day-to-day life but do have an additional cost. Ideal is actually ideal for consumers, as the merchant doesn't ever receive personal information. For small amounts, it's only a fingerprint away. It seems to become a European standard: https://nltimes.nl/2023/04/25/dutch-payment-processor-ideal-become-european-standard https://nltimes.nl/2023/04/25/dutch-payment-processor-ideal-...
    - SpacePortKnight 3y ago
      Correction. Our debit cards are only mastercard maestro not visa. Maestro is depricated, and soon everyone in EU will have proper international debit cards.
  - sigio 3y ago
    Yeah, only a very low percentage of people will have a creditcard... 99% of dutch online payments will be made using IDeal, which is cheap (free for user, ~20-30ct for the seller) and instant. And works with every bank in the country (and some international ones like Revolut and N26)
chrismorgan 3y ago
> But here’s how you can mess it up: > • Not having dynamic error validations before someone goes ahead with the payment. It is as simple as using the Luhn algorithm to make some basic checks. On the other hand, someone that does validation of their own is far more likely to accidentally filter out valid values. This used to be rather common on email addresses. (I’ve been using almost exclusively @chrismorgan.info addresses since about 2010, and had one rejected exactly once, from a regular expression that thought TLDs were only two or three characters long; I was able to use my skills to bypass the check, and the backend accepted it.) Nowadays, people normally just leave client side validation to whatever <input type="email"> does. So, payment card numbers. I’ve only ever had a 16-digit one, but they can actually be 10–19 characters long, and some people are sure to have hard-coded maxlength=16 and/or minlength=16 (or equivalent JavaScript checks). There are also those ridiculous things that insist on splitting the card number into multiple fields (four groups of four characters), but that’s generally just painful to work with rather than actually preventing you from using it.
- fake-name 3y ago
  > Nowadays, people normally just leave client side validation to whatever <input type="email"> does. Hah, I wish. SO MANY sites disallow the plus symbol in the email name (e.g. something+else@example.com). This is a valid email. It should be accepted. Arrrgh.
  - cyberbanjo 3y ago
    I was surprised to learn the extent of what is a valid local-part (something+else in your example) of an email. Can have two dots in sequence if the local-part is quoted, and support for non alphanumeric characters like !#$%&'*+-/=?^_`{|}~; if the local-part is quoted, comments with parentheses. And it could be case sensitive.
    - WirelessGigabit 3y ago
      We have the following validation: let form_email: Option::<String> = /* ... */; match form_email { Some(email) if !email.is_empty() => { // ... send email with validation link }, _ => { // report missing email } } If you (can) click the validation link it's a valid email. If not... it's invalid. Saves me the trouble of debugging all the regexes.
notpushkin 3y ago
> bonus points for the dropdown on expiry date I usually don't mind those because you can just Tab to them and start typing and it will select the item from the list (if you have guessed the format right, and the dropdowns are native or custom but properly implemented). But why would you ever want that instead of simple MM / YYYY field (or two fields, if you don't want to add masking)?
KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
This would benefit from some examples of perceived "good" user experiences in this space. Also it's a bit lacking on the stateful side of things. For example, a lot of Amazon customers hit "save card details" and then bam, one click checkout forever; making optimisation in this area highly diminished. Similar story and even more true for vendors that support Apple Pay.
sdflhasjd 3y ago
The most surefire way of making me not buy something from your site is if you ask for any unnecessary details before telling me the whole price. If I have to create an account or enter an email address, or fill in any field other than my country and "state" before you tell me postage/shipping costs, I will just close the page down. If I see anything that even feels like a dark pattern, I will just refuse out of principle.
fhd2 3y ago
Is PayPal still a thing in the US? Only one mention in the article, none here in the comments. I'm in Germany and order at a lot of specific sites, and while I don't like PayPal as a company or their fee structure, it's usually what keeps me sane. Most cases I don't have to enter anything, no need to create an account or even enter the delivery address. Doesn't get much more convenient than that.
- benoliver999 3y ago
  I find it's a gamble for me. If paypal redirects and opens in the same browser it's happy days. If it opens in a new window, it always seems to error out
