6 ms·
Ask HN: Paypal alternatives for vendors outside the US?
As a digital vendor who lives outside the US, I don't want to be at the mercy of PayPal's psychotic mood swings. What alternatives are out there to process payments and accept payouts from gumroad, paddle, Leanpub etc?
- DiabloD3 12y agoBitcoin.
- tckr 12y agoStripe has Bitcoin suppport now: https://stripe.com/bitcoin https://stripe.com/bitcoin
- yc1010 12y agoIt does BUT it doesnt have zero fees nor does it have next business day settlement like bitpay does
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- mkr-hn 12y agoBitcoin is an alternative to Paypal in the same way a bag of gold on a rocket is an alternative to a bank transfer.
- buro9 12y agoWhat are you selling? I'd say Stripe, but it depends what you're selling: https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses If what you're selling in any way touches any of the things on that list, then you should get your own merchant account and handle it directly. It's messy, it's work you don't want to do, but the list of prohibited businesses put on you by your bank is much shorter than the list put on you by Stripe, PayPal, etc.
- aboutus 12y agoI'm asking on behalf of completely legitimate businesses who provide typical digital products and services.
- foxpc 12y agoStripe is kind of limited on what countries they support (as merchants).
- walshemj 12y agoComputer technical support is in the high risk category?
- thejetset 12y agoI'd imagine that's the result of both somewhat dishonest advertising and scams that are being run by companies that advertised themselves as technical support or "Fix Your PC" companies. Like the "I'm calling from Microsoft" scam - http://www.howtogeek.com/180514/the-%E2%80%9Ctech-support%E2%80%9D-scammers-called-htg-so-we-had-fun-with-them/ http://www.howtogeek.com/180514/the-%E2%80%9Ctech-support%E2...
- walshemj 12y agoah yes I see the point now
- MarkCole 12y agoFor European businesses Paymill might be an alternative. It works pretty much exactly the same as Stripe, just available in more/different countries. http://www.paymill.com http://www.paymill.com
- bojanz 12y agoFor our European SaaS we had to switch from Paymill to Stripe because a large percentage of US customers would get their cards rejected when paying via Paymill. (Paymill is Europe-only, and when a US bank detects a payment going out to Europe, it flags it as fraud. Thanks, US banks!)
- grobmeier 12y agoOh my god. I saw this by random. I see clear now. Thank you.
- RedSocks112 12y agoMeh. My application with paymill has been in the works for over a month now (following google wallet digital goods shut down). Requests for updates are ignored. Documentation isn't great. It is a shame as on paper they do seem quite good...
- l0ckk3 12y agoHey. I'm in charge of Developer Relations at PAYMILL. I'm sorry to read that you are having difficulties with the service. What do you mean with "Requests for updates are ignored"? The current documentation has been around for a while and is currently being entirely updated. I would be happy to hear your thoughts to ensure the new version will be satisfying for our users. Feel free to contact me, I'll help you with that. yann.irbah[at]paymill.com
- illahuluo 12y agoBraintree (https://www.braintreepayments.com/ https://www.braintreepayments.com/)
- benev 12y agoWe use Paypal, Stripe, GoCardless (UK only I think), and Bitpay. Although we are obviously aware of Paypal's mood swings, we haven't been the victim of any. So far all of the above have worked well for us. They've all been easy to integrate.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- WA 12y agoI have a SaaS that processes payments with PayPal since 2011 and I never had a single problem. I know about the horror stories, frozen accounts and whatnot, but maybe it's also worth considering where your opinion comes from. I also use Stripe and accept wire transfers.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- fjuan 12y agoIf you're in Europe, give a try to https://klarna.com https://klarna.com. It's more than a payment processor, and can help you a lot! Disclaimer: klarna employee.
- markdown 12y ago2CO/2Checkout works great for me. You can withdraw your funds either via wire transfer or a Mastercard debit card issued by Payoneer.com Have used them for 7 years without issue.
- egomaksab 12y agoI recommend Fastspring (http://www.fastspring.com http://www.fastspring.com). Yes, it's more expensive than others but it has a lot of features that make it worth it. The main selling point for us was that essential you sell your product wholesale to Fastspring and they become the seller. This makes accounting and taxes much easier, especially for EU customers.
- aboutus 12y agoAt first glance, Fastspring looks fantastic. It even accepts PayPal, so I don't have to miss out on those sales. Hopefully it's the real deal.
- egomaksab 12y agoYep, we (Breeze, http://www.breeze.pm http://www.breeze.pm) have used it for over 3 years without any issues.
