7 ms·

Google Checkout will be retired, transition to Google Wallet

204 points by dpick 13y ago

orangethirty 13y ago
I reason google shoud bring labs from the dea, and use it to test the waters with products like this.
thehodge 13y ago
It's a real shame that Google Checkout never really was what was promised, we've integrated it into our shop and we have more GoCardless payments than Google Checkout, it was a horrible system to deal with and I won't miss it when it goes (and if I ever get a response about the Stripe UK beta I'll be swapping that quick sharpish) We've had more declined transactions on Google Checkout than PayPal + GoCardless put together.
- pgr0ss 13y ago
  Have you tried Braintree in the UK?
  - thehodge 13y ago
    I looked at Braintree but I found the fee's not worth it at this stage, I've looked at NoChex and a few other providers but there is a worry about giving people too much choice, at moment we have PayPal, Google Checkout and GoCardless, I'd be looking to replace GC with either Stripe or NoChex
  - Silhouette 13y ago
    Unfortunately, I think Braintree in the UK is probably doomed at this point. They looked good a year or two ago, and we did consider using them. They were certainly a better prospect than old school card payments where you had to apply for multiple services, make back room deals to get good fees, and all that nonsense. However, to start the application process with Braintree, it seemed you would still be faced with a lot of form-filling, followed by multi-week delays to get approval (or not), and on top of that the fees were unclear but didn't look competitive in most cases. More recently, the likes of GoCardless and Stripe have become serious players on the UK scene, and both seem to be working on expansions further into Europe as well. They have all the same obvious benefits that Braintree offered: a single company to deal with, staffed by human beings rather than robots, reasonable APIs. But they also offer much faster sign-up and reasonable, transparent fees. At this point, to be brutally honest, the likes of Braintree are simply outclassed. Unless anything very surprising happens, I expect the payments market for UK and probably European small businesses and start-ups to be completely dominated by GoCardless and Stripe within 2-3 years. Unless you're big enough to approach the old school players with enough leverage to get favourable terms, it's hard to see why you'd look any further if these are options, and I think both GoCardless and Stripe will do well because they're different enough not to be in direct competition but similar enough to keep each other honest.
- michaelschade 13y ago
  (I work at Stripe.) Sorry you haven't gotten one yet! I just sent an invite your way.
  - thehodge 13y ago
    Thanks, We are planning a visual refresh of the site and Stripe will certainly be part of the new offering :)
  - nahname 13y ago
    Is this for e-commerce? I just suspected you guys didn't seriously consider e-commerce since you don't do pre-auth and settlement. It being illegal to charge the customer before shipping in some countries and such.
    - nivloc 13y ago
      They do: https://support.stripe.com/questions/can-i-authorize-a-charge-and-then-wait-to-settle-it-later https://support.stripe.com/questions/can-i-authorize-a-charg...
      - nahname 13y ago
        This is a very recent change, if I am not mistaken. Seven days is a very short window.
  - Felix21 13y ago
    Using Google checkout reduced my conversion rates but I still stuck to them cause they Paid on time and are very much less troublesome than paypal (especially for high volume merchants) I'm definitely switching to stripe when it comes to the UK.
dewiz 13y ago
anyone taking bets... ehm willing to speculate on what big is next dying at google? I'm thinking about google tv, or is that Q already gone? music? books? I'm happy to see G staying on the marketing garden
- quackerhacker 13y ago
  I think Google is just refining their products, which I think is great thing for them. I think I got an email about G+ being integrated into ALL of Google's products...but who didn't see that coming.
- petercooper 13y ago
  I'm going with FeedBurner. Although you could argue it's already 90% dead.
  - ComputerGuru 13y ago
    We're betting the same, and have put our money where our mouth is: http://feedsnap.com/ http://feedsnap.com/
    - stock_toaster 13y ago
      Go bold. Love it.
    - mh- 13y ago
      looks great, nice work
  - taigeair 13y ago
    It definitely feels neglected. What do you think is a good alternative?
    - petercooper 13y ago
      Doing it yourself. I'm not convinced if even Google is willing to pay $100m for a service then let it crumble that there's much in the business model for anyone else to maintain long term.
quackerhacker 13y ago
I think the problem was Google's Api was very ill written compared to Paypal's. This may be an old implementation, but I think the Api didn't allow subscription services easily, and also notified it's sellers of an order immediately (regardless if the transaction was successful or not). Beside, I think Google is investing the proper resources in building Waller to be a formidable product against Paypal, Amazon, and other 3rd Party checkouts. Side Note: For the Google Checkout devs that read this, I'm sorry for what I did (Michael Largent).
- Finster 13y ago
  Shoddy API's are not unique to Checkout. Most, if not all, of Google's API's are actually pretty terrible. When they DO update their API's it's pretty rare that they tell anyone, and they never update their documentation. So, a workflow that worked fine last week will suddenly fail disgracefully and you'll have no idea unless you find the right version of the docs.
  - zbowling 13y ago
    maps has a great API.
_Lemon_ 13y ago
