4 ms·

Compare Payment Gateway Fees [PayPal, Square, Dwolla, etc]

12 points by mschonfeld 14y ago

citricsquid 14y ago
Don't get me wrong, this is cool and helpful, but in my opinion this website is absolutely not okay: > Since I started working at Dwolla it became clear to me that payment fees are really confusing. I put this calculator together so people could easily understand how different payment system fees compare. To have this tucked away on the little "about" page that it's being ran by someone with a connection to one of the companies listed seems wrong. If this was presented as a tool from Dwolla then sure, that's fine, the bias is made clear at the start, but to masquerade as independent isn't okay. Even if the intentions are 100% pure this is still an advert for Dwolla from Dwolla (each employee represents the company) and not making sure every viewer understands that is wrong. Not to mention Dwollas pricing structure is so that you can never not have Dwolla as #1 in this...
- mschonfeld 14y ago
  The whole point of this is to be as neutral as possible. If you look at the source code, which is btw available on github (https://github.com/Dwolla/fees-calculator https://github.com/Dwolla/fees-calculator), you'll see that I haven't hard coded anything. Which means that if one of the other gateways happens to be cheaper for a given scenario, they will be on top. I understand where you're coming from, but again, the whole point was to try and stay neutral.
lincolnq 14y ago
Dwolla is awesome, but this comes off as an ad for Dwolla. I suspect most merchants will be dismayed to learn that asking your customers to pay with Dwolla requires them to sign up with a new service and link their bank account.
sbirch 14y ago
You could also replace this website with a sentence: Dwolla is always the cheapest payment gateway.
- lsh123 14y ago
  ... if you want to pay with bank account and allow some small startup to charge it w/o you having any control over it or any way to dispute the charge with your bank
steventruong 14y ago
Tried playing around with it and got a serious error in calculation. Did $100 average per transaction + 500 transactions annual (made up numbers) and I got the following fees PER TRANSACTION: $125 | $1375 | $1600 | $1850 That's clearly not right...
- mschonfeld 14y ago
  Oops. Fix coming up now...
- kayhi 14y ago
  There does seem to be an error, try annual $250 with 500 transactions, yields all zeros. Also it does not seem to be taking into account Paypal's volume discounts: https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=merchant/merchant_fees https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&c...
  - mschonfeld 14y ago
    mind trying this again now? I just pushed a fix for the zeros bug...
    - kayhi 14y ago
      No luck, tried: annual $1000, 500 transactions Did calculate for: annual $850, 350 transactions Doesn't seem to be taking into account the volume discounts. As a potential customer, the more significant barrier is customers not knowing what Dwolla is therefore not making a purchase.
freddealmeida 14y ago
Wondering if any of these services work with a Japan based business?

12 points by mschonfeld 14y ago

Don't get me wrong, this is cool and helpful, but in my opinion this website is absolutely not okay: > Since I started working at Dwolla it became clear to me that payment fees are really confusing. I put this calculator together so people could easily understand how different payment system fees compare. To have this tucked away on the little "about" page that it's being ran by someone with a connection to one of the companies listed seems wrong. If this was presented as a tool from Dwolla then sure, that's fine, the bias is made clear at the start, but to masquerade as independent isn't okay. Even if the intentions are 100% pure this is still an advert for Dwolla from Dwolla (each employee represents the company) and not making sure every viewer understands that is wrong. Not to mention Dwollas pricing structure is so that you can never not have Dwolla as #1 in this...

mschonfeld 14y ago
The whole point of this is to be as neutral as possible. If you look at the source code, which is btw available on github (https://github.com/Dwolla/fees-calculator https://github.com/Dwolla/fees-calculator), you'll see that I haven't hard coded anything. Which means that if one of the other gateways happens to be cheaper for a given scenario, they will be on top. I understand where you're coming from, but again, the whole point was to try and stay neutral.

lincolnq 14y ago

Dwolla is awesome, but this comes off as an ad for Dwolla. I suspect most merchants will be dismayed to learn that asking your customers to pay with Dwolla requires them to sign up with a new service and link their bank account.

sbirch 14y ago

You could also replace this website with a sentence: Dwolla is always the cheapest payment gateway.

lsh123 14y ago
... if you want to pay with bank account and allow some small startup to charge it w/o you having any control over it or any way to dispute the charge with your bank

steventruong 14y ago

Tried playing around with it and got a serious error in calculation. Did $100 average per transaction + 500 transactions annual (made up numbers) and I got the following fees PER TRANSACTION: $125 | $1375 | $1600 | $1850 That's clearly not right...

mschonfeld 14y ago
Oops. Fix coming up now...
kayhi 14y ago
There does seem to be an error, try annual $250 with 500 transactions, yields all zeros. Also it does not seem to be taking into account Paypal's volume discounts: https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=merchant/merchant_fees https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&c...
- mschonfeld 14y ago
  mind trying this again now? I just pushed a fix for the zeros bug...
  - kayhi 14y ago
    No luck, tried: annual $1000, 500 transactions Did calculate for: annual $850, 350 transactions Doesn't seem to be taking into account the volume discounts. As a potential customer, the more significant barrier is customers not knowing what Dwolla is therefore not making a purchase.

freddealmeida 14y ago

Wondering if any of these services work with a Japan based business?