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Australia will not have a Silicon Valley until the banks let Australian startups charge their customers in USD.
by garazy 14y ago
Australia will not have a Silicon Valley until the banks let Australian startups charge their customers in USD.
- vezycash 14y agowhy do you think so?
- garazy 14y agoIt's a massive hurdle to charge your customers without using third party payment processors in Australia (PayPal). To get around it you can either use third parties (PayPal) or what every startup I've come across in Australia has done so far that want a professional checkout system, charged in AUD, set up US subsidiary or gone down the route impossible for a smaller start up, set up with NAB. Aside from this Australia is a good place to run a startup, there's a good community in most of the major cities.
- vezycash 14y agoI see your point. How about an Australian startup that does paypal's job?
- stevoski 14y agoI don't understand what you are saying - the banks don't control how I charge my customers. I've charged in numerous currencies, either directly or via payment processors. Can you elaborate?
- whatusername 14y agoFrom Australia? My understanding was that this post from 2010 was still essentially the state of play for Australian accounts: http://www.22michaels.com/2010/04/online-retail-in-australia-sucks-part-2.html http://www.22michaels.com/2010/04/online-retail-in-australia... That essentially it's Paypal, Worldpay or NAB.
- 6ren 14y agoI used WorldPay: high annual fees and % fees. I can't believe the situation hasn't improved after 10 years. There's a startup opportunity here - it doesn't need to be Google Checkout or Stripe - and, because it would benefit Australian business, it would make sense for the government to fund it (ha).
- stevoski 14y agoI see. Yet another good reason to outsource payment processing, and concentrate instead on what you do well. I use FastSpring because they are good at the headaches of making it easy for people to pay whenever, however, in whatever currency they like.
- whatusername 14y agoThanks. Nice to see other options. (So they wont pay to an AU account but they will pay out to a paypal account or send a cheque).
- Im_Mr_Manager 14y agoAustralian company here charging customers in USD for nearly 10 years now via PayPal. "Having a Silicon Valley" is totally unrelated I think.
- nfm 14y agoIIRC, you can't do this for subscription based services - PayPal won't let non-US account holders store CCVs. Are you doing recurring billing with PayPal? If so, I'd love to know how!
- garazy 14y agoWe do recurring billing with them, you just have to use their interface - https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_pdn_subscr_techview_outside https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_pdn_subscr_techvi...
- Im_Mr_Manager 14y agoNo we don't do recurring billing so I can't help regarding that.
- garazy 14y agoI don't think it's totally unrelated, only having one or two third party life lines for charging customers in a currency other than AUD is fairly dire for the success of any "Silicon Valley" if the startups are planning on making any money from global online sales.
- Im_Mr_Manager 14y agoDo the fees that PayPal charge really cross the line from a possible business idea to non-viable one for you? There may be some sectors which you could say you can't compete in on a global stage from Australia because of payment processing fees but it really wouldn't be many. What is the big deal about setting up a US company to handle it? Why not charge US customers in USD? There are so many options that to dismiss running a business from Australia because of the extra few % really may be a problem in your business plan and product instead of payment processing options/cost.