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by tylerrooney 5370 days ago
I used to work in Payments at Amazon and I don't think people have an appreciation for how complicated and expensive payments in Europe can be. Credit Card penetration in certain countries (Germany and Switzerland for example) is really low and to get competitive rates you'll need a processor in the UK, France, and Germany. Then, when you have a problem, I challenge you to get technical support from a French bank after 5pm and, while you're at it, make sure you have someone on your team that speaks French.

At least it's better than Japan though.
1 comments
aculver 5370 days ago
How does it compare to Japan?
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tylerrooney 5370 days ago
Credit card penetration is really low so your other options are bank transfers and CVS (paying at a convenience store). COD is actually quite popular but I can't imagine any SaaS could implement that effectively.

I don't have any experience with direct bank transfer systems in Japan. I believe that a lot of Japanese Banks now offer NetBanking as a payment option for CVS payments but I'm not sure how widespread the use is. I'm also not sure what is culturally common in Japan for billing recurring online services.

Perhaps someone on HN who lives in Japan could comment.

Not sure who you're using as a gateway but I do have memories of being on the line with technical support and a Japanese translator.

Best of luck to you!

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bemmu 5370 days ago
I have paid through bank transfers a lot in Japan. Instead of just needing a name and an account number, additionally you need to know name of receiving bank and the branch of that bank the recipient uses.

Looking at the last two payments I made, it seems reference codes are not used. How the businesses know which order a payment relates to is a bit mysterious to me. I suppose someone looks at the accounts and tries to match by sender name and date.

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powertower 5370 days ago
Some things are better left unsaid.
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aculver 5370 days ago
No, really I'd rather hear. We're about to launch a product in Japan and all the advice I've been given from folks in Japan so far is that my standard credit card payment processing will be fine for our target user base. So, seeing a comment like the one in the parent post definitely caught my attention. If I'm going to be missing the mark, I'd rather find out now.
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