Earlier today I received a phone call from a number in Mountain View CA. It was Google letting me know in advance that Google Checkout was to be shut down (and asking to keep the call quiet). This was, to say the least, very surprising considering I have very little correspondence with Google Checkout and was actually thinking there was a huge problem with my account. Thankfully not but this is still bad news for myself and I presume the industry at large. Google Checkout was very good with their fraud protection to the point that I did not have to think about it. In fact, over the years I have been growing my business Google have been my rock---never a real issue with them. PayPal was a similar story but it also seemed to attract the sort of customer that would open a dispute at almost any issue (or just threaten it). You can also count me in one of their horror stories that indirectly cost me £5k and even got to the point where they just flat out refused refunds for my customers who wanted them. I have a Stripe and GoCardless account as well and I've been trying to make it work but their fraud protection is just not up to scratch compared to Google and PayPal, which is a real shame. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to see enough data to get quite the same fraud protection. Stripe do look fun though. Another perspective from a merchant: roll on Bitcoin. With exchanges offering guaranteed payouts in another currency (for me, GBP) I take on zero risk by accepting it and it solves so many problems. There's no wonder more and more websites are starting to accept it.
- kitbrennan 13y ago
  Hi _Lemon_ I work at GoCardless. I would love to hear your feedback about ways that you think we could improve our fraud protection! Feel free to reply here, or give me an email (kit AT gocardless DOT com), or to call me on 020 7183 8674.
- thehodge 13y ago
  Someone suggested Bitcoin today, as a merchant, what would you recommend to start accepting it? a third party service?
  - clarkm 13y ago
    I've heard good things about https://bitpay.com https://bitpay.com
Lost_BiomedE 13y ago
I am surprised that they will no longer offer processing. The whole reason I even used them was to prevent the need to deal with a payment processor (my current store options for customers are google and paypal). I checked out amazon's offer again and will likely add them as a replacement. They have a lot of existing customers, the charge is reasonable, and I will be able to integrate it in a fairly painless manner.
ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
Google is making the same mistakes Microsoft made. Trying to enter into every industry it can thinking it can use it's monopoly power to take over the world. Reality: Doing 20 things mediocrely is not as profitable of doing 2 things very very well. Result: 1) Constant experiments and dropped products (just like Microsoft). 2) Consumers no longer trust your services to stick around and no longer even invest in your platforms (*see most of Microsoft's offerings). 3) The services you do have aren't the highest quality and your brand takes a hit as being "giant mediocre corporation" like Microsoft instead of "high quality company" like Apple. The more things change the more they stay the same.
- _pmf_ 13y ago
  > 1) Constant experiments and dropped products (just like Microsoft). > 3) The services you do have aren't the highest quality and your brand takes a hit as being "giant mediocre corporation" like Microsoft instead of "high quality company" like Apple. Yes, Apple never creates duds; we are all happily using our Newton.
  - silverlake 13y ago
    And Ping. :)
- pvnick 13y ago
  This seems to be a mistake that a ton of startups make as well. It's a result of indecisive (read:poor) management and inevitably leads to doing nothing particularly well. One company that I've seen not fall into this trap is Dropbox. Dropbox offers one amazing service and pours all it's efforts into that, and from what I hear they have some insanely smart people working there doing that. As a result they can afford to decline a $6 billion offer from Google and then go on to compete against Google's inferior offering.
  - jmhain 13y ago
    Other than the frustrating lack of a linux client, how is drive inferior to dropbox?
codereflection 13y ago
I figured this was going to happen when they announced Wallet, :/. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714531
- shubb 13y ago
  Good spot
- contingencies 13y ago
  This is the real story. They're not shutting down at all, they're pivoting their focus within payments to mobile/physical presence. Getting rid of 'card not present' situations means cheaper and more reliable processing, and the physical focus that goes with mobile payments gives additional reasons for Android users to leave their credit card details with Google. Google's fastest growth right now must be in Android-driven Google account signups. I can see why they're focusing on that area, rather than some old, first financial world only, pre-monopolized, credit card not present delayed payments reverse charges web based fraud rule quagmire.
hnolable 13y ago
Anyone have any idea if this effectively terminates any existing recurring Google Checkout subscription payments (on November 20)? If so, that's kind of a big deal. Cutting off merchants from their revenue stream is a great way to get people really angry and could easily destroy a business.
- jonknee 13y ago
  Did you read the post? > If you don't have your own payment processing, you will need to transition to a different solution within six months. To make things easier, we've partnered with Braintree, Shopify and Freshbooks to offer you discounted migration options. So you have 6 months and several options for migration.
  - hnolable 13y ago
    That sentence is confusing at best. "If you don't have your own payment processing" What does that mean? I thought Google Checkout was my payment processor? Do they mean if you already have a payment processor other than Google? And if I _do_ have my own payment processing then I won't need to "transition to a different solution within six months". What does that mean, are they going to give me all the subscribers credit card info so I can start charging their cards myself? I don't think so. As far as I know Braintree only does direct credit card processing, similar to Stripe. If they are planning on migrating all the Google Checkout subscriptions to Braintree credit card subscriptions that would be great but it doesn't sound like that to me. And how would that work for the Google Checkout users who were able to manage their subscriptions through the Google Checkout interface? Does Braintree have an interface for all Google Checkout users or do they lose their interface and need to go through the merchant now?
