Ask HN: What payment system are you using?

[trengul]

We almost finished our startup and currently we need to choose a payment system, that will be easy to use, have a small commission, easy to implement (have a good and easy API) and can accept credit cards in USA, Europe and if possible Asia (China, Japan). What payment system are you using? What are advantages/disadvantages? Thanks in advance

[dangrossman]

For making the actual charges, a merchant account from an ISO, currently Vantage Card [1]. I pay interchange plus (0.04% + $0.10) per transaction. That's the fee charged by Visa/MasterCard to the processor, plus four hundredths of a percent and a dime. For about a quarter of my volume which are debit/check cards used as credit, that's just 0.09% + $0.31. For the rest, it probably averages around 1.6-2%, far less than the 2.9% flat rate you'll get offered by flashy payment startups.

I use Authorize.net as a payment gateway for that account [2]. If you do look at merchant account providers, they'll typically set you up with a gateway, you don't need to choose and sign up for one yourself. Just watch that they don't use it as a way to add on more than nominal fees.

To actually hook everything up to my websites, I use Spreedly [3]. They're the best thing to happen to payments in years. Spreedly is a single API for 66 different gateways and payment providers, meaning you code against Spreedly and can switch payment companies any time you want without changing any code. They're also a PCI Level 1 Certified card vault for storing payment information to charge again in the future, for e.g. running a SaaS business.

They offer a pass-thru option where you point the payment form on your website to their URL, and they return the visitor to your page with a token attached that you can then use via their API to make charges, meaning no cardholder data ever touches your servers. That means no on-site PCI audits or any of the other nasty stuff required if you store cards yourself.

1: http://www.vantagecard.com/

2: http://www.authorize.net/

3: https://spreedly.com/

[trengul]

Thanks. Can i use these services for Asia countries (China, Japan, Korea)?

[chatmasta]

I would recommend Chargebee (www.chargebee.com). They provide a layer on top of a dozen different backends, including Stripe, and handle all of the annoying subscription logic you don't want to write code for.

The advantage of Chargebee is that you are not dependent on one backend or merchant provider, and can always swap it out for another if you get booted or want to try something else.

[hashtag]

https://stripe.com/

[trengul]

Thanks. Advantages/Disadvantages?

[dangrossman]

They're very expensive unless you do $80K+/month to negotiate rates, but the service itself is great. I don't use them as I pay much less through a merchant account, but I have set up others that are less technical and handle less volume with Stripe.

[stevekemp]

Advantages: Quick to apply for. Quick to integrate.

Disadvantages: Comparatively expensive.

[jgunaratne]

Ditto, very easy to use API.