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PayMill, Stripe clone, rolls out silently across Europe
- heeton 14y agoLooks like I'm signing up with these guys then! Just this week I asked the Stripe team when their UK launch would happen.
- droelf 14y agoHoly shit, bootstrap buttons, get me out of there ...
- mrkmcknz 14y agoThis is major news for startups in Europe. Major news. The only issue I have is that the activation process seems like any other merchant account application. It will be interesting to hear from people who are rejected in the activation process to see how 'frictionless' these guys really are!
- sergiotapia 14y agoI wonder why they require you to "apply" for a merchant account, when Stripe just lets you get started ASAP. This is nothing but good news, anything that makes accepting payments easier is a god send. If Stripe were gone tomorrow, how more difficult would our lives be?
- mrkmcknz 14y agoI thought that, perhaps it's just to remain compliant on their side. Maybe it's the reason they've been able to ship despite the fact Stripe haven't. Then again those Samwer brothers aren't short for cash.
- jpkrohling_jpk 14y agoSorry to hear that, but the activation process is unfortunately needed. That said, you can still start right away integrating our solution into your app. If you decide to indeed use our solution, you can just ask for the activation and in about 2 business days you'll be able to accept "live" payments.
- mrkmcknz 14y agoThat's awesome, just cool to know why the activation is needed and how long it will take. I'm stoked to have you guys launched and I'm sure many other developers are also.
- TheSmoke 14y agoholy shit, they support turkey. yay!
- omarkassim 14y agoI was blown away by that too. Then it made sense considering it's Rocket behind it!
- TheSmoke 14y agoand which is why now i cannot use it even though they support turkey.
- jusben1369 14y agoAt Spreedlycore we support 40 + payment gateways. (our target audience are developers/applications that need to work with more than one payment gateway) No one's asked us about PayMill yet. It'll be interesting if they do. It worries me when the first two sentences contradict each other: "Paymill enables you to offer credit card payments on your website within a short time. There is no waiting time" Which one is it? I hope it's the real deal because the world needs it (we deal with a lot of non US developers around payments all the time so know the pain). But Stripe hasn't nailed it and Braintree couldn't nail the "immediate sign up" outside of the US so I too will wait to hear if it's all that much different. Lastly looks like just Visa/MC. No AMEX or Discover which isn't the terrible but worth noting vs other options. (AMEX is more expensive so not having it I'm sure helped them get to 2.9%)
- jaredsohn 14y ago> contradict It seems like is saying the amount of time required by the developer is small and that you don't have to wait for approval/activation. (i.e. if it was a process it would be both fast and cpu-bound.)
- jusben1369 14y agoYeah but I think that's what they want you to believe. I think it's cleverly worded. "There is no waiting time" Stop - ok, in this space we all know what the biggest change has been recently. No waiting time to get a merchant account any more. "........to begin the integration process" Ohhhh. Still I'll wait to be corrected by someone who finds it is immediate - maybe it is true.
- yakshay 14y ago> But Stripe hasn't nailed it and Braintree couldn't nail the "immediate sign up" outside of the US so I too will wait to hear if it's all that much different. Correction: Braintree hasn't nailed it even inside US, despite reports otherwise. Even though you can sign up and get started with a developer account immediately, there is a human underwriter who looks at your account and activates production. This process might take lesser time now, but its not automated (like Stripe) and some people might get rejected on the way. This step is the key value proposition for me. If Braintree or Paymill doesn't work like that, then they are not comparable to Stripe.
- jacques_chester 14y agoIt's definitely been very annoying for us outside of the US watching the light speed evolution of payment systems happening there and only there. So this is good news for my European friends.
- coopdog 14y agoIt's true, the motto of HN is that ideas are nothing, execution is everything. Yes the Samwise brothers outright steal ideas, but if you object then go and out-execute them in Europe. If you can't do that and the competition was fair, then the market has found a better solution. The only other path is in mandating a monopoly
- guard-of-terra 14y agoThis is a too narrow view. Africa leads with mobile phone banking (use your phone as a wallet and transfer funds and be able to cash out), Russia and CIS have viable cardless electronic money (you deposit money into electronic kiosks at shops and molls and then pay for goods and services via interwebs or from mobile), China has I guess everything we can imagine and more.
- kc0bfv 14y agoMany in the US have lusted over NFC payments via cellphone, available in Japan.
- fredsters_s 14y agoInteresting. This still needs to play out, but it seems like a lesson to geography-bound US startups (airbnb, stripe etc). I guess the question is, how much does execution count for? If I'm a Europe-based dev, do I really care that this isn't Stripe?
- ceelee 14y agoHere's a previous HN thread on PayMill with some solid comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4380302 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4380302
- DodgyEggplant 14y agoGood. Stripe waited for Intl forever
- gojomo 14y agoIs this Samwer-linked?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- j2labs 14y agoRocket is at it again.
- toomuchtodo 14y agoCan I use PayMill to except payments from clients in the EU if I'm a US-based business?