    - jonknee 13y ago
      Braintree certainly does recurring billing and it's pretty common in these scenarios for the migration to happen between vendors. https://www.braintreepayments.com/tour/recurring-billing https://www.braintreepayments.com/tour/recurring-billing Braintree even helped start http://www.portabilitystandard.org/ http://www.portabilitystandard.org/ to help standardize the migration process. That said, Google Checkout didn't do much in the way of recurring billing. The FAQ says it never made it out of beta. The vast majority of merchants appeared to just be selling the old fashioned way. https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/63440?hl=en https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/63440?hl=en
pbreit 13y ago
This is bizarre considering that the Gmail money thing just launched so Google is remaining in the payment processing business (different from Play in that Checkout and Google Gmail Money are much more accessible to recipients).
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > This is bizarre considering that the Gmail money thing just launched so Google is remaining in the payment processing business The "Gmail money" thing is a Google Wallet feature, as Google Wallet doesn't include credit card processing on the merchant side, I suspect that for things where Google is, effectively, the "merchant" (like sending money through Gmail), they are paying a third party for processing services.
bifrost 13y ago
Ugh, this is terrible. The one service I actually used with Google, and they shut it down. In their defense, its been dead for a while, they made the UI horrifying to use and a giant PITA. Glad I got my one last payment in. Time to move to stripe.
- droopyEyelids 13y ago
  Looks like Google partnered(?) with Braintree, Shopify and Freshbooks-- like you can get a discount for transitioning. Considering how many people mention just moving to Stripe on this thread, I wonder what sort of hoops those three had to jump through to get their names on the page. Also I wonder what part of the process led Google to choose those three over their competitors. It seems like Stripe would have been a natural choice. Anyone know anything about the vetting process and want to comment? It would be interesting if there was a hangup or concern that led to the decision.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    Stripe is only available in North America, and probably lacks the headcount to handle thousands or more new merchants in a short time. Braintree's more than twice as old, more than twice as big, and operates in US/UK/AU/CA/EU. Recommending Stripe would mean sending many of Google Checkout's merchants somewhere that can't help them. Google Checkout, like many third-party processors, is heavily used by merchants outside the US where a traditional merchant account is much more difficult to acquire and integrate.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - simonk 13y ago
      Google Checkout was US/UK only.
jmgrosen 13y ago
Wait, so what's the difference between this and Google Wallet?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Wait, so what's the difference between this and Google Wallet? With Checkout, Google is a credit card processor. With Wallet, Google isn't a credit card processor, they are partnered with Bankcorp Bank who is issuing virtual cards which are funded either by transferring funds from the users bank account or by charging credit cards.
- chromaton 13y ago
  This was a system that let online shops take payments. Confusingly, at one point they renamed the service to "Google Wallet".
chromaton 13y ago
This is a real shame. My business was one of the very first to integrate Google Checkout into a website shopping cart after the general release. I did a marathon coding session the first week it came out because I knew that it would be worth some free publicity if I got it working. All of our payments come through either Google Checkout or PayPal. And some people really hate PayPal, so we will be looking for alternatives (Amazon Payments springs to mind). I could see the writing on the wall for Google Checkout a couple years back, though. They failed to add any new features in recent times in order to try to match PayPal. The reporting was weak. E-mail notifications didn't always work right. Declined charges were a hassle. E-mail payment requests couldn't be formatted and were too short. Those were my main complaints, I'm sure there were many more problems faced by people who had different requirements. Checkout had huge potential to integrate into Google's other services. For example, it let Google see directly who the best and most reliable merchants were. In fact, I believe you can still have Adwords show stars on your text ad based upon Checkout customer feedback. Another useful integration is with Analytics. They did attempt some information sharing there. Tying Analytics directly to sales information is fantastic, and I wish they had made them work together better.
taigeair 13y ago
Good thing I'm not using Google Checkout anymore. It's still a shame though. I actually like it more than Paypal but having done some experiments with my ecommerce businesses (e.g. http://www.wellingtonstravel.com/ http://www.wellingtonstravel.com/) I found people trust the Paypal payment option more or are more familiar with it, leading to more conversions. So that's why I went with Paypal over Google Checkout.
braco_alva 13y ago
