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Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
- jtchang 13y agoPretty cool. I love the competition in the payments space right now. My bet is that Braintree is seeing some serious competition from Stripe and others. One thing to keep in mind is that 2.9% + 30cents is relatively high. If you go to Authorize and negotiate they will lower the price if your volume is high enough. Stripe will also negotiate once you hit a certain volume. One thing I really want to do is take on the micropayments space. No one has really managed to do it well. Think about how much it costs to charge someone a dollar. The cheapest way is paypal. But what if you want to take a Visa/Mastercard? You are at their payment network's mercy. In order to really challenge that you need to make your own payment network. And then get banks onboard. And get through all the regulation. Yikes. If anyone is interested though contact me.
- jgalt212 13y agoIt's probably this sort of heated competition that keeps Square from being able to IPO in 2014.
- nayefc 13y agoSquare is tackling different type of merchants. It's not quite this that is keeping Square from an IPO; but they messed up in a few ways along with Chase (their merchant acquirer) releasing the same product undercutting the Square margin. Not to mention PayPal's ability to lower the price or the international market is almost gone for Square (others have copied Square).
- jgalt212 13y agoI hear you on that. I guess it depends how narrowly one defines market. And I guess the more narrowly one defines it, the harder it is to justify a valuation. That being said, I suspect my downvotes were a function of Jack Dorsey fanboys knee-jerking more so that my overly broad definition of the payments market.
- pbreit 13y agoNo, I think it was just sort of an ill-informed, senseless and inaccurate comment.
- jgalt212 13y agoYou're a loser.
- nayefc 13y agoActually, Stripe's market is smaller than Square's. But these business models will never capture a large percentage of their respective markets anyway due to the high rates (negotiating with an acquirer can get you almost 50% less than their rates). After all, "Simple Pricing" is not as good as it sounds. Why pay 2.9% on a 0.05% debit card for the sake of simplicity? I'm sure Excel can handle these variations. This is an unfortunate consequence of the inefficiencies of that industry.
- tomasien 13y agoThat last paragraph is spectacularly spot on - that's why I started knoxpayments.com - connecting people directly into their banks. No fees on micro, $0.18 on everything else - flat. Just won Best Enterprise at Launch 2014, and we're moving fast toward solving this problem for folks!
- jtchang 13y agoAre you able to take visa/mastercard?
- tomasien 13y agoWe are not - we sync directly with people's online banking to make ACH payments without asking people to know their account and routing number.
- bostonvaulter2 13y agoDoes that mean you require their bank account login info? If not how do you access enough infor for ACH?
- tomasien 13y agoThat's the one!
- mamcx 13y agoIs posible to integrate into a IOS App?
- tomasien 13y agoWe're building that SDK now - tommy at knoxpayments.com I can tell you more about it and see if it makes sense for what you're building.
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- superuser2 13y agoit exists; it's called Dwolla and almost no one uses it.
- jtchang 13y agoYup. If everyone just had a Dwolla card.
- tomasien 13y agoDon't underestimate Dwolla - they're a fantastic company, and even if "nobody uses it" if that nobody is fast growing into "somebody", that's really something to consider.
- teleclimber 13y agoAgreed Dwolla is one of my favorite startups. Talk about upending an industry! I recommend this TWIST episode if you are wondering why: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFeSgN1cQhg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFeSgN1cQhg
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- lbarrow 13y agoBraintree will also negotiate with you once you hit a certain volume.
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- eli 13y agoFor a moment I thought it was the first $50,000 in fees not transaction volume. Still pretty cool and will probably get me to try them out.
- thehodge 13y agoEvery startup in the US at the moment which is a shame, same rules as last time
- kaa2102 13y agoFantastic! That's a great way to delight your customers.
- zaidf 13y agoWorks out to about $1,450 in savings if you process $50,000. I hope people don't impulsively go with them just to take advantage of this offer. In fact, you probably don't want this offer to have anything to do with your decision-making on the best processor for your needs. That decision is not easy to undo - and will easily cost you more than the savings.
