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Pretty 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 th
by jtchang 13y ago
Pretty 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.
- 13y ago
- 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.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]