- SyneRyder 12y agoFastspring is great, I've used them for the last 5 years. They handle VAT as well, one of the main reasons I use them (I'd rather not deal with that bureaucracy myself). It's still a good idea to have a second payment processor, in case one has downtime or a customer has a problem charging their card. I've never had problems with Fastspring, but I occasionally had problems with others - I have a switch in my backend where I can flip to a second payment processor instantly.
- jakobegger 12y agoI can also vouch for Fastspring. The reseller part is really important. It means they take care of billing and VAT, similar to the App Store. It's a bit more effort to set up compared to the Mac App Store, but they take less and pay out faster. Customer support is really good. Their API is a bit annoying to work with, but gets the job done, and the customer support makes up for unclear docs. I'm really happy with them.
- matheweis 12y ago
- thibaut_barrere 12y ago(EU-based freelancer and SaaS builder here). I can warmly recommend https://www.recurly.com https://www.recurly.com, which I use to handle recurring billing on a number of projects (my own SaaS https://www.wisecashhq.com https://www.wisecashhq.com, but also client projects such as https://www.boxcar.io/developer https://www.boxcar.io/developer and https://www.process-one.net/en/ejabberd/saas/ https://www.process-one.net/en/ejabberd/saas/). It can be used together with Stripe as a gateway (much recommended, the setup is much faster than on other gateways), and provides a full-featured setup with PCI SAQ A, VAT handling, PDF invoices, coupons, dunning etc.
- bizifyme 12y agoYou are welcome to try out our service, https://www.bizify.me https://www.bizify.me We have higher fees then PayPal but we also support payment by mobile phone (SMS) in a lot of countries and of course also payment by credit card. You can read more about our service here: https://www.bizify.me/hacker-news/ https://www.bizify.me/hacker-news/ If you would like to try out our service, just contact us and we'll give you a great rate if your products are "normal" products. Adult related content is a little higher risk so we can't give you as good rate on adult as we can on "normal" products. PS: You can check out our WordPress plugin if you are running a WordPress blog: https://wordpress.org/plugins/bizifyme/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/bizifyme/
- ExpiredLink 12y agoAny payment provider. You can chose between dozens per country.
- irrlichthn 12y agoI can recommend BMTMicro: http://www.bmtmicro.com/ http://www.bmtmicro.com/ Payment processor with the best support I had so far. Supports nearly every payment type and does all the nasty stuff for you (invoices, recharges, customer support etc)
- Shizka 12y agoGreat question! I recently launched a startup where we ended up using Paypal because we simply couldn't find any good alternatives. It is a huge drawback from our point of view and we really want an alternative. There just doesn't seem to be one. We wanted to set up a payment flow where a consumer would transfer the money to us, and after the delivery of the product we would transfer it to the seller. Strripe offers something that can accomodate this flow, but not internationally. It is only available in the US. There seems to be a huge gap in the market here. Is there something missing from my exploration of alternatives?
- steven2012 12y agoAt least in the US, what you are attempting to do would probably run into a bunch of regulations. Not only are you probably aggregating funds, which smacks into money laundering regulations, but VISA/MC rules say you can't charge a card before the product ships. If what you are trying to do is some sort of escrow service, again at least in the US, that requires a license.
- Shizka 12y agoThanks for the answer. Ouch, that makes sense and it is probably something similar in Europe. Do you have any idea for how to ensure that the person has the funds when we need to charge the card? And do you know how vendors like Airbnb handles this?
- scoot 12y agoDo you have any idea for how to ensure that the person has the funds when we need to charge the card? You preauthorise the card for the amount at purchase, then complete the transaction on shipment.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoWould you not preauthorize the card again right before shipment? What if their card is no longer valid, closed, or is past their credit limit?
- yazinsai 12y agoFor the folks over in the Middle East, there's https://whitepayments.com/ https://whitepayments.com/ (As if the guy on the front page didn't give it away)
- aiaf 12y agoThe login link on top takes you to a non-secure page :/
- namenotrequired 12y agoNationally many countries have their own local market leader. In the Netherlands, iDeal is the most popular (and the most user friendly of those I've tried). http://www.ideal.nl http://www.ideal.nl For moving money internationally and between currencies there is TransferWise, which I personally mainly use for c2c payment but they also support business accounts and I've used it to pay companies on occasion too. With a TransferWise invite link you can transfer up to £3000 (over $4.5k) for free, here's mine: https://transferwise.com/u/5d78 https://transferwise.com/u/5d78 Where I work we use mangopay, which is specifically for marketplaces. http://www.mangopay.com http://www.mangopay.com
- simi_ 12y agoI was going to recommend TransferWise too, more of a second hand recommendation since I haven't used it but I've had several friends praise it.