Could this mean that could expand the number of countries that were supported by checkout? I really hope so, not being able to sell in the Play Store/Chrome Web Store is something we've been looking for a while.
NLPsajeeth 13y ago
Although Google Checkouts is shutting down, Google Wallet for Digital Goods still lives on (https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449 https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449). It offers pretty much the best pricing on the net (most favorable of 5% or 1.9% + 30c (USD) per transaction is automatically applied.) and works in way more countries and currencies than Google Checkout ever did (https://developers.google.com/commerce/wallet/digital/faq https://developers.google.com/commerce/wallet/digital/faq).
- diminoten 13y ago
  I feel like no one actually read the submission. Google Checkout and Google Wallet overlapped too much, and Wallet won out. If your website uses Checkout, just replace it with Wallet, and move on with your life.
  - simonk 13y ago
    Wallet doesn't have payment processing except for items on Google Play.
akandiah 13y ago
I'm a bit uninformed about the capabilities of Google Wallet and Checkout. Anyone care to elucidate the differences? Do they perform the same functions?
aviraldg 13y ago
Uh... calling it a "shutdown" isn't all that close to the truth. They're transitioning from Checkout to Wallet.
- eco 13y ago
  "Google" + "Shutdown" = instant successful headline
- nieve 13y ago
  It may be a transition for Checkout users, but it's a shutdown for merchants. * Shutting down payment processing which was a pretty fundamental part of the offering * they're requiring you to reapply to get an instant buy account * They're killing off the APIs It's not a transition if you lose a core feature, don't transition the accounts in any meaningful way, and have to implement a new system - at that point it's about like switching to PayPal (except you get to keep payment processing if you switch).
kintamanimatt 13y ago
I don't trust Google any longer. Google (usually) brings out fantastic products only to neglect and abandon them like a bored toddler. This wave of product discontinuations is making me extremely hesitant to use anything new Google brings out. If Google brought out Gmail today I'd sign up and explore what it's about, but I wouldn't ever give out the email address for fear that it would be snatched back with no or little notice. I'm not going to pretend to know Google's business better than they do, but to me it appears as though they're really dropping the ball here and losing a lot of credibility and trust.
- ancarda 13y ago
  My trust has been eroded in Google to the point where I am actively seeking a replacement to Google Apps (I have a free account which I can't imagine will be around forever). Also, now with tumblr being bought I'm hesitant to jump ship and host my blog on my own server. Seems like the way forward.
- bdowney 13y ago
  >This wave of product discontinuations i I see what you did there.
- Bockit 13y ago
  I wonder how we would have reacted if rather than spacing all these out, they batched them up an did one big announcement with plans for all lines being discontinued. Quick and clean sort of deal.
jpalomaki 13y ago
At some point I thought the master plan behind Google Checkout was to tie the adword payments to actual purchases behavior. So instead of paying per click an advertisers could have paid "per purchase". With enough sites on board Google would probably have been in quite good position in trying to figure out if the user is really going to make the purchase or not. If user is likely to purchase, then show him "pay per purchase" ads otherwise just regular "pay per click".
Shorel 13y ago
Amazon is still a viable alternative to PayPal. I used it to buy the latest Humble Bundle.
eco 13y ago
The post says they are transitioning over to Wallet in the very first sentence. It's amazing how many people are commenting without even getting that far into the link.
pbreit 13y ago
I wonder if anyone besides Braintree will step in with a copy of Google's APIs and try to win some easy business?
jensenbox 13y ago
If you are interested, I have been keeping score: http://jensenbox.github.io/timeline/ http://jensenbox.github.io/timeline/
martindale 13y ago
This title is inaccurate. Google Checkout is being upgraded to Google Wallet, which provides the _exact_ same functionality with more features.
- simonk 13y ago
  No, they are getting rid of the payment processing.
- dennisgorelik 13y ago
  Google merged Checkout with Wallet over a year ago. That was unpleasant, but bearable. This time Google is killing what's left of Google Checkout: API and subsriptions. That's much worse. To add an insult to injury, Google uses Doublespeak, so now we have to guess about what's really going to happen.
fixxer 13y ago
I just hope they don't toss Scholar. That thing is salvation.
jmd_akbar 13y ago
does anyone have any idea what happens to the google drive subscription, if you're paying via google checkout?
jacquesm 13y ago
Retiring a payment system is really the ultimate insult to those that invest in your platforms. Imagine the bank that you use for your business transactions, especially recurring billing, to one day walk in and say: so sorry, you won't be able to process your old payments any more, but here is a new and shiny service that we think is better that you'll have to use from now on. Never mind the integration overhead, possible loss of business, customer service issues and all the other headaches that can come from a thing like this. I'm scared just to change bank accounts given how far those bits of information have propagated, losing a billing platform is a nightmare for businesses that rely on it. Why would anyone switch to another service by the same provider that just chose to shut you down or that chose to saddle you up with a bunch of overhead on this years calendar? Google partnering with braintree, shopify and freshbooks is the saving grace here. In payment systems only two things matter: fraud control and continuity. Google excels at the first, drops the ball on the second.

