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Pin Payments is Australia’s first all-in-one online payment API
- nwh 13y agoI don't understand the $50 a month fee, they're taking that on top of 3% and 30c a transaction. Uh, and they also don't support 2FA on their login form; that's not going to end well.
- daurnimator 13y agohuh? "A monthly service fee of $9 gives you everything you need to accept payments in your website or application."
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- davidlumley 13y agoThe $9 a month is an introductory price valid for registrations this month only. The original (and I suspect the price if you register next month) was $50.
- nagash 13y agoIt has special pricing of $9/month for life if you signup during June.
- regecks 13y agoEven with the $50 fee it is still much, much cheaper and easier than anything else available here in Australia (which is basically to get eWay + a merchant account). I am very that excited this came through and am doubly grateful for the $9 offer they're doing. I'll have to get a sole trader ABN to be eligible to use it but I suspect it will be worth it.
- jacques_chester 13y agoI would not be amazed if this reflects the upstream cost structure from NAB, their bank. Merchant accounts generally have monthly fees + percentages + fixed per-transaction costs. Welcome to Australian banking.
- nikcub 13y agoWelcome to the Australian banking cartel Somehow through one of the worst banking crisis in the history of the world the major Australian banks still remained some of the most profitable companies in the world. The banks in Australia are a huge tax on the economy but politically nobody will raise the issue - since despite getting shafted the Australian public is too shallow to see past the fear mongering of job losses in the banking sector and having to protect it.
- jacques_chester 13y agoOh, for sure. The massive profitability of the Big 4 has its blessings, and it lets the RBA set quite high reserve ratios by global standards. But our market is too small to attract truly serious competition. A serious foreign entrant would need to buy a Big 4 and that would be expensive and messy.
- thejosh 13y ago$9 until the end of June. And that's Australian Banking. Alternatives are even more pricy..........
- davidlumley 13y agoThe temporarily reduced pricing means I can actually justify trying a few side projects without investing too much into it. Thanks so much Pin!
- chrismorgan 13y agoThat was my feeling too. $600/year for what is at present a spare-time project and not complete (thus, not ready to accept payments) was putting me off; $108/year is sufficiently low that I'm pretty confident I'll be signing up in the next month... then there's the added benefit of the incentive that will give me to get something worth paying for up quickly to make it financially worthwhile. :-) And then for any further side-projects... I'll already have the low-maintenance account. Great!
- rmccue 13y agoThere's not much documentation that I can find on it, so, do you need a merchant account for this, or will any bank account work?
- jacques_chester 13y agoAny account, no merchant account required.
- jonemo 13y agoFrom the front page: No gateway or merchant account required.
- regecks 13y agoI believe you also need an ABN to begin charging live customers.
- kondro 13y agoThis is an Australian law requirement anyway for charging anyone for anything.
- vbrendel 13y agoStrictly speaking, no. In Australia, businesses cannot pay suppliers unless they have an ABN, otherwise their payment will be subject to Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT). You can take money as an individual without ABN however. With PayPal this is already possible. You can run a small operation eg on ebay but as soon as you call it a business you should get an ABN, but then you also have to pay income tax on what you make.
- tomcorrigan 13y agoYou mean PAYG withholding not FBT. But you are certainly correct that an ABN is not necessary to charge for something
- kondro 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- beefsack 13y agoIs it possible to have USD payments deposited in my account directly without having currency conversion inside Pin? My bank account (Citibank Australia) tends to be significantly cheaper when depositing in USD than when gateways convert and charge their own conversion fee.
- jacques_chester 13y agoI'll second this. A lot of the time it's easier just to hold a foreign currency as-is rather than chugging back and forth. That said, foreign currency accounts are usually expensive. Westpac quoted me a $60/mth account keeping fee.
- robryan 13y agoYeah, seems to be industry standard to throw nearly one percent on top of any conversion.
