Ask HN: How do you collect payment as Startup from Stripe none support country?

[tuyenhx]

I wanted to use Stripe to collect payment. But I'm a founder from Stripe's none support countries.

I see there is an option Stripe Atlas. I'm a little hesitate about this option. I totally understand the cost, set up fee and yearly fee. But is there any other hidden fee after this? Like taxes? ...

I did research and saw a few posts tell that, it costed them about 10k/year (When using Stripe + Stripe Atlas) with many hidden fees.

I asked a lot of people around me, they avoided answering this and I don't know why. I even contacted Stripe's support, and they redirected my to a lawyer site with no clear answer. I'm so frustrated.

I have a dumb question.

How do you collect payment if you're in my situation?

Paypal seems a better option for this.

[flothebre]

There are a couple of alternative that I used before Stripe was allowed in my country:

- Flurly, they take 1% on top of Stripe fees but provide super easy payment setup + dashboard, fraud management. You can be paid by direct transfer or PayPal

- Paddle, never tried but has really good reputation

- Gumroad, kinda same as flurly with higher fees and custom payment pages.

You should consider alternatives before open a US company IMHO (except if you have others reasons to do so) Gumroad (not really appro

[tuyenhx]

Thank you so much for the suggestion.

[carlosleyva]

You can also use Wise as an alternative.

For a certain fee they'd give the option of having a "local bank account" in that country so customers can do deposits there. Then you can withdraw to your main account elsewhere.

[nivertech]

Could you explain how one can use Wise to accept credit card payments for a SaaS website?

Or just point to the relevant pages on the https://wise.com/ site.

Do you mean to open US bank a/c via Wise, and then use it with Stripe or similar to accept credit cards?

[toomuchtodo]

Wise is so good, they’re a Stripe sleeper competitor as credit card payments make way for local instant payments in various markets.

[tuyenhx]

Thank you! Let me check it

[ReadTheLicense]

Is there not a local payment gateway company where you're headquartered? If not, then a bank should be able to help you with accepting cards, they might even have their own online payment gateway with a simple enough API, or they'll point you to their online payments partner.

[tuyenhx]

I am from Viet Nam. But it will take me a lot of time (1 - 2 months) just for only paper work before really integrate with their payment gateway.

[mikhael28]

… Bitcoin?

Well, only if the transactions are substantial - otherwise you are getting bones by transaction fees.

You can run your own Lightning node - check out https://stacker.news for an example of proof of concept.

[tuyenhx]

I am not sure accepting crypto is a good idea in my case, since my customers are low tech. They dont know much about these things.

Last time, when I made a transaction on ETH, it took me 10 mins for wait nodes to confirm and costed me about 20$ of transaction fee.

How about the speed of Bitcoin network now? Just curious.

[mikhael28]

Much better. But still slow. Check out the lightning network, and the link I posted above for an example of how fast lightning network transactions are.

[tuyenhx]

Just checked it, it’s very fast. Will the speed still the same if the network bigger?

[mikhael28]

Probably. If the network grows, more nodes will be added as the demand increases (because the nodes who open the channels, get paid a small amount of money. Very small, but still something).

You can run your own nodes, and get paid to open your own channels.

[alxmng]

I’ve used PayPal to accept payments in non-Stripe countries. Even for Stripe-supported countries PayPal is probably an easier checkout experience because most customers just have to login to PayPal rather than getting their card or bank info out.

[tuyenhx]

Yes, I have the same thought.

[ev1]

I think phrase you are looking for is "merchant of record"

[tuyenhx]

I didnt know that is its name. Thank you for the phrase.

[illegalmemory]

Please check paddle, another decent option for solo founders.

[tuyenhx]

Thank you. Let me check it