- jmonegro 14y agoYou can use Stripe for that.
- maaku 14y agoNot if you want to receive in euros.
- toomuchtodo 14y agoCorrect. I don't want Stripe to do the conversion. We want to receive dollars from US customers, and Euros from EU customers.
- kristofferR 14y agoShouldn't be too hard to create a script that sends a Stripe form to US customers (either based on country selection or just IP) and a Paymill form to EU customers.
- jtheory 14y agoI started a reply here simply to comment that Stripe doesn't do currency conversion, they just charge in USD. But I double-checked their FAQ and couldn't verify that, actually... I can't find details on how they manage the actual charge to foreign cards. It's an important issue, because if they just charge in USD, holders of foreign cards will presumably see a "foreign transaction fee" in their statement, which discourages future purchases. If they are able to charge the card in its own currency and avoid the fees, that means they're doing the conversion themselves, and setting the rate. I still suspect it's the former solution, but I'll have to ask about that....
- jpkrohling_jpk 14y ago
- gkoberger 14y agoThis was created by the Samwer brothers, who have an interesting history of cloning sites and flipping them, often to the company they cloned: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/04/features/inside-the-clone-factory?page=all http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/04/features/ins... So, proceed with caution if you decide to use them. (That being said, I wonder if Stripe will just buy them in order to get European payments working?)
- UntitledNo4 14y agoWhy do you think developers should proceed with caution? They don't seem malevolent to me. Perhaps you question their methods, which is legitimate, but if you have any other information apart from that, I would like to hear it. Additionally, I don't know if I can criticise their model. Yes, it's not very innovative, but on the other hand you can think of it as a outsourced European development team for US-based startups. They know the market, the language(s), the problems. They do the development work and then if the original startup wants to buy the product, they can. Who knows, perhaps it might even end up being not much more expensive than setting up the infrastructure and acquiring the knowledge required to operate in the EU. It might also serve as a test case: "is service X really going to work in the EU?". They take the risk that something might not work. As an EU-based developer (who never used any of their products. yet?), I also think it's valuable for us (EU-based developers). Instead of waiting for startup X to get their act together, they offer us an alternative, which then later might be merged with the original product. As a side note, there is a bit of a unintentional Schadenfreude to be found in this article as well. Since it's 6 - 7 months old, their investments in Facebook, Zynga and Groupon doesn't look so hot anymore as it did back then. Maybe they should avoid the investment side of things. Edit: grammar
- Jd 14y agoGenerally speaking, I agree, but the Samwer teams often overstep the bounds and going beyond simply duplicating functionality (i.e. blatantly ripping the design features and html/css theme of the website landing page). I think if you talk to people who've worked for their companies (I have) there is the general impression that whatever the boundary is that should not be crossed, it is being crossed.
- jdangu 14y agoThe activity of a Payment Service Provider is heavily regulated in EU, a license is required - But no mention of this on the site.
- jpkrohling_jpk 14y agoSorry, but what kind of license are you talking about? In order to use Paymill, you just need to have a company registered in one of the countries we are present (31, at the moment).
- exim 14y agoWhere can I see the list of supported countries?
- jpkrohling_jpk 14y agoWe have it both in our Terms and Conditions page (hint: Belgium is missing there, but that's a mistake) and in our activation form.
- exim 14y agoThanks. Any plans to add Georgia?
- the_mitsuhiko 14y agoDo I have to be PCI compliant if I use them?
- michaelfairley 14y agoIf your business accepts credit card payments, you must be PCI compliant.
- chmike 14y agoWhat means PCI compliant ?
- carlsednaoui 14y agoFirst result on Google - but here it is anyways: http://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/pcifaqs.php#1 http://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/pcifaqs.php#1
- jpkrohling_jpk 14y agoYou don't have to be PCI compliant to use Paymill, due to our "javascript bridge" solution. In short: the payment details never touches your server, removing the PCI compliance requirement.
- michaelfairley 14y agoAny merchant that accepts credit card payments must be PCI compliant. Even if cardholder data never touches the merchant's servers, the merchant still falls under the scope of SAQ A[1]. 1: https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/pci_saq_a_v2.pdf https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/pci_saq_a_v2....
- jacques_chester 14y agoMost gateways are structured so that your own systems never see card information.
- timnash 14y agoWhile I applaud any move to bring more payment options in Europe this is really still very german focused and appears only half baked. The English documentation is interesting with lots of muddled terminology and when you start the application process bit's of it are still in german in places. The site also seems to lack error and confirm messages (wondering if this is simply not translated) For those in the UK jumping for joy at a Stripe like payment gateway there is a bit of a gotcha it only supports Euros. Also there is no details about who is actually processing the payments and several interesting and dubious (but again could simply be translation problems) statements about PCI compliance on the site which could make due diligence interesting. Something to watch, but for UK merchants I suspect it may be a lot of work to get going so not quite the frictionless option people are holding out for. Be interesting to hear from a German companies perspective to see if similar issues exist on the paymill.de site?