- dangrossman 13y agoThere's no commitment if you code against Spreedly instead of against Braintree's API. Then, once you save your $1450, you can switch processors if you're so inclined by changing just one token in your code. Spreedly is a unified API for 58 payment gateways, a gateway-agnostic billing info vault so your customer info isn't trapped in whatever processor you chose at the time they signed up, and can alleviate much of the PCIDSS compliance burden if you choose to point your payment forms to them instead of your own server. https://spreedly.com https://spreedly.com I've been using them for a few years now. If you have a lot of recurring billing, knowing that you own that customer data instead of your processor, and your processor cutting you off without notice (which ALL of them can and have done to customers) won't interrupt your business, is peace of mind Spreedly sells very cheaply.
- Tohhou 13y agoHave you ever had to change gateways? They charge 2 cents on top of gateway fees - would it be substantial for you if you went direct to the gateway? I imagine less sales at higher prices it's worth it. Many lower price sales it would be worth it to gateway hop manually cost wise.
- nonchalance 13y agoThe monthly fee makes it unappealing for small volume customers, and the per-transaction fee makes it unappealing for large volume customers. I'm guessing there's some intermediate range, when you are negotiating the final deal, where it's comforting to have that "flexibility".
- steerj92 13y agoI think this is a really great way of enticing new startups. Yes it's to get them more business, but for once it actually brings a good benefit of $1400+ for startups. I would use Braintree for things like this.
- workhere-io 13y agoAs a European who was disappointed that Stripe isn't in my country yet, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Braintree is every bit as easy to use[1] (took me a half hour to set up a test transaction website), and it's even cheaper than Stripe. (Edit: Seems Braintree's European pricing differs from their US pricing. Braintree's European pricing is 1.8% to 2.6% (everything included) which is considerably cheaper than Stripe). The only downside I can see is the approval process which in Europe takes 7-10 days. 1) https://www.braintreepayments.com/docs/python/guide/getting_paid https://www.braintreepayments.com/docs/python/guide/getting_...
- apexauk 13y ago(I work at Stripe, based in the UK.) Our pricing in EU countries where we've launched (UK + Ireland) starts at 2.4% + 20p (we've revised pricing for each country when we launch out of beta). We regularly give volume pricing well below 1.8% - so at both ends, considerably cheaper than the range quoted above. Also, which country are you in? Stripe is available in full production-ready beta in France, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Sweden and Finland, with more countries in the coming weeks - keep an eye on https://stripe.com/global https://stripe.com/global for updates. You can sign up and start using Stripe to process live transactions instantly in all our beta countries - this is a key requirement for us as we expand globally.
- workhere-io 13y agoI'm in Denmark. Any idea as to when Stripe is coming to Denmark? Will merchants be instantly approved, or does it take several days/weeks?
- apexauk 13y agoSoon! Want to drop me an email? ay@stripe.com
- higherpurpose 13y agoIn case some of you aren't aware of this, PayPal acquired BrainTree a while ago: http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/26/paypal-acquires-payments-gateway-braintree-for-800m-in-cash/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/26/paypal-acquires-payments-ga...
- yuhong 13y agoThere is this comment about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6455951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6455951
- asenna 13y agoI am working on a marketplace project right now and I was wondering if anyone can suggest an international payment processor other than PayPal. Braintree Marketplace would have been perfect but it is currently only for the US. The same goes for Balanced Payments and several other options. (My project involves freelancing and finding small projects - Sign up page at http://www.ladr.io/ http://www.ladr.io/ if anyone interested)
- jusben1369 13y agoCheck out MangoPay.
- asenna 13y agoWe are based in the US and I don't think we will be eligible. From their FAQ - Am I eligible to use MangoPay? All companies registered in the European Economic Area can use our solution.
- Celinelz 13y agoHi I'm the founder of Mangopay. You can process payment in € $ £, and 7 other currencies on Mangopay. But you are right, you should have a company incorpored in Europe. Feel free to contact us! C.