- davidjohnstone 13y agoIf I'm reading https://pin.net.au/pricing https://pin.net.au/pricing correctly, they're charging four percent extra for conversion, which sounds like it means they end up costing 7% + 30c for payments in USD.
- robryan 13y agoNot sure why they need to do that, AUD/USD forex is something like .1 of a percent given a high enough amount if I recall correctly. I am probably missing something.
- lukevdp 13y agoI've looked at a lot of options for accepting USD from Australia and 4% is pretty standard for retail exchange rate. I ended up going with a US entity + bank account, which is the best option of a bunch of crappy options. Pin looks good for small volumes
- JimmyL 13y ago
- threeseed 13y agoI would still think that Braintree would be a better bet. They abstract the bank part of the equation as well so you are just dealing with a single entity for any issues that arise. Plus their pricing is a little bit better: https://www.braintreepayments.com/pricing https://www.braintreepayments.com/pricing That said ANY competition is always nice. The real question though is how they handle chargebacks.
- kondro 13y agoBraintree require you get an NAB merchant account and, if you want to support USD then you have to also get the NAB foreign-currency accounts.
- robryan 13y agoWhich unless you have a stack of cash to park there and are doing something they don't associate with risk is pretty hard to do when getting started.
- elithrar 13y ago> Braintree require you get an NAB merchant account and, if you want to support USD then you have to also get the NAB foreign-currency accounts. Which, to me, are not-insubstantial barriers. Pin might not be as competitive on price (barring the $9/m intro offer), but just being able to supply a regular account to handle their deposits is convenient. On a somewhat related note, I'm currently forking Drone.io's go.stripe library[1] for Pin Payments, given the extreme similarity of the Stripe & Pin API's. If anyone is keen on helping, get in touch or send me a pull request: https://github.com/elithrar/go.pin https://github.com/elithrar/go.pin [1]: https://github.com/drone/go.stripe https://github.com/drone/go.stripe
- ra 13y agoTotally. I don't know how it is in the US, but in AU braintree doesn't even compete with eway + your choice of bank. IMHO Pin lowers the barrier to entry for accepting CC, which is most welcome, and long overdue in this country.
- markdown 13y agoI hope this pushes http://www.paymentexpress.com/ http://www.paymentexpress.com/ to up their game.
- toast76 13y agoDon't even get me started... PaymentExpress demanded we sign a 3 year contract to move off their "starter" plan. This is after them stuffing up our recurring billing for 6 weeks late last year. Cost us thousands. Told them to jam it, in the process of moving to Pin as we speak.
- marcloney 13y agoCongratulations to the guys at Pin! As an Australian, I welcome this wholeheartedly. It has been extremely frustrating watching the payment revolution in the states, whilst at home there is next to no alternative to getting a merchants facility through a bank up until now. It will also be nice dealing with an API that isn't stuck in the 90s.
- kibibu 13y agoBraintree are in Australia, and their API is quite lovely these days. edit: apologies, I didn't realize braintree required a merchant account as well.
- jacques_chester 13y agoMerchant accounts are a huge PITA. You have to pay a bunch of money up front and then, if you're not a fish-and-chip shop or similar, you'll probably be told "no". Plus, each bank will ask if you've ever been knocked back somewhere else. If you honestly answer that you have, guess how that affects your chances?
- kaliblack 13y agoI started the process of getting a merchant account with NAB and quickly gave up. They had a long check list of requirements that had to be completed before the application was submitted. This included have the signup and subscription processes fully working so they could test them. Pin is very needed here.