204 points by dpick 13y ago

I reason google shoud bring labs from the dea, and use it to test the waters with products like this.

It's a real shame that Google Checkout never really was what was promised, we've integrated it into our shop and we have more GoCardless payments than Google Checkout, it was a horrible system to deal with and I won't miss it when it goes (and if I ever get a response about the Stripe UK beta I'll be swapping that quick sharpish) We've had more declined transactions on Google Checkout than PayPal + GoCardless put together.

pgr0ss 13y ago
Have you tried Braintree in the UK?
- thehodge 13y ago
  I looked at Braintree but I found the fee's not worth it at this stage, I've looked at NoChex and a few other providers but there is a worry about giving people too much choice, at moment we have PayPal, Google Checkout and GoCardless, I'd be looking to replace GC with either Stripe or NoChex
- Silhouette 13y ago
  Unfortunately, I think Braintree in the UK is probably doomed at this point. They looked good a year or two ago, and we did consider using them. They were certainly a better prospect than old school card payments where you had to apply for multiple services, make back room deals to get good fees, and all that nonsense. However, to start the application process with Braintree, it seemed you would still be faced with a lot of form-filling, followed by multi-week delays to get approval (or not), and on top of that the fees were unclear but didn't look competitive in most cases. More recently, the likes of GoCardless and Stripe have become serious players on the UK scene, and both seem to be working on expansions further into Europe as well. They have all the same obvious benefits that Braintree offered: a single company to deal with, staffed by human beings rather than robots, reasonable APIs. But they also offer much faster sign-up and reasonable, transparent fees. At this point, to be brutally honest, the likes of Braintree are simply outclassed. Unless anything very surprising happens, I expect the payments market for UK and probably European small businesses and start-ups to be completely dominated by GoCardless and Stripe within 2-3 years. Unless you're big enough to approach the old school players with enough leverage to get favourable terms, it's hard to see why you'd look any further if these are options, and I think both GoCardless and Stripe will do well because they're different enough not to be in direct competition but similar enough to keep each other honest.
michaelschade 13y ago
(I work at Stripe.) Sorry you haven't gotten one yet! I just sent an invite your way.
- thehodge 13y ago
  Thanks, We are planning a visual refresh of the site and Stripe will certainly be part of the new offering :)
- nahname 13y ago
  Is this for e-commerce? I just suspected you guys didn't seriously consider e-commerce since you don't do pre-auth and settlement. It being illegal to charge the customer before shipping in some countries and such.
  - nivloc 13y ago
    They do: https://support.stripe.com/questions/can-i-authorize-a-charge-and-then-wait-to-settle-it-later https://support.stripe.com/questions/can-i-authorize-a-charg...
    - nahname 13y ago
      This is a very recent change, if I am not mistaken. Seven days is a very short window.
- Felix21 13y ago
  Using Google checkout reduced my conversion rates but I still stuck to them cause they Paid on time and are very much less troublesome than paypal (especially for high volume merchants) I'm definitely switching to stripe when it comes to the UK.

dewiz 13y ago

anyone taking bets... ehm willing to speculate on what big is next dying at google? I'm thinking about google tv, or is that Q already gone? music? books? I'm happy to see G staying on the marketing garden

quackerhacker 13y ago
I think Google is just refining their products, which I think is great thing for them. I think I got an email about G+ being integrated into ALL of Google's products...but who didn't see that coming.
petercooper 13y ago
I'm going with FeedBurner. Although you could argue it's already 90% dead.
- ComputerGuru 13y ago
  We're betting the same, and have put our money where our mouth is: http://feedsnap.com/ http://feedsnap.com/
  - stock_toaster 13y ago
    Go bold. Love it.
  - mh- 13y ago
    looks great, nice work
- taigeair 13y ago
  It definitely feels neglected. What do you think is a good alternative?
  - petercooper 13y ago
    Doing it yourself. I'm not convinced if even Google is willing to pay $100m for a service then let it crumble that there's much in the business model for anyone else to maintain long term.

quackerhacker 13y ago

I think the problem was Google's Api was very ill written compared to Paypal's. This may be an old implementation, but I think the Api didn't allow subscription services easily, and also notified it's sellers of an order immediately (regardless if the transaction was successful or not). Beside, I think Google is investing the proper resources in building Waller to be a formidable product against Paypal, Amazon, and other 3rd Party checkouts. Side Note: For the Google Checkout devs that read this, I'm sorry for what I did (Michael Largent).

Finster 13y ago
Shoddy API's are not unique to Checkout. Most, if not all, of Google's API's are actually pretty terrible. When they DO update their API's it's pretty rare that they tell anyone, and they never update their documentation. So, a workflow that worked fine last week will suddenly fail disgracefully and you'll have no idea unless you find the right version of the docs.
- zbowling 13y ago
  maps has a great API.