- jeltz 3y ago
  Are the competitors that bad in Germany? Here in Sweden PayPal has one of the worst UIs and the buggiest sites.
  - panragon 3y ago
    This is actually true, but I still use PayPal probably 10-20 times a year and I haven't logged into their site for probably 2-3 years, at least whenever I last had to update my payment cards. The site is suboptimal, it's probably not a great company and I have no idea if they're charging me anything - but the one-tap purchase system just works, and that's all I need. There are other great options in Klarna and similar, but even they give me too many options to coax me into paying later so I inadvertently pay fees. PayPal literally just withdraws from whichever card has sufficient funds at the time, has worked exactly as stated for over a decade, so I really have no incentive to investigate alternatives (especially for sites where my PayPal is already setup, like Steam).
  - abwizz 3y ago
    alternatives are standard wire-transfer, which will take a few days (wtf?) and some privately run proxy-service for wire-transfers (sofortueberweisung.de) where you login with the banking credentials on a non-bank website (yes, really) which manages to give the seller a confirmation of the transaction. no alternative thou that manages adresses, confirmation and the actual transaction with one login/button
nicexe 3y ago
Having to give your personal details just to see that the shipping to your country isn't worth (or not available at all) and then sending me an email to say that I potentially forgot to checkout some stuff in my shopping card is the reason I don't even try to fill my details and try and find an alternative shop. Selecting a country and entering the post code to find out the shipping cost is slightly old-fashioned but works very well.
jiehong 3y ago
I think the future is to never fill-in your cards info anymore, and maybe not even have a card at all. Once you start using something with a QR Code, it's much much better: - WeChat Pay and co. (in China); - PhonePe and co (in India); You usually have 2 ways to pay with those systems (only systems I'm familiar with, others might be different): - Merchand shows a QR Code; you scan it and enter the right amount manually. Merchand gets a confirmation. - Merchand shows a QR Code; you scan it but the amount and details are all pre-filled and you just have to confirm. In both cases, it's scan + click ok. Now, if worldwide banks in the world were to have a way to send money to each other without fees and with a single standard, they could make it happen (one can hope).
- nik736 3y ago
  Is it possible to have recurring payments with the QR pay solutions you mentioned? There are probably a lot of use cases, for example for a gym membership, etc.
  - SpacePortKnight 3y ago
    Yes. I pay for Netflix via UPI e-mandates. The best part of UPI subscriptions is that I can cancel them whenever without going to the merchant's website. In Netherlands, iDEAL comes close to UPI as well.
stokesr 3y ago
> (bonus points for the dropdown on expiry date) I definitely prefer being able to go through inputting my card details using the numpad and the tab key. Having to switch more often between keyboard and mouse adds one more step to the nightmare that is online payment. While it is just a preference though, I wouldn't go so far as to say a date dropdown automatically means bonus points.
- NavyG 3y ago
  Dropdowns are kinda better for mobile though
colesantiago 3y ago
If a website doesn’t offer me the ability to pay without running javascript this is a red flag and i’ll bounce. The amount of spying in the payments industry is vile enough.
MrThoughtful 3y ago
The whole concept of how we pay online is insane. You put data into a form of a random website you want to pay a small amount to. Data which enables everybody who has it to cause trouble. Trouble to you, trouble to your credit card company, trouble to other websites who get scammed with it. Websites should simply give you a string like "visa:3498734219:$12.34" where "visa" is their payment processor, 349... is the invoice nr and $12.34 is the amount invoiced. Then you copy+paste that into the website of your payment solution and let it do the transaction. And if you don't like copy+paste, you install some app so you can just point your phone at such an invoice and click pay. Or a browser plugin which detects those invoices and asks you "Pay this?".
- AndroTux 3y ago
  That's basically paying via QR code, and not an entirely new concept. Crypto works this way, and I believe WeChat or similar payment systems, too. Good idea for one-time payments, but honestly, those are no longer the norm. If you're not paying for something physical to be shipped to your home, chances are it's a subscription anyways in which case a payment flow like this would be a nightmare to both the user and the merchant alike.
