Which payment gateway?

[Hendro Wijaya]

Hi,

 

Does anyone have experience on which payment gateway is best for Australian startup that is targeting toward global user?

We plan to charge in US dolar but the company is in Australia.

 

I've read few discussion in HN and a lot of people talk about Authorize.net, Paypal, Amazon or Google Checkout.

But, they're mostly US companies.

 

So, just curious on what is best for Oz companies.

Thanks in advance.

 

Best Regards,
Hendro Wijaya

[@ungerik]

Haven't used it, but http://www.paymate.com/ is an Australian service.

-Erik

[Julian Tol]

http://www.paycorp.com.au/ are very good.

[nic...@gmail.com]

We use verisign, a bit of a bitch to setup but very low transaction costs.
Sent from my BlackBerry® from Optus

-----Original Message-----
From: "@ungerik" <ma...@ungerik.net>

Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 20:26:18
To: Silicon Beach Australia<silicon-bea...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [SiliconBeach] Re: Which payment gateway?

[Brad]

Payment Express by DPS are an NZ firm with offices and support in
Australia. We resell their services (PX Post) and find them very good,
very reliable.

Like any payment gateway they have a number of example scripts you can
start with.

http://www.paymentexpress.com/

~ brad
http://twitter.com/bradpollard
http://netlife.com.au

[Gürkan]

Hi Hendro,
I am not sure which payment gateway is best but this depends on your
requirements especially if you are trying to sell customers that are
in US.

When I was looking for an open source solution to "setting up CC
transactions in an e-commerce site" I found that osCommerce has an add-
in for SunCorp and ANZ gateways and installing this is fairly easy
(http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,3968). I didn't
have a chance to test the add-in yet as it requires the merchant
account with SunCorp or ANZ. The package at the link has also an
explanatory document about how CC transaction gateway works which I
found very useful as I didn't know at all how these transactions work.

The reason for going with a bank rather than a payment gateway
provider is in most cases you need to have accounts both in payment
gateway provider and at a bank (like Virtual POS membership from
SunCorp) which increase the costs.

Regards,

Gurkan Yeniceri
http://www.linkedin.com/in/gyeniceri
http://twitter.com/gyeniceri

On May 10, 3:53 am, "Hendro Wijaya" <hendro_wij...@hotmail.com> wrote:

[Rolf]

Hi Hendro,

Do you already have an Internet Merchant Account with your bank? Some
Australian banks don't allow you to charge in US dollars. So check
that first. We will only trade in Australian Dollars and decided to go
with eway. Setup was easy. We also investigated Netregistry and liked
their pricing (flat fee, regardless of volume of transactions) but
they couldn't work with our bank, which was the deal stopper.

Regards,
rolf
brandsExclusive.

[rodrigu...@gmail.com]

The only multi currency merchant bank is NAB.




-----------------------------------------
Sent by emoze push mail

-original message-
Subject: [SiliconBeach] Re: Which payment gateway?

[Hendro Wijaya]

Hi,

Thanks all for the reply. This community rocks! =D

No, I haven't setup any account yet.

To give credit, our model is similar to Mobiusly' FormBinder (Dave Cheong).
They're using NAB with eWay. I might go with that path too since I heard
that NAB is the only bank that deal with multi-currency.

Regards,
Hendro

twitter: hwijaya


--------------------------------------------------
From: "Rolf" <sonn...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 2:17 PM

To: "Silicon Beach Australia" <silicon-bea...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: [SiliconBeach] Re: Which payment gateway?

>

[Kai Waldon]

Is this including HSBC?

Thanks for info Guys

Kai Waldon

[Mark Mansour]

I'm in the same situation and I've just started my investigation into this (so my info may be a bit off - can someone comment on how right it is?)

My requirements are:

* customers pay in USD

* recurring payments - I'm providing a subscription service

* full control over the UI

Retaining full control over the UI is important to me because you lose a lot of people between initiating the checkout and completing the payment and I want to do everything I can to smooth that path.  It also means that I need to be PCI compliant which is a security check to make sure I'm not doing anything stupid with credit cards and that my system has been security hardened to an "acceptable" level.  I think security hardening your site is good practice to the PCI compliance is not a big deal to me.