_Lemon_ 13y ago

Earlier today I received a phone call from a number in Mountain View CA. It was Google letting me know in advance that Google Checkout was to be shut down (and asking to keep the call quiet). This was, to say the least, very surprising considering I have very little correspondence with Google Checkout and was actually thinking there was a huge problem with my account. Thankfully not but this is still bad news for myself and I presume the industry at large. Google Checkout was very good with their fraud protection to the point that I did not have to think about it. In fact, over the years I have been growing my business Google have been my rock---never a real issue with them. PayPal was a similar story but it also seemed to attract the sort of customer that would open a dispute at almost any issue (or just threaten it). You can also count me in one of their horror stories that indirectly cost me £5k and even got to the point where they just flat out refused refunds for my customers who wanted them. I have a Stripe and GoCardless account as well and I've been trying to make it work but their fraud protection is just not up to scratch compared to Google and PayPal, which is a real shame. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to see enough data to get quite the same fraud protection. Stripe do look fun though. Another perspective from a merchant: roll on Bitcoin. With exchanges offering guaranteed payouts in another currency (for me, GBP) I take on zero risk by accepting it and it solves so many problems. There's no wonder more and more websites are starting to accept it.

kitbrennan 13y ago
Hi _Lemon_ I work at GoCardless. I would love to hear your feedback about ways that you think we could improve our fraud protection! Feel free to reply here, or give me an email (kit AT gocardless DOT com), or to call me on 020 7183 8674.
thehodge 13y ago
Someone suggested Bitcoin today, as a merchant, what would you recommend to start accepting it? a third party service?
- clarkm 13y ago
  I've heard good things about https://bitpay.com https://bitpay.com

Lost_BiomedE 13y ago

I am surprised that they will no longer offer processing. The whole reason I even used them was to prevent the need to deal with a payment processor (my current store options for customers are google and paypal). I checked out amazon's offer again and will likely add them as a replacement. They have a lot of existing customers, the charge is reasonable, and I will be able to integrate it in a fairly painless manner.

ChrisNorstrom 13y ago

Google is making the same mistakes Microsoft made. Trying to enter into every industry it can thinking it can use it's monopoly power to take over the world. Reality: Doing 20 things mediocrely is not as profitable of doing 2 things very very well. Result: 1) Constant experiments and dropped products (just like Microsoft). 2) Consumers no longer trust your services to stick around and no longer even invest in your platforms (*see most of Microsoft's offerings). 3) The services you do have aren't the highest quality and your brand takes a hit as being "giant mediocre corporation" like Microsoft instead of "high quality company" like Apple. The more things change the more they stay the same.

_pmf_ 13y ago
> 1) Constant experiments and dropped products (just like Microsoft). > 3) The services you do have aren't the highest quality and your brand takes a hit as being "giant mediocre corporation" like Microsoft instead of "high quality company" like Apple. Yes, Apple never creates duds; we are all happily using our Newton.
- silverlake 13y ago
  And Ping. :)
pvnick 13y ago
This seems to be a mistake that a ton of startups make as well. It's a result of indecisive (read:poor) management and inevitably leads to doing nothing particularly well. One company that I've seen not fall into this trap is Dropbox. Dropbox offers one amazing service and pours all it's efforts into that, and from what I hear they have some insanely smart people working there doing that. As a result they can afford to decline a $6 billion offer from Google and then go on to compete against Google's inferior offering.
- jmhain 13y ago
  Other than the frustrating lack of a linux client, how is drive inferior to dropbox?

codereflection 13y ago

I figured this was going to happen when they announced Wallet, :/. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714531

shubb 13y ago
Good spot
contingencies 13y ago
This is the real story. They're not shutting down at all, they're pivoting their focus within payments to mobile/physical presence. Getting rid of 'card not present' situations means cheaper and more reliable processing, and the physical focus that goes with mobile payments gives additional reasons for Android users to leave their credit card details with Google. Google's fastest growth right now must be in Android-driven Google account signups. I can see why they're focusing on that area, rather than some old, first financial world only, pre-monopolized, credit card not present delayed payments reverse charges web based fraud rule quagmire.

hnolable 13y ago

Anyone have any idea if this effectively terminates any existing recurring Google Checkout subscription payments (on November 20)? If so, that's kind of a big deal. Cutting off merchants from their revenue stream is a great way to get people really angry and could easily destroy a business.