  - MrThoughtful 3y ago
    The same flow would work for subscriptions. The amount would just be a string like "whatever+whenever". So you tell your payment provider that you authorize this merchant to pull whatever amount of money whenever they feel like. And not give out a piece of data that authorizes anybody to pull whatever amount of money whenever they feel like.
    - AndroTux 3y ago
      So, PayPal, with the exception of „whatever“, as subscriptions may increase in price or you decide to upgrade without wanting to adjust your payment method. Plus, you have excellent protection as a buyer on PayPal with the option to request refunds for basically every reason.
danmaz74 3y ago
Slightly OT question: I need to integrate payments on a new service I created[+], and for now I need to use a "merchant of record" approach. Currently I'm choosing between Paddle and FastSpring; any suggestions why should I choose one over the other? [+] https://chess.braimax.com https://chess.braimax.com
andygh 3y ago
While this post is trying to maximise the conversion of customers, I'm always drawn to how the UK's GOV.UK Design System handles these fairly common tasks: https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/payment-card-details/ https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/payment-card-d...
kumarajeet024 3y ago
Is there any valid use case at all for people to progressively disclose card details? There's got to be a reason
- nakulkothari 3y ago
  It is with the risk rules. If a transaction is considered risky due to amount, location, customer pattern etc, Stripe/ issuer would need more details to lower the riak during Authorization
MzHN 3y ago
For me the benchmark is Mullvad. The experience of throwing money at them is so satisfying, I almost want to do it just for the rare feeling of zero friction. If I do want to pay on your website, and it is not as low friction in comparison, I will be considering how much I really want to pay or if I should just give up.
vedantkhairnar 3y ago
Did anyone experience the Palm payment method introduced by Tencent?
nakulkothari 3y ago
There are broadly two kinds of checkout experiences for most payment methods. The SDK flow is where your payment page has the SDK of the processor embedded for a more native experience. The redirection flow is when you break from the flow of your website and use the processor’s hosted checkout page. It is worth putting in the extra effort to blend the payment page until the end of the checkout experience to not lose your customer’s flow of attention. PayPal one-click checkout button is an example of paypal’s SDK flow. You actually don’t need the user to reach the final checkout page with all these icons and progressive disclosures for checking out with Paypal
Loranubi 3y ago
Oh god online payment systems are the worst. And even good ones sometimes break horribly. Once I booked a flight online by credit card and the payment timed out (or rather stopped at a late stage without an error). Afterwards the website didn't tell me if the payment went through or not. I called the airline and my bank and neither one could tell me if the payment was successful or not. Both just told me to wait a week and then check again... this was only around 5 years ago. In the end the payment did go through, however if it didn't, I am sure I would have lost that seat/ticket. Lots of wasted time and stress for nothing.
RobotToaster 3y ago
One thing I've been encountering recently is being required to enter a bunch of info before telling me the postage cost, I think it's a shopify thing. Most of the time I just go somewhere else.
Towaway69 3y ago
So this article is by one payment provider complaining about other payment providers and at the end telling their readers how wonderful their product is. If the object is a product, then the force is advertising. How boring.
- fluxinflex 3y ago
  The underlying point being made - by the comment - is that if an author is biased because they are selling a product and complaining about their competition, how can the article or the "facts" be trusted? The orignal article is disguised advertising, advertising in the form of a "knowledgable criticism" of existing payment services. May the force be with you even if the object isn't.
  - vedantkhairnar 3y ago
    We are basically an open-source payment orchestrator - we are not even competing with these guys. Haha :)
Turing_Machine 3y ago
One of my undergrad professors, a Tamil from India, had a first and second name that between them totaled 36 characters. He had endless trouble with forms (even paper forms) until he eventually adopted a shortened version of his name. My first encounter with him was when I was selecting classes and asked a friend "Hey, do you know anything about (short version of his name)?" "Yeah, he's great. That's not really his name, though. That's just all that will fit in the schedule."

