[apexauk]

(I work at Stripe, here in London)

Great write-up - I hadn't seen that graphic before but it's great - full credit to the original source http://startingandsustaining.com/.

As a Stripe-r, I can't complain about the OP's conclusion in any way :) As stated they are based in Denmark, and Stripe is not currently available for Danish businesses - that's on us to fix, and we're certainly working on it.

However, re: the title "How to choose a payment provider for your Europe-based SaaS startup" - the situation in Denmark is not representative of Europe as a whole.

Stripe has now launched here in the UK[1], and we now have betas available in Ireland, France, the Netherlands and Belgium - with the latest released in the past few weeks. So if you're based on one of those countries, please do give us a look. And if you're based elsewhere, well - I guess we need to keep up the pace and hurry to your country ;)

[1] https://stripe.com/blog/introducing-stripe-uk

As other commenters have mentioned, it's really easy to make mistakes comparing complex pricing across different providers. With Stripe and PAYMILL, the fees quoted are all you pay. With Braintree's interchange+ pricing, they actually state themselves that "Total costs are typically 1.8% to 2.6% of the transaction. There is a minimum cost of €100 per month"[2]

[2] https://www.braintreepayments.com/faq#pricing-question

[Silhouette]

With Braintree's interchange+ pricing, they actually state themselves that "Total costs are typically 1.8% to 2.6% of the transaction. There is a minimum cost of €100 per month"

And that means it can't be as low as 1.8% of your transaction unless you're consistently taking in the region of €5,500+ per month -- low revenues for an established business, but not a trivial amount for a bootstrapped start-up looking for a payment service to launch with.

I've wondered whether this is a deliberate business decision by Braintree to discourage applications from brand new (and I assume on average more risky) start-ups. Then again, established businesses with serious revenues would presumably be considering a more traditional set-up where they can negotiate much lower rates with heavyweight payment services, and would perhaps care less about the hassle of setting those things up compared to the ease-of-use for developers of modern payment services. I'm not sure which part of the market Braintree are really trying to own at the moment: they do seem to have a USP among the "developer-friendly services" in the number of different payment methods they support through a common API, but this doesn't even seem to merit a mention on the front page of their site.

[ig1]

If you're charging customers and aren't making enough in a few months to cover the minimum fee then your business is going to be in trouble in any case. Sure the percentage is going to be crappy, but if you're a SaaS business and your margins are so small that the percentage is worth stressing about in the early days then you're probably doing something wrong.

(I bootstrapped my last startup and 100 euros is roughly what I was paying SEOMoz, my accountant, etc. on a monthly basis)

It's way more important to just get something working and out-the-door and grow the number of customers then to spend a lot of time over what comes down to a relative small amount of money, you can always re-negotiate the fees when you grow and the absolute amount becomes meaningful.

[Silhouette]

If you're charging customers and aren't making enough in a few months to cover the minimum fee then your business is going to be in trouble in any case. Sure the percentage is going to be crappy, but if you're a SaaS business and your margins are so small that the percentage is worth stressing about in the early days then you're probably doing something wrong.

Right, so if you're in that position, why would you put up with the onerous application process for a service like Braintree if you have a simpler alternative like Stripe available and it provides the functionality you need? You want a payment service that takes as little time as possible to set up and then just works, because you have a million more important things to be doing. Any advantages Braintree might have had if their pricing did work out more favourable than Stripe's flat rates is instantly lost because they can't give straight answers to too many basic questions (like "What does it cost me to collect a payment?") and their API and documentation are significantly more complicated.

[ig1]

I've not implemented either Braintree or Stripe before, but I'd agree with the principle of just doing whatever gets you out the door the fastest (for a subscription business I might including the proviso of using a service that will give you card portability so you can transition off in the future).

[aitoehigie]

Hello, as a developer based in Lagos, Nigeria (don't believe the stereotype about Nigerians and fraud), PayPal has refused to include Nigeria in her list of supported countries hence there is a gaping need for an international payment gateway in Nigeria which is the fastest growing mobile market in the world and the fastest growing economy on the continent. When does stripe intend on coming towards this neck of the woods?