jonknee 13y ago
Did you read the post? > If you don't have your own payment processing, you will need to transition to a different solution within six months. To make things easier, we've partnered with Braintree, Shopify and Freshbooks to offer you discounted migration options. So you have 6 months and several options for migration.
- hnolable 13y ago
  That sentence is confusing at best. "If you don't have your own payment processing" What does that mean? I thought Google Checkout was my payment processor? Do they mean if you already have a payment processor other than Google? And if I _do_ have my own payment processing then I won't need to "transition to a different solution within six months". What does that mean, are they going to give me all the subscribers credit card info so I can start charging their cards myself? I don't think so. As far as I know Braintree only does direct credit card processing, similar to Stripe. If they are planning on migrating all the Google Checkout subscriptions to Braintree credit card subscriptions that would be great but it doesn't sound like that to me. And how would that work for the Google Checkout users who were able to manage their subscriptions through the Google Checkout interface? Does Braintree have an interface for all Google Checkout users or do they lose their interface and need to go through the merchant now?
  - jonknee 13y ago
    Braintree certainly does recurring billing and it's pretty common in these scenarios for the migration to happen between vendors. https://www.braintreepayments.com/tour/recurring-billing https://www.braintreepayments.com/tour/recurring-billing Braintree even helped start http://www.portabilitystandard.org/ http://www.portabilitystandard.org/ to help standardize the migration process. That said, Google Checkout didn't do much in the way of recurring billing. The FAQ says it never made it out of beta. The vast majority of merchants appeared to just be selling the old fashioned way. https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/63440?hl=en https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/63440?hl=en

pbreit 13y ago

This is bizarre considering that the Gmail money thing just launched so Google is remaining in the payment processing business (different from Play in that Checkout and Google Gmail Money are much more accessible to recipients).

dragonwriter 13y ago
> This is bizarre considering that the Gmail money thing just launched so Google is remaining in the payment processing business The "Gmail money" thing is a Google Wallet feature, as Google Wallet doesn't include credit card processing on the merchant side, I suspect that for things where Google is, effectively, the "merchant" (like sending money through Gmail), they are paying a third party for processing services.

bifrost 13y ago

Ugh, this is terrible. The one service I actually used with Google, and they shut it down. In their defense, its been dead for a while, they made the UI horrifying to use and a giant PITA. Glad I got my one last payment in. Time to move to stripe.

droopyEyelids 13y ago
Looks like Google partnered(?) with Braintree, Shopify and Freshbooks-- like you can get a discount for transitioning. Considering how many people mention just moving to Stripe on this thread, I wonder what sort of hoops those three had to jump through to get their names on the page. Also I wonder what part of the process led Google to choose those three over their competitors. It seems like Stripe would have been a natural choice. Anyone know anything about the vetting process and want to comment? It would be interesting if there was a hangup or concern that led to the decision.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  Stripe is only available in North America, and probably lacks the headcount to handle thousands or more new merchants in a short time. Braintree's more than twice as old, more than twice as big, and operates in US/UK/AU/CA/EU. Recommending Stripe would mean sending many of Google Checkout's merchants somewhere that can't help them. Google Checkout, like many third-party processors, is heavily used by merchants outside the US where a traditional merchant account is much more difficult to acquire and integrate.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - simonk 13y ago
    Google Checkout was US/UK only.

jmgrosen 13y ago

Wait, so what's the difference between this and Google Wallet?

dragonwriter 13y ago
> Wait, so what's the difference between this and Google Wallet? With Checkout, Google is a credit card processor. With Wallet, Google isn't a credit card processor, they are partnered with Bankcorp Bank who is issuing virtual cards which are funded either by transferring funds from the users bank account or by charging credit cards.
chromaton 13y ago
This was a system that let online shops take payments. Confusingly, at one point they renamed the service to "Google Wallet".

chromaton 13y ago

This is a real shame. My business was one of the very first to integrate Google Checkout into a website shopping cart after the general release. I did a marathon coding session the first week it came out because I knew that it would be worth some free publicity if I got it working. All of our payments come through either Google Checkout or PayPal. And some people really hate PayPal, so we will be looking for alternatives (Amazon Payments springs to mind). I could see the writing on the wall for Google Checkout a couple years back, though. They failed to add any new features in recent times in order to try to match PayPal. The reporting was weak. E-mail notifications didn't always work right. Declined charges were a hassle. E-mail payment requests couldn't be formatted and were too short. Those were my main complaints, I'm sure there were many more problems faced by people who had different requirements. Checkout had huge potential to integrate into Google's other services. For example, it let Google see directly who the best and most reliable merchants were. In fact, I believe you can still have Adwords show stars on your text ad based upon Checkout customer feedback. Another useful integration is with Analytics. They did attempt some information sharing there. Tying Analytics directly to sales information is fantastic, and I wish they had made them work together better.

taigeair 13y ago

Good thing I'm not using Google Checkout anymore. It's still a shame though. I actually like it more than Paypal but having done some experiments with my ecommerce businesses (e.g. http://www.wellingtonstravel.com/ http://www.wellingtonstravel.com/) I found people trust the Paypal payment option more or are more familiar with it, leading to more conversions. So that's why I went with Paypal over Google Checkout.

braco_alva 13y ago

Could this mean that could expand the number of countries that were supported by checkout? I really hope so, not being able to sell in the Play Store/Chrome Web Store is something we've been looking for a while.