- simonk 13y agoWould Stripe connect not work here?
- firefox 13y agoUse it for the first $50k then switch to Stripe..
- michaelmior 13y agoProbably not worth your time to save ~$1,500 unless you use an abstraction layer like Spreedly or you're really short on cash.
- jasonkester 13y agoExisting customers too? The signup button sends me to a form for new customers. Do I really have to cancel my account and open a new one?
- klynch 13y agoKristi from Braintree here. Happy to help. Just sent you an e-mail.
- LukeHoersten 13y agoThey ran this promotion before too. I tried to use it but later was told I couldn't because I'm a 3rd party payment aggregator. The trouble is they never said TPPA couldn't participate anywhere in the promotion. I felt tricked. I continued to try to set up processing with them as a TPPA but it was this long drawn out and manual process. The CEO ended up contacting me to apologies and see what the problem was. He told me they didn't disclose the TPPA restriction on the website to make it "simpler". After many phone calls with them I was never able to get set up. Stripe just came out with Stripe Connect and I was up and running in a matter of minutes. Not to mention support at stripe has never been so bad that the CEO had to contact me. In fact I think stripes real edge is their excellent support. I would never use anyone but stripe after seeing how bad it can be. Note I have no affiliation with either company. I'm a Chicagoan and want to see Chicago companies like Braintree succeed but boy what a poor job they did. Definitely not with $1500 IMO.
- lbarrow 13y ago(I'm an engineer at Braintree.) Hey Luke, we had an internal discussion about what happened with RaceMetrics and came to several conclusions about what we could do better. The restrictions on who can use Braintree and who can't now are listed here: https://www.braintreepayments.com/faq#restricted-business-types https://www.braintreepayments.com/faq#restricted-business-ty... Your experience with us was before we launched our Marketplace product, which eliminates the need for many people to onboard as a TPPA. If you were to apply now, things would be a lot better.
- palidanx 13y agoI'm a current Braintree customer, where my start-up integrates to their services via our custom cart. I can't really compare them to their other competitors, but one of the things I really like is the ability to call them and ask questions about my business workflow. Often times, I get their 2 cents before I change my business workflow, or I get crazy unexpected scenarios I need help on (mainly involving vendors getting new credit cards). I appreciate them going beyond the call of duty with helping me with things outside the traditional technical api questions. I just hope the paypal acquisition won't change things...
- eKIK 13y agoI'm delighted for all potential US customers to get such a nice deal thrown their way - nice one Braintree! Too bad the offer doesn't extend to Europe, but I can appreciate the complexity in setting up something like this world wide. I'm currently in the process of going live with two sites using Braintree, and everything has been great so far. Excellent Python API, documentation and extremely quick, knowledgeable and friendly support. My previous payment provider experience has been with Cleverbridge, Digital River and Paymill...and so far Braintree has managed to surpass them in every single way. YMMV but for my use case Braintree has been a great fit. Keep up the good work!
- chourobin 13y agoImportant note, I believe this doesn't include marketplaces.
- klynch 13y agoHi, I work for Braintree. This is open to marketplaces as well, and payouts are always free.
- jaunkst 13y agoBraintree isn't a bad choice, not the best but better than most. Their documentation and needs for more complex stratiges for domain logic is lacking. Stripe has one of the best documentations I've seen as far as payment gateways go and how it can fulfill most business needs. As far as MVP products go I grade each api on documentation and flexibility. 1. Stripe, 2. Braintree, 3. Custom gatwate solutions such as shopifies gem. Im sure there are many more solutions but as a developer without a huge background in payment processing solutions this is my assessment.
- jpincheira 13y ago"for any U.S.-based startup", then I closed the tab. But great, good option "for any U.S.-based startup", they seem like a fair and cool payment gateway.
- lerouxb 13y ago...for any U.S.-based startup...
- yashg 13y agoNon US, non EU merchant? Sorry no cookie for you. :(
- alecsmart1 13y agoWhich countries do they support?