4 ms·

I don't really see the point of a European Stripe clone, since in Europe we're dealing with a completely different set of problems when it comes to online payme

I don't really see the point of a European Stripe clone, since in Europe we're dealing with a completely different set of problems when it comes to online payment. In many countries it's relatively painless if not trivial to set up a merchant account and start accepting payments through one of the many payment service providers, so for the internal market a Stripe-like service doesn't offer much of an advantage over tried and trusted local services. If you want to accept payments across Europe, especially the many local direct payment solutions which are often much more popular than credit cards (and Paymill doesn't support any of them), you'll run into a whole different class of problems which any service will have a hard time solving. But if you want to disrupt the European online payment market, then that's the problem to solve.

Kliment 14y ago
This is not true. Before Paymill came along, I had no reasonable (not involved with going through huge amounts of paperwork and diligence just to get a price quote) way of taking payments in Germany. Merchant accounts are a pain. They are most definitely neither painless nor trivial. I hear it's better in the UK, but for me the only reasonable alternative was PayPal, who have strongly negative trust in my book. Paymill made it possible for me to take credit cards at all. As of recently they also support the most popular local direct payment method in Germany. Given how quickly they spread from DE only to most of Europe, I expect they'll support other local payment methods eventually, but I honestly don't care much. Being able to take credit card payments is already a huge, huge step.
- sdepablos 14y ago
  And at least here in Spain you should not forget the TERRIBLE way of integrating payments in your site if you're not PCI compliant. When you try to pay you end up in a ugly POS terminal that with some browsers shows misleading JS alerts when you click on the pay button.
lucian1900 14y ago
There's still the problem of EU companies wanting to take payments from all over the world.
- onemorepassword 14y ago
  That's what I mean. Both Stripe and Paymill only support an extremely limited set of payment methods. The average half-decent payment service provider supports way more ways of payment. Which in the end is the major bottleneck. Merchant accounts and legal formalities are just hurdles, which any serious business can take. Yeah, it sucks, but if you can't handle that than perhaps you shouldn't be running a business in the first place. But both we and our clients would lose most of their business if they could only accept credit cards. Hell, the only additional option Paymill offers isn't even enough to cover half the German market. It's stupid to focus on the effort it takes to set-up payment if 75% of your potential market can't/won't use it.
  - Silhouette 14y ago
    Perhaps you'd be kind enough to share your idea of "average half-decent payment service provider" with the rest of us? Merchant accounts and legal formalities aren't just hurdles if you're spending weeks getting contracts reviewed by lawyers, filling out application forms, chasing people up, and then integrating poorly documented back-ends if you get approved at all. I know plenty of people who've been in that position with a start-up that has no trading history yet, but I've never met anyone IRL or on-line who has anything like your perspective. So do you know something we all don't, or do we all know something you don't?

Kliment 14y ago

This is not true. Before Paymill came along, I had no reasonable (not involved with going through huge amounts of paperwork and diligence just to get a price quote) way of taking payments in Germany. Merchant accounts are a pain. They are most definitely neither painless nor trivial. I hear it's better in the UK, but for me the only reasonable alternative was PayPal, who have strongly negative trust in my book. Paymill made it possible for me to take credit cards at all. As of recently they also support the most popular local direct payment method in Germany. Given how quickly they spread from DE only to most of Europe, I expect they'll support other local payment methods eventually, but I honestly don't care much. Being able to take credit card payments is already a huge, huge step.

sdepablos 14y ago
And at least here in Spain you should not forget the TERRIBLE way of integrating payments in your site if you're not PCI compliant. When you try to pay you end up in a ugly POS terminal that with some browsers shows misleading JS alerts when you click on the pay button.

lucian1900 14y ago

There's still the problem of EU companies wanting to take payments from all over the world.

onemorepassword 14y ago
That's what I mean. Both Stripe and Paymill only support an extremely limited set of payment methods. The average half-decent payment service provider supports way more ways of payment. Which in the end is the major bottleneck. Merchant accounts and legal formalities are just hurdles, which any serious business can take. Yeah, it sucks, but if you can't handle that than perhaps you shouldn't be running a business in the first place. But both we and our clients would lose most of their business if they could only accept credit cards. Hell, the only additional option Paymill offers isn't even enough to cover half the German market. It's stupid to focus on the effort it takes to set-up payment if 75% of your potential market can't/won't use it.
- Silhouette 14y ago
  Perhaps you'd be kind enough to share your idea of "average half-decent payment service provider" with the rest of us? Merchant accounts and legal formalities aren't just hurdles if you're spending weeks getting contracts reviewed by lawyers, filling out application forms, chasing people up, and then integrating poorly documented back-ends if you get approved at all. I know plenty of people who've been in that position with a start-up that has no trading history yet, but I've never met anyone IRL or on-line who has anything like your perspective. So do you know something we all don't, or do we all know something you don't?