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NavyG 3y ago

Does the vagueness of the error message have something to do with reducing frauds?

tomschwiha 3y ago
Usually yes. And there can be alot going on: https://stripe.com/docs/error-codes https://stripe.com/docs/error-codes I guess it's the same intention, why to not tell the user an email is already registered on your site. Could be used for personalized scam/fraud. However often you trade security for comfort.
- NavyG 3y ago
  Yeah it does not make sense to pass on every error message to the customer but don't these error codes get logged on the console anyways?
happymellon 3y ago
Surely that's what 3D secure is for. I don't see how blocking error messages reduces the fraud. All of my accounts come with that enabled by default and will ping my phone app, so stealing my card number isn't enough. Card details + something I know + something I have.
vedantkhairnar 3y ago
Is there some way to understand if the payment page is a phishing attack?

Symbiote 3y ago

I was frustrated recently trying to book an expensive flight. My card was denied, and I retried several times — had I mistyped something? Should I have written "oe" not "ø" in "København"? Did it need me to make up a "state/province"? Eventually I gave up with that site, and tried the same booking on a different website. It immediately said "Your bank has declined the transaction. Either you have insufficient funds in your account, or the transaction is above the bank's limit for this card." Annoying, but checking on the bank's website revealed there was an unspecified limit. The first site would have got the sale (with a different card) if they'd given me a clear error message.

edpichler 3y ago
The generic error message is, sometimes, a strategy to hinder attacks, at the very cost of the user experience.
earth-adventure 3y ago
It's all to stop bad actors.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  Yeah that's basically it. Risk vs. reward, and there is probably a way to make it work, but what's the payoff? That said, a bikeshare should be able to help tourists / be low-effort. Otherwise I'll just uber.
Nars088 3y ago
I think there is a strong relationship between the average ticket size and payment experience. It is almost like it is the user's problem if the ticket size is high (hence the website need not necessarily invest in creating a good payment experience). Something like insurance websites. The ones that really seem to think about the payment experience are the ones that have low to medium average ticket size and high transaction volumes. It is in the website's best interest to ensure each and every transaction goes through
bryanrasmussen 3y ago

quickthrower2 3y ago

OG title “Why I won't pay on your website” Emphasis: Your

samwillis 3y ago
HN strips some words from titles when you first submit, I believe its to make them less click bait. The submitter can then immediately edit the title if it mucks up. This is a rare example of the small fraction where it makes the title more click bait.

bengale 3y ago

If you don't offer me Apple Pay and skip the whole payment step, you better offer something I can't get anywhere else because otherwise, I'm bailing.

nine_k 3y ago
Is using Stripe acceptable?
- parker_mountain 3y ago
  Honestly, Apple has really knocked it out of the park. Stripe is okay and works well with autofill, but it's still extra friction. Yeah, apple might be doing something a little anti-competitive here.
  - nine_k 3y ago
    What if some of my customers use a non-Apple OS to access my site?
    - parker_mountain 3y ago
      That's not really at all how implementing Apple Pay works, and would not affect your non Apple customers. Also, even Apple users can opt to not use Apple Pay if it's offered on a site.
- alasarmas 3y ago
  For parent, maybe. For me, no.
- stavros 3y ago
  Stripe is the processor, Apple Pay is the method. Stripe supports Apple Pay.
  - Nars088 3y ago
    Stripe's link has a similar experience

dorianmariefr 3y ago

would you pay on checkout.stripe.com?

vedantkhairnar 3y ago
Stripe checkout is pretty clean and straightforward it's just not blended with the brand of the website (because it is hosted by stripe) which is fine mostly.

supriyo-biswas 3y ago

The HN algorithm strikes again, and makes it look like a anti-capitalistic rant whereas it’s really about the failure modes of payment pages.

azangru 3y ago
I thought it was going to be a security rant. I was expecting the author to say that he was hesitant to trust an unknown site with their debit card information, and was arguing for using something like the Stripe payment gateway.