NLPsajeeth 13y ago

Although Google Checkouts is shutting down, Google Wallet for Digital Goods still lives on (https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449 https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449). It offers pretty much the best pricing on the net (most favorable of 5% or 1.9% + 30c (USD) per transaction is automatically applied.) and works in way more countries and currencies than Google Checkout ever did (https://developers.google.com/commerce/wallet/digital/faq https://developers.google.com/commerce/wallet/digital/faq).

diminoten 13y ago
I feel like no one actually read the submission. Google Checkout and Google Wallet overlapped too much, and Wallet won out. If your website uses Checkout, just replace it with Wallet, and move on with your life.
- simonk 13y ago
  Wallet doesn't have payment processing except for items on Google Play.

akandiah 13y ago

I'm a bit uninformed about the capabilities of Google Wallet and Checkout. Anyone care to elucidate the differences? Do they perform the same functions?

aviraldg 13y ago

Uh... calling it a "shutdown" isn't all that close to the truth. They're transitioning from Checkout to Wallet.

eco 13y ago
"Google" + "Shutdown" = instant successful headline
nieve 13y ago
It may be a transition for Checkout users, but it's a shutdown for merchants. * Shutting down payment processing which was a pretty fundamental part of the offering * they're requiring you to reapply to get an instant buy account * They're killing off the APIs It's not a transition if you lose a core feature, don't transition the accounts in any meaningful way, and have to implement a new system - at that point it's about like switching to PayPal (except you get to keep payment processing if you switch).

kintamanimatt 13y ago

I don't trust Google any longer. Google (usually) brings out fantastic products only to neglect and abandon them like a bored toddler. This wave of product discontinuations is making me extremely hesitant to use anything new Google brings out. If Google brought out Gmail today I'd sign up and explore what it's about, but I wouldn't ever give out the email address for fear that it would be snatched back with no or little notice. I'm not going to pretend to know Google's business better than they do, but to me it appears as though they're really dropping the ball here and losing a lot of credibility and trust.

ancarda 13y ago
My trust has been eroded in Google to the point where I am actively seeking a replacement to Google Apps (I have a free account which I can't imagine will be around forever). Also, now with tumblr being bought I'm hesitant to jump ship and host my blog on my own server. Seems like the way forward.
bdowney 13y ago
>This wave of product discontinuations i I see what you did there.
Bockit 13y ago
I wonder how we would have reacted if rather than spacing all these out, they batched them up an did one big announcement with plans for all lines being discontinued. Quick and clean sort of deal.

jpalomaki 13y ago

At some point I thought the master plan behind Google Checkout was to tie the adword payments to actual purchases behavior. So instead of paying per click an advertisers could have paid "per purchase". With enough sites on board Google would probably have been in quite good position in trying to figure out if the user is really going to make the purchase or not. If user is likely to purchase, then show him "pay per purchase" ads otherwise just regular "pay per click".

Shorel 13y ago

Amazon is still a viable alternative to PayPal. I used it to buy the latest Humble Bundle.

eco 13y ago

The post says they are transitioning over to Wallet in the very first sentence. It's amazing how many people are commenting without even getting that far into the link.

pbreit 13y ago

I wonder if anyone besides Braintree will step in with a copy of Google's APIs and try to win some easy business?

jensenbox 13y ago

If you are interested, I have been keeping score: http://jensenbox.github.io/timeline/ http://jensenbox.github.io/timeline/

martindale 13y ago

This title is inaccurate. Google Checkout is being upgraded to Google Wallet, which provides the _exact_ same functionality with more features.

simonk 13y ago
No, they are getting rid of the payment processing.
dennisgorelik 13y ago
Google merged Checkout with Wallet over a year ago. That was unpleasant, but bearable. This time Google is killing what's left of Google Checkout: API and subsriptions. That's much worse. To add an insult to injury, Google uses Doublespeak, so now we have to guess about what's really going to happen.

fixxer 13y ago

I just hope they don't toss Scholar. That thing is salvation.

jmd_akbar 13y ago

does anyone have any idea what happens to the google drive subscription, if you're paying via google checkout?

jacquesm 13y ago

Retiring a payment system is really the ultimate insult to those that invest in your platforms. Imagine the bank that you use for your business transactions, especially recurring billing, to one day walk in and say: so sorry, you won't be able to process your old payments any more, but here is a new and shiny service that we think is better that you'll have to use from now on. Never mind the integration overhead, possible loss of business, customer service issues and all the other headaches that can come from a thing like this. I'm scared just to change bank accounts given how far those bits of information have propagated, losing a billing platform is a nightmare for businesses that rely on it. Why would anyone switch to another service by the same provider that just chose to shut you down or that chose to saddle you up with a bunch of overhead on this years calendar? Google partnering with braintree, shopify and freshbooks is the saving grace here. In payment systems only two things matter: fraud control and continuity. Google excels at the first, drops the ball on the second.