- jpkrohling_jpk 14y agoI'm very sorry for the translation problems. We are working to solve these, but we would appreciate if you could send us an email on support@paymill.com if you find something wrong or ambiguous. But a small correction: we support the local currency of your company. If you are based in the UK, you'll be able to accept GBP. If you need support for other European currencies, you can contact us and we can certainly look into it. About the PCI compliance: you don't have to be PCI compliant, for one reason: the payment data never reaches your server. Our javascript bridge solution takes care of sending the data directly to our payment servers (which are PCI compliant), so you don't have to be. I'm not sure what you mean by not being frictionless for UK companies. Is this about the points above? If not, please do let us know what your concerns are :-)
- mylittlepony 14y agoThis connection is untrusted. The certificate is only valid for the following names: .paymill.de , paymill.de http://i.imm.io/Lcpp.jpeg http://i.imm.io/Lcpp.jpeg Anyone else getting this error?
- Silhouette 14y agoI didn't get that far, but I did notice that their blog is in German and hasn't been updated for over a month. There are a lot of questions still to be answered before I'd go anywhere near this service for a UK company...
- jpkrohling_jpk 14y agoQuestions that we'll gladly answer at support@paymill.com ;-)
- d0mme 14y agoWe're working on that, thanks for the hint. We noticed that problem on wednesday, should be fixed at the beginning of the next week (from 12th on). Alternatively you can hit our website with paymill.com without entering https in your URL.
- mylittlepony 14y agoI tried that but I'm being redirected: http://i.imm.io/LhSg.jpeg http://i.imm.io/LhSg.jpeg
- yakshay 14y agoThe site has German words on some pages even though I've switched to the English locale.
- chmike 14y agoLooks like half backed
- jpkrohling_jpk 14y agoWould you mind sending an email to support@paymill.com with where these are happening? The original content was in German, and we tried our best to translate it, but something might have slipped (as you noticed).
- urlwolf 14y agoTo those mentioning it looks 'half backed' (and wondering whether it works): Samwer brothers' companies are built to flip. From talking to their devs at meetup (not paymill's, but other rocket company), they mention software dev practices leave a lot to be desired. Whatever it takes to get something out of the door. Code quality is not a priority. This makes me reticent, even though I really need a real EU stripe.
- dewey 14y agoI'm using them for a month now and i'm quite happy with the service. Especially compared to the CC gateways we were using before. Their support team is very competent and usually reply within a few minutes. (I had some problems with the Magento Extension but they fixed it and pushed a new version of the extension to their github).
- rmoriz 14y agothey still only support Euro currency.
- d0mme 14y agoNope, we also offer currencies which are supported in your country as well as USD/EUR and other way round, if you contact us directly at support@paymill.com.
- schmrz 14y agoIf someone was wondering here are the supported countries: Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Czech Rep ., Turkey, UK, Hungary, Cyprus (Greek part), Israel. (from https://www.paymill.com/en-gb/support-3/worth-knowing/terms-conditions/index.html https://www.paymill.com/en-gb/support-3/worth-knowing/terms-...)
- guard-of-terra 14y agoWhat's the point of supporting both Greece and Turkey but not the other part of Cyprus? Just wondering.
- ekurutepe 14y agoProbably simply because they're not officially recognized by the EU.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoI bet they aren't officially recognized by USA either, you can still buy Coca-Cola there. Seriously, I come to think IT products are inferior to physical products in the terms of being able to distribute and make them available regardless of politics.
- kc0bfv 14y agoI suspect citizens of Iran, North Korea, China and the old USSR would disagree with that last sentiment. Ooh! And the US (Cuban cigars).
- guard-of-terra 14y agoDo you think there are no iPhones in Iran or North Korea? Hint: there are. Even in USSR people managed to smuggle enough British LPs and Japanese tape recorders to kickstart a Rock movement. It's not that hard. Compare this to major IT services (Amazon, iTunes, movie streaming) not available in quite a few otherwise rich and democratic, albeit small, countries; or even only available in a selected few of countries.
- buro9 14y agoThis is great news, but I will probably try and wait for Stripe as I have no urgency to move today. Why? Because this looks like where Stripe were and I know that when Stripe finally makes it to the UK they are the ones pushing the envelope and I want to be where they are. I also hope Stripe will be more competitive on fees. Obviously, should the need be pressing then this looks like a good stop-gap.
- Kliment 14y agoI've been using this service for a month and a bit now and it's worked really well. There is dramatically more paperwork compared to Stripe, but it works and it's way way better than anything else available in Germany.
- Luc 14y agoI still don't see how Stripe and PayMill are different from companies like SWREG that have existed since the time of Compuserve. Why is everyone so enthusiastic about Stripe? I honestly don't understand.
- vinhboy 14y agoI really like the way they are presenting their API. A simple example is better than an entire of page of documentation. Kind of how w3schools does it.