nicbou 3y ago

Another big one: expecting local information from international customers. My phone number starts with +49 and is longer than a North American phone number. This prevents me from renting a Bixi bicycle in Montreal. You know who likes to rent bicycles? Tourists like me. In any case my card failed with a generic error, both at the payment booth, and in the mobile app (after working one time). Another one was a stand up paddling booking website. I shouldn’t need a Canadian postal code to rent something (especially 10km from the border) yet here we are. In any case it was impossible to select the field on my phone, so I dropped out. I wonder how much business they lost to this single bug. This sort of stuff happens when you ask for data that you don’t need, and validate it beyond your needs. I fight tooth and nail with colleagues to reduce the size of forms to avoid this sort of friction and bugs. EDIT: oh and IBAN discrimination, which is illegal but happens even on government websites

tommiegannert 3y ago
A hotel in Sweden used an external booking system for breakfast slots (remnants of CoVID, I guess). To receive breakfast, I had to provide name, email address and a phone number. And read a ~15 phone-screens ToS. Strangely, no one pointed out the obviously fake email address or phone number when I had the breakfast. Perhaps it wasn't needed after all.
- kwanbix 3y ago
  Ah, the ToS. I sometimes download a game in my Xbox Series X and the TOS is crazy long. What the fck for?
- noirscape 3y ago
  Oh that crap is super common on restaurant wifi too around here. The funny thing is that they can't actually validate the email address so most just accept whatever (sometimes with a small extra filter to avoid stuff like a@a.com).
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    In 8th grade, long ago, my buddy created a hotmail account: deepthroat50005. he thought it was based on Metal Gear Solid's reference to the Watergate thing. Didn't get the other connotations -- at least not at first. He disowned it, and we laughed about it for a while. I still use that email for anything that requires an email but I DGAF about. Hasn't been rejected yet...

JCharante 3y ago

> (bonus points for the dropdown on expiry date) I hate dropdowns for the expiry date. Let me just enter 01 TAB 22, I don't want to click on dropdowns then scrolldown.

jcotton42 3y ago
Unless the form has been horribly butchered, that should still work, since the browser will select from the dropdown as you type, so long as the dropdown is focused.
- planede 3y ago
  1. It's not intuitive that you can type in a dropdown. 2. It's not always obvious if a dropdown is focused or not. It's orthogonal, but focus doesn't always cycle in the obvious order of input fields with nothing in between. As for the field, couldn't it be a text field with a small down arrow within for a dropdown option?
  - Etheryte 3y ago
    Every native dropdown in your OS supports typing to select an option. While it might be arguable if it's intuitive, it definitely is a common pattern.
Etheryte 3y ago
I mean, there's no reason you can't have it both ways? So long as the dropdowns are not some broken custom widget, you can use dropdowns the same way.
parasti 3y ago
For me, ideally, you don't need to TAB, because the input focus switches automatically.
- tommiegannert 3y ago
  If you implement this, please make sure any auto-refocus has visual clues, e.g. looking like a single input field, and behaving like a single field (a TAB moves to the next logical form field). When inputting license keys in programs, and there were dashes in them, it was always fun encountering an auto-focus across split textfields where you didn't expect it, so you accidentally skipped a field and had to redo it.

yawnxyz 3y ago

For our microbiology conference event, I just programmatically created a bunch of Stripe Payment Link options for every combination, and used our site to open up the payment link. We record the event using a webhook back into our Airtable. Though I'm not a huge fan of opening up a new window for payment, this turns out to be much easier for us, implementation-wise. Plus, the Stripe Payment Link UI is able to handle most of the errors and payment methods, add discount codes, etc.

yieldcrv 3y ago

> making payments online should have been solved for well beyond doubt in 2023 but Apple Pay in browser checkout is pretty great

dan_mctree 3y ago

If you only offer creditcard payments and want international customers, you will missing out on a lot of customers. For example in the Netherlands, iDeal is the standard of payment and many Dutch customers do not have other payment options easily available.

KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
Trying to support international payment methods in general is a nightmare and the Dutch system is one of the most idiosyncratic. Not saying it's bad for users, but I remember integration of support across different banks being daunting (this was several years ago so things may have improved).
zx8080 3y ago
Does it mean that mostly, they don't have any Visa or Mastercard?
- jvdvegt 3y ago
  Indeed. Our debit cards are visa/mastercard, but such cards have numbers like NL01BANK012345678901 (IBAN). Credit cards have no additional benefit in day-to-day life but do have an additional cost. Ideal is actually ideal for consumers, as the merchant doesn't ever receive personal information. For small amounts, it's only a fingerprint away. It seems to become a European standard: https://nltimes.nl/2023/04/25/dutch-payment-processor-ideal-become-european-standard https://nltimes.nl/2023/04/25/dutch-payment-processor-ideal-...
  - SpacePortKnight 3y ago
    Correction. Our debit cards are only mastercard maestro not visa. Maestro is depricated, and soon everyone in EU will have proper international debit cards.
- sigio 3y ago
  Yeah, only a very low percentage of people will have a creditcard... 99% of dutch online payments will be made using IDeal, which is cheap (free for user, ~20-30ct for the seller) and instant. And works with every bank in the country (and some international ones like Revolut and N26)

chrismorgan 3y ago

> But here’s how you can mess it up: > • Not having dynamic error validations before someone goes ahead with the payment. It is as simple as using the Luhn algorithm to make some basic checks. On the other hand, someone that does validation of their own is far more likely to accidentally filter out valid values. This used to be rather common on email addresses. (I’ve been using almost exclusively @chrismorgan.info addresses since about 2010, and had one rejected exactly once, from a regular expression that thought TLDs were only two or three characters long; I was able to use my skills to bypass the check, and the backend accepted it.) Nowadays, people normally just leave client side validation to whatever <input type="email"> does. So, payment card numbers. I’ve only ever had a 16-digit one, but they can actually be 10–19 characters long, and some people are sure to have hard-coded maxlength=16 and/or minlength=16 (or equivalent JavaScript checks). There are also those ridiculous things that insist on splitting the card number into multiple fields (four groups of four characters), but that’s generally just painful to work with rather than actually preventing you from using it.

fake-name 3y ago
> Nowadays, people normally just leave client side validation to whatever <input type="email"> does. Hah, I wish. SO MANY sites disallow the plus symbol in the email name (e.g. something+else@example.com). This is a valid email. It should be accepted. Arrrgh.
- cyberbanjo 3y ago
  I was surprised to learn the extent of what is a valid local-part (something+else in your example) of an email. Can have two dots in sequence if the local-part is quoted, and support for non alphanumeric characters like !#$%&'*+-/=?^_`{|}~; if the local-part is quoted, comments with parentheses. And it could be case sensitive.
  - WirelessGigabit 3y ago
    We have the following validation: let form_email: Option::<String> = /* ... */; match form_email { Some(email) if !email.is_empty() => { // ... send email with validation link }, _ => { // report missing email } } If you (can) click the validation link it's a valid email. If not... it's invalid. Saves me the trouble of debugging all the regexes.

notpushkin 3y ago

> bonus points for the dropdown on expiry date I usually don't mind those because you can just Tab to them and start typing and it will select the item from the list (if you have guessed the format right, and the dropdowns are native or custom but properly implemented). But why would you ever want that instead of simple MM / YYYY field (or two fields, if you don't want to add masking)?

KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago

This would benefit from some examples of perceived "good" user experiences in this space. Also it's a bit lacking on the stateful side of things. For example, a lot of Amazon customers hit "save card details" and then bam, one click checkout forever; making optimisation in this area highly diminished. Similar story and even more true for vendors that support Apple Pay.

sdflhasjd 3y ago

The most surefire way of making me not buy something from your site is if you ask for any unnecessary details before telling me the whole price. If I have to create an account or enter an email address, or fill in any field other than my country and "state" before you tell me postage/shipping costs, I will just close the page down. If I see anything that even feels like a dark pattern, I will just refuse out of principle.

fhd2 3y ago

Is PayPal still a thing in the US? Only one mention in the article, none here in the comments. I'm in Germany and order at a lot of specific sites, and while I don't like PayPal as a company or their fee structure, it's usually what keeps me sane. Most cases I don't have to enter anything, no need to create an account or even enter the delivery address. Doesn't get much more convenient than that.