- klynch 13y agoBraintree here. Gave the same response below in the thread,but wanted to make sure to address here as well. You all are right. Getting a merchant account and setting up a foreign currency account has been notoriously difficult to get in the past with extremely high fees and approval requirements. This is no longer the case. Braintree sponsors merchants to get setup with a merchant account in Australia and has built an accelerated process to creating foreign currency accounts. If a provider states that no merchant account is required, you are most likely being placed on an aggregated merchant account. This has many disadvantages for the merchant as you are grouped under one umbrella account. As the provider grows, this becomes unsustainable and often leads to poor customer experiences (a la Paypal account freezes). We're working to create a sustainable solution where customer service and great software are the central focus. We'll be constantly improving the on-boarding timeline and look forward to helping the fast growing tech scene in Australia. Always happy to answer any questions about anything payments or e-commerce related, just let us know!
- cstrat 13y agoSigned up even though I don't have an immediate requirement for this service. Great to see some local innovation in the financial space.
- djtidau 13y agoI have been testing with these guys as we get closer to releasing our service and they have been great to deal with. Not having to worry about a merchant account saved a lot of time when it came to paperwork and the integration is very simple. The payments sector has been awaiting a shakeup in Australia for some time now, and Pin will definitely be a recognizable force moving forward. Congrats on the launch and thanks for the lowered monthly fee!
- secoif 13y agoAfter paypal shutting down my account on a number of occasions while organising campjs.com, we switched from Paypal+EventBrite to Pin+Tito and it's been smooth sailing ever since. The Pin team has been a joy to deal with, responsive to feedback and I highly recommend them. Congratulations to Pin.
- nodesocket 13y agoFirst, congratulations to the Pin team. However I wonder about the longevity of companies that are essentially Stripe clones in unsupported countries. Their business essentially depends on the fact that Stripe is not currently in Australia. Once Stripe announces support for Australia, why would anyone choose Pin over Stripe?
- coopdog 13y agoApparently our financial regulations are an obtuse, onerous nightmare to deal with. I imagine even just getting setup here is a big head start. Google Merchant have been expanding for years but are still ignoring Australia, so thank you Pin
- primitur 13y agoHow to get Stripe in Australia, set up Pin, $$$-big (locally), BRANDBRANDBRAND (its an Aussie thing), and then .. when big enough, the sharks come calling, throw out the chum ..
- intractable 13y agoI would imagine that it would be much easier for Stripe to acquire local Stripe equivalents and rebrand, rather than trying to navigate the labyrinth of financial regulations in each location. Maybe that's the game plan for Pin? From another Perth guy, more congrats to the Pin team (I actually discovered them when I had the same idea, googled it and found that it existed already - in my own town!)
- jacques_chester 13y agoEarly on they didn't say much about their being in Perth -- like most Perthans I assumed that they were in Sydney or Melbourne. I found out that they were here by looking the company details on ASIC.
- thejosh 13y agoBeen watching these guys closely for the past 8 months or so. These guys are based out of Perth, Australia and offer some pretty compelling prices, especially the email they sent them morning where their monthly pricing went down to $9 a month (instead of $50). They use ruby on rails, and offer a JSON API.bEE
- buro9 13y agoWould love to hear their story. For those who don't know, Perth is the most remote city in the world (according to Bill Bryson), and has a population shy of 2 million mostly in a sprawl that hugs the coast. I spent over a month there and a couple of weeks exploring the area around Margaret River, lovely place... but reading this, what strikes me is how hard it must be to find support, raise money, and build a startup with reach in a city of such remoteness and with only a limited pool of angels and tech resource to call upon. So... knowing the city and WA as briefly as I do, I think this startup would probably have a good story behind it about the adverse environment (for startups) in which they emerged and what it took to get to where they are, and where they're going from here.
- djtidau 13y agoI too would love to hear the story. Australia isn't known for being all that startup friendly, and with WA being the mining sector predominantly I found it quite refreshing to see something so tech focused coming out of there. It looks like they have a great team and in my limited experience their customer service is really good. Hopefully some of them chime in here though their director seems a little HN shy from one of his latest tweets.