- silver1 12y agoBluesnap.com (Supports 180 Countries, 110 Payment Types, 60 Currencies & 29 Languages) - Dont know why no one has matched the features offered by this service ... paywithatweet.com (pay with twitter) chargebee.com adyen.com afex.com securetrading.com credorax.com ccavenue.com moneybookers.com 2checkout.com chargebee.com For India (stricter rules of double authentication: payzippy.com paytm.com zaakpay.com citruspay.com payupaisa.com indiapay.com payu.in
- rodolphoarruda 12y agoFor latin america: MercadoLibre or MercadoPago. They are from Argentina and work very well.
- zhte415 12y agoAlipay Another huge elephant in the room.
- zone 12y agoI'm surprised no one has mentioned Paddle.com. It seems to be open to any business worldwide and it offers a Stripe modern looking payment form.
- jakobegger 12y agoThey have pretty annoying sales people. Contacted me out of the blue and didn't leave me alone until I responded in a rather impolite manner.
- chrowe 12y agoHey - CEO of Paddle.com here. Really sorry one of our sales guys was a little overzealous :( we'll make sure we do better in future.
- andersthue 12y agoI sell downloadable software. I have tried shareit, bluesnap and avangate. Avangate checkout flow peformed best. I am currently working on switching to cleverbridge, ping me if you want stats on them when I have switched.
- mastersk3 12y agoPayMill, Braintree and Stripe for Europe; eWay or Pin for Australia and, 2Checkout or Worldpay for everywhere else.
- ssully 12y agoBraintree was bought by Ebay last year. Someone looking for an alternative to PayPal probably won't be too inspired when they see "A PayPal Company" below Braintree's logo[1]. [1]: https://www.braintreepayments.com/ https://www.braintreepayments.com/
- gettingreal 12y agoIf you can use stripe, that should be your first choice. Failing that, 2Checkout and http://www.fastspring.com/ http://www.fastspring.com/ are really good and 2Checkout works in many countries. The other option would be to just get your own merchant account and use something like WorldPay
- known 12y agoTalk to your Bank;
- tobeportable 12y agoIn europe https://www.hipay.com/ https://www.hipay.com/ was cleary easier to set up then something more popular, like ogone, and had much better prices for us
- robertpohl 12y agoI run a Sweden based payment service called https://www.mondido.com https://www.mondido.com, with support for cards and subscriptions.
- zura 12y agoCan anyone recommend a service with flat-fee only option?
- greenwalls 12y agoCleverbridge https://www.cleverbridge.com https://www.cleverbridge.com is great and works well with International and American users.
- Giorgi 12y agoMoneybookers?
- Giorgi 12y agoMoneyBookers?
- chrowe 12y agoHey, I'm the CEO at Paddle.com (mentioned in your initial post). Wondering what we can be doing to make withdrawing your Paddle earnings easier. We opperate in a very similar way to Fastspring - in that you sell your products wholesale to us and we become the merchant of record (and it seems you're already familiar with us). Would love to see how we can help you out (we're a little cheaper than FS too if that's a deciding factor for you).
- aboutus 12y agoI'll email you on Monday, first thing.
- chrowe 12y agoAwesome! christian@paddle.com to get me directly.
- mrcold 12y agoCompetition is always great. So here are my problems with Paddle: 1. Too much hidden information. The main page should specify the pricing because that's the first thing we all look at. Yes, I know about the pricing page. But a click away is one too many. And I couldn't find a list of supported countries. If I don't know the cost and if I can get it, I'm not going to waste time asking. 2. You're cheaper than FastSpring now. But when FastSpring started it was a lot cheaper and more dynamic. You're competing with PayPal, not FastSpring. And PayPal is charging 2.9% + $0.30. So start where FastSpring started, not where it is after a couple years of growth. A bonus would be to find cost-effective ways to handle different price points. A 5% fee is ok for a $5 sale, but for a $1000 sale it's a bit too much. 3. Not sure how to say this in a more diplomatic way, but your store forms look spammy. Maybe the cluttered elements, maybe the asymmetrical design. You should talk with a designer and create something cleaner and nicer. The purchase forms are the last step of a sale. If they are not perfect, the client can easily change his mind. At least this is how I feel as a seller. Good luck. And find ways to do things better. Innovation always attract people.
- chrowe 12y ago
- bobcoat 12y agoBitcoin