benoliver999 3y ago
I find it's a gamble for me. If paypal redirects and opens in the same browser it's happy days. If it opens in a new window, it always seems to error out
jeltz 3y ago
Are the competitors that bad in Germany? Here in Sweden PayPal has one of the worst UIs and the buggiest sites.
- panragon 3y ago
  This is actually true, but I still use PayPal probably 10-20 times a year and I haven't logged into their site for probably 2-3 years, at least whenever I last had to update my payment cards. The site is suboptimal, it's probably not a great company and I have no idea if they're charging me anything - but the one-tap purchase system just works, and that's all I need. There are other great options in Klarna and similar, but even they give me too many options to coax me into paying later so I inadvertently pay fees. PayPal literally just withdraws from whichever card has sufficient funds at the time, has worked exactly as stated for over a decade, so I really have no incentive to investigate alternatives (especially for sites where my PayPal is already setup, like Steam).
- abwizz 3y ago
  alternatives are standard wire-transfer, which will take a few days (wtf?) and some privately run proxy-service for wire-transfers (sofortueberweisung.de) where you login with the banking credentials on a non-bank website (yes, really) which manages to give the seller a confirmation of the transaction. no alternative thou that manages adresses, confirmation and the actual transaction with one login/button

nicexe 3y ago

Having to give your personal details just to see that the shipping to your country isn't worth (or not available at all) and then sending me an email to say that I potentially forgot to checkout some stuff in my shopping card is the reason I don't even try to fill my details and try and find an alternative shop. Selecting a country and entering the post code to find out the shipping cost is slightly old-fashioned but works very well.

jiehong 3y ago

I think the future is to never fill-in your cards info anymore, and maybe not even have a card at all. Once you start using something with a QR Code, it's much much better: - WeChat Pay and co. (in China); - PhonePe and co (in India); You usually have 2 ways to pay with those systems (only systems I'm familiar with, others might be different): - Merchand shows a QR Code; you scan it and enter the right amount manually. Merchand gets a confirmation. - Merchand shows a QR Code; you scan it but the amount and details are all pre-filled and you just have to confirm. In both cases, it's scan + click ok. Now, if worldwide banks in the world were to have a way to send money to each other without fees and with a single standard, they could make it happen (one can hope).

nik736 3y ago
Is it possible to have recurring payments with the QR pay solutions you mentioned? There are probably a lot of use cases, for example for a gym membership, etc.
- SpacePortKnight 3y ago
  Yes. I pay for Netflix via UPI e-mandates. The best part of UPI subscriptions is that I can cancel them whenever without going to the merchant's website. In Netherlands, iDEAL comes close to UPI as well.

stokesr 3y ago

> (bonus points for the dropdown on expiry date) I definitely prefer being able to go through inputting my card details using the numpad and the tab key. Having to switch more often between keyboard and mouse adds one more step to the nightmare that is online payment. While it is just a preference though, I wouldn't go so far as to say a date dropdown automatically means bonus points.

NavyG 3y ago
Dropdowns are kinda better for mobile though

colesantiago 3y ago

If a website doesn’t offer me the ability to pay without running javascript this is a red flag and i’ll bounce. The amount of spying in the payments industry is vile enough.

MrThoughtful 3y ago

The whole concept of how we pay online is insane. You put data into a form of a random website you want to pay a small amount to. Data which enables everybody who has it to cause trouble. Trouble to you, trouble to your credit card company, trouble to other websites who get scammed with it. Websites should simply give you a string like "visa:3498734219:$12.34" where "visa" is their payment processor, 349... is the invoice nr and $12.34 is the amount invoiced. Then you copy+paste that into the website of your payment solution and let it do the transaction. And if you don't like copy+paste, you install some app so you can just point your phone at such an invoice and click pay. Or a browser plugin which detects those invoices and asks you "Pay this?".