- gbpin 13y agoI'm a co-founder of Pin Payments. Not shy, just on HN-sabbatical :) There's a story to tell! Building something like this in Perth is hard, but that's part of what makes it such an opportunity. We're by no means the only tech startup here too - given the population and isolation, Perth is well represented in Australian startup crowd.
- ppradhan 13y agothis is stellar, sterling and capital, all at the same time. I was days away from signing up with eWay. Maintain the modern API and take good care of your customers, I'll refer you to everyone I know and your customers will ensure you'll remain in business for a long while. Welcome!
- barrydahlberg 13y agoI wonder what the chances of them getting this to us in NZ are...
- gbpin 13y agoI can't give you an ETA, but the chances are high.
- reitzensteinm 13y agoAny way we can lock in the $9/mo pricing for when you launch in NZ? As others have said, it would be awesome to have available for side projects!
- orlandohill 13y agoWhy not use SwipeHQ? https://www.swipehq.com/ https://www.swipehq.com/ They're based in NZ, have lower transaction fees, no monthly fee, and already support 12 different currencies.
- sbennettmcleish 13y agoGreat stuff! Good to see this coming out of Perth and hopefully they can get a good foothold on the market from support of businesses here before the bigger US/EU competitors (finally) arrive.
- z0s0123 13y ago"The conversion is completed at a retail foreign exchange rate of 4% on top of the wholesale interbank rate at the time of the transaction". So the actual pricing is more like $9/mo + .30 + 7% for any non AUD business. We use Stripe, a Bank of America USD account and OANDA to move our USD -> AUD with an FX commission ~ 0.1%.
- chrismorgan 13y agoWould you be able to do a more complete writeup of what you did (setting up EIN, getting a bank account, etc.) and all the implications (especially tax)? I've seen one person do such a thing to a limited degree and I've got the gist of the process myself, but I'd really like to see more info about this sort of thing. There's one point in favour of Pin, though: easy setup. For side-projects, $9/month and have an ABN is comparatively little, where going through creating a merchant account alone---let alone the other requirements---is a big deterrant and thus, I think, quite harmful to this micro/experimental online business sector. My plan is basically use Pin while it's the cheapest and simplest, then when my business has demonstrated viability, go for the cheaper, more complex option. (Naturally this is dependent upon having a fairly-high-margin business.)
- dcw303 13y agoThis is great news. I've been patiently waiting for Stripe to arrive, but I've started to lose hope. Pin looks like it will fill that void. Can use a standard customer savings account to receive payments?
- thejosh 13y agoYeah, just need an ABN.
- jwilliams 13y agoI love that this is happening and this innovation is extremely important in the Australian market. However, if you're an Australian company that wants to deal exclusively or largely in USD -- then you need to keep an eye on the cost. Pin is offering $50/month ($9 promo atm) - then 3% and $0.30 on every transaction. Then for foreign exchange there is "a retail foreign exchange rate of 4% on top of the wholesale interbank rate at the time of the transaction" https://pin.net.au/pricing https://pin.net.au/pricing Plus if you've got USD outgoings - e.g. paying for EC2 - you'll cop the foreign exchange on the way out too. All of these things chip away & can add up to quite a considerable overhead.
- ra 13y agoYup. Thats well worth pointing out. Pin is awesome for Australian facing businesses, but if you want to trade in USD, better off elsewhere.
- elithrar 13y ago> Yup. Thats well worth pointing out. Pin is awesome for Australian facing businesses, but if you want to trade in USD, better off elsewhere. "Better off elsewhere" - where? Braintree seems like the only similar option, and as discussed elsewhere in this comment thread: you need a merchant account if you want to engage with them. (I'm happy to take suggestions, but there's just a dearth of them!)