AndroTux 3y ago
That's basically paying via QR code, and not an entirely new concept. Crypto works this way, and I believe WeChat or similar payment systems, too. Good idea for one-time payments, but honestly, those are no longer the norm. If you're not paying for something physical to be shipped to your home, chances are it's a subscription anyways in which case a payment flow like this would be a nightmare to both the user and the merchant alike.
- MrThoughtful 3y ago
  The same flow would work for subscriptions. The amount would just be a string like "whatever+whenever". So you tell your payment provider that you authorize this merchant to pull whatever amount of money whenever they feel like. And not give out a piece of data that authorizes anybody to pull whatever amount of money whenever they feel like.
  - AndroTux 3y ago
    So, PayPal, with the exception of „whatever“, as subscriptions may increase in price or you decide to upgrade without wanting to adjust your payment method. Plus, you have excellent protection as a buyer on PayPal with the option to request refunds for basically every reason.

danmaz74 3y ago

Slightly OT question: I need to integrate payments on a new service I created[+], and for now I need to use a "merchant of record" approach. Currently I'm choosing between Paddle and FastSpring; any suggestions why should I choose one over the other? [+] https://chess.braimax.com https://chess.braimax.com

andygh 3y ago

While this post is trying to maximise the conversion of customers, I'm always drawn to how the UK's GOV.UK Design System handles these fairly common tasks: https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/payment-card-details/ https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/payment-card-d...

kumarajeet024 3y ago

Is there any valid use case at all for people to progressively disclose card details? There's got to be a reason

nakulkothari 3y ago
It is with the risk rules. If a transaction is considered risky due to amount, location, customer pattern etc, Stripe/ issuer would need more details to lower the riak during Authorization

MzHN 3y ago

For me the benchmark is Mullvad. The experience of throwing money at them is so satisfying, I almost want to do it just for the rare feeling of zero friction. If I do want to pay on your website, and it is not as low friction in comparison, I will be considering how much I really want to pay or if I should just give up.

vedantkhairnar 3y ago

Did anyone experience the Palm payment method introduced by Tencent?

nakulkothari 3y ago

There are broadly two kinds of checkout experiences for most payment methods. The SDK flow is where your payment page has the SDK of the processor embedded for a more native experience. The redirection flow is when you break from the flow of your website and use the processor’s hosted checkout page. It is worth putting in the extra effort to blend the payment page until the end of the checkout experience to not lose your customer’s flow of attention. PayPal one-click checkout button is an example of paypal’s SDK flow. You actually don’t need the user to reach the final checkout page with all these icons and progressive disclosures for checking out with Paypal

Loranubi 3y ago

Oh god online payment systems are the worst. And even good ones sometimes break horribly. Once I booked a flight online by credit card and the payment timed out (or rather stopped at a late stage without an error). Afterwards the website didn't tell me if the payment went through or not. I called the airline and my bank and neither one could tell me if the payment was successful or not. Both just told me to wait a week and then check again... this was only around 5 years ago. In the end the payment did go through, however if it didn't, I am sure I would have lost that seat/ticket. Lots of wasted time and stress for nothing.

RobotToaster 3y ago

One thing I've been encountering recently is being required to enter a bunch of info before telling me the postage cost, I think it's a shopify thing. Most of the time I just go somewhere else.

Towaway69 3y ago

So this article is by one payment provider complaining about other payment providers and at the end telling their readers how wonderful their product is. If the object is a product, then the force is advertising. How boring.

fluxinflex 3y ago
The underlying point being made - by the comment - is that if an author is biased because they are selling a product and complaining about their competition, how can the article or the "facts" be trusted? The orignal article is disguised advertising, advertising in the form of a "knowledgable criticism" of existing payment services. May the force be with you even if the object isn't.
- vedantkhairnar 3y ago
  We are basically an open-source payment orchestrator - we are not even competing with these guys. Haha :)

Turing_Machine 3y ago

One of my undergrad professors, a Tamil from India, had a first and second name that between them totaled 36 characters. He had endless trouble with forms (even paper forms) until he eventually adopted a shortened version of his name. My first encounter with him was when I was selecting classes and asked a friend "Hey, do you know anything about (short version of his name)?" "Yeah, he's great. That's not really his name, though. That's just all that will fit in the schedule."