- jwilliams 13y agoAgree. There aren't a lot of great options. At the low end (transaction volume/amounts), you just get murdered on costs. If you've got a niche or high margin business this might be fine. At the higher end. Well. It seems that a US entity is the way to go. If you structure the vehicle according to some strict rules, you don't incur any US tax. The fixed costs are much, much higher, but the breakpoint is probably lower than people think. This is especially true if you have any kind of cost-base in the US. There are a few other hacks too. If you're a SaaS business you might consider deeper discounts for annual payment. This is good for cash flow & bumps up your individual transactions. This can change the equation a little - and it's probably better for the $ to be in your customers' pocket rather than a bunch of intermediary financial institutions. As you say. I'm open to hearing constructive suggestions too! It's frustrating how complex this still is. Edit: One of the biggest bugbears is AMEX. Even if you get yourself a NAB USD account - AMEX only ever process in the home currency (i.e. AUD). It's easy to be ignorant of this in Australia as AMEX is considered reasonably rare. However, it's pretty much a requirement to operate in the US... So you get this expensive facility, then half your transactions come in AMEX and get processed to AUD anyway (damn). Very open to hear better solutions!
- WatchDog 13y agoThe website claims that they are backed by the government but doesn't go into any detail. Can anyone clarify?
- bentoner 13y agoYeah, they might want to reword that. I think they mean that they got a grant: http://www.commercialisationaustralia.gov.au/OurParticipants/Pages/Southern%20Payment%20Systems%20Ltd.aspx http://www.commercialisationaustralia.gov.au/OurParticipants...
- WatchDog 13y agoSo this exact post was made almost exactly a year ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4078334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4078334
- shimms 13y agoClosed alpha testing vs public availability? Progress, not the exact same post.
- cletus 13y agoWow, I'm a little surprised to see this for two reasons: 1. Doing anything financial in Australia is hard. For better or for worse (IMHO it's mostly better) there is strict financial regulation in Australia (mostly due to the Corporations Act revamp under the Howard government as well as the longstanding Trade Practices Act, which is one of the most consumer-friendly pieces of legislation I think in the world). I'd be interested in knowing the story and how high compliance costs are for something like this. 2. It was done (based on comments here) at least in part in Perth. Perth is my home town and has become increasingly tech unfriendly for three reasons: - a lot of the bigger employers got bought out and consolidated their software development over East; - the state as a whole is very focused on digging stuff up from the ground (or under the sea to be pedantic) and selling it to the Chinese. The startup scene is tiny; and - cost of living in Perth is terrible in wage-adjusted terms. Honestly it's cheaper for me to live in New York (I moved here about 2.5 years ago to start a job with Google). Housing is a huge part of it but food, utilities and, well, everything is expensive in Perth now. I'd certainly like to here more about the development story and the team (the site is scant on details on this). As for the service itself, I'll echo the comments of others and say the FX and other fees coule make this quite expensive. Still, good to see this coming out of Australia and good luck guys. I'm also glad to hear about more tech things happening in Perth. I might have to check out the meetups and stuff next time I visit.
- h4rrison 13y agoAs someone who lives in Perth, I can concur with the ridiculous cost of living here at the moment, and am also surprised that this seems to have been developed at least partly here. However, the meetup/tech/startup scene is developing here (albeit slowly). Check out some spacecubed events when you're next here.
- DigitalSea 13y agoFrom Brisbane, Queensland here and it's a similar story here. The company I work for is causing ripples in the Australian pond but as a whole the Australian tech scene is way behind that of the states and other parts of the world due to our tight regulations, expensive Internet connections and slow Internet connection speeds. For every successful Australian company I can think of, there are thousands not so lucky. Atlassian and Envato are the only two companies I can think of off of the top of my head who have had major success spawning web based businesses in a country as small and somewhat lacking as Australia as Australia is. Melbourne and Sydney are definitely two locations you're most likely to start a successful business in. Good to see Pin tackling payments because in Australia you have two options: Paypal or a propriety expensive bank solution with horrible API.
- capex 13y agoIf Stripe was thinking about moving into the Australian market, Pin would provide them a ready-made solution. All things equal, this startup has a high chance of getting acquired/ merged.