I'm pretty hesitant to use the NAB solution because (and I'd love this to be wrong, can someone verify this?)

* The multi-currency facility fees are higher than I think is reasonable:

  * $1200 setup fee

  * annual fees of (28 + (7 + 22)* 12) ~= $350

  * transaction fees of 10c +4.3% 

* their "advanced financial management software program" is managed with a WINDOWS DESKTOP CLIENT (they explicitly don't support Apple or Unix OSs) and doesn't use the internet. It instead requires something called a 56k modem.

* It also requires a USD$5000 deposit to open the account (do you need to maintain this as a float?)

On top of this I believe you also need a gateway to hook up the NAB Internet merchant facilities.  I haven't costed these solutions.

The other solution I've been looking into is WorldPay (owned by Royal Bank of Scotland).  They too are not cheap but:

* standard account setup fee is 0 (well, it is waived on a promo deal) + $280 for the recurring payment feature

* $430 annual fee

* transaction fees of 16c +3.95% 

* for the first 6 months (i.e. until they trust you are not a scammer) they hold your money for 4 weeks before you can get to it.

Worldpay acts as both an internet merchant facility and a gateway provider.

I did some very quick calculations and both WorldPay and NAB end up costing the same (very roughtly) with the exception of the setup fee where there is about a $1000 difference and the requirement for gateway provider for NAB.

I've started a spreadsheet with some very rough calculations and made it editable by anyone.  If anyone is keen to add to it then that would be great.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rUI9-mGk4vfNVDUC4MRELHg

Does anyone have more info on this?

Mark

--
Mark Mansour
ma...@stateofflux.com

[Michael A.]

Like others have commented, NAB is the only merchant account to accept
USD (at least when we investigated last year).

We eventually opted for a combined merchant account/payment gateway
with Worldpay which gives us USD processing and more.

Cheers,
Michael

--
Hire'm
www.hirem.com

> > From: "Rolf" <sonnen...@gmail.com>

> > Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 2:17 PM
> > To: "Silicon Beach Australia" <silicon-bea...@googlegroups.com>
> > Subject: [SiliconBeach] Re: Which payment gateway?
>
> > Hi Hendro,
>
> > Do you already have an Internet Merchant Account with your bank? Some
>
> > Australian banks don't allow you to charge in US dollars. So check
>
> > that first. We will only trade in Australian Dollars and decided to go
>
> > with eway. Setup was easy. We also investigated Netregistry and liked
>
> > their pricing (flat fee, regardless of volume of transactions) but
>
> > they couldn't work with our bank, which was the deal stopper.
>
> > Regards,
>
> > rolf
>
> > brandsExclusive.
>
> > Kai Waldon
>
> --
> Mark Mansour

> m...@stateofflux.com

[Brad]

According to the following Multi Currency table the following banks
can accept transactions in US dollars:

http://www.paymentexpress.com/knowledge_base/merchants/multi_currency.html

Bank of New Zealand (BNZ)
NAB
Citibank Singapore
UK HSBC
Westpac Pacific Islands

Does anyone know whether an Australian based business can open a
merchant account with BNZ, Citibank Singapore, UK HSBC or Westpac
Pacific Islands? If so, it might be worthwhile checking out their
prices also.

~ brad
http://twitter.com/bradpollard
http://netlife.com.au

[Dave Cheong]

Hi all,

As already mentioned, I only recently implemented credit card processing for FormBinder and I did it with eWay/NAB. This eWay/NAB combination allowed me to:

- charge in USD

- handle recurring payments

- retain full UI control

- handle variable amounts (eg user changing plans)

- deal with an Australian institution

According to my research, NAB is currently the only Australian bank that deals with multi-currency.

NAB has a $1200 setup fee, but I wasn't required to have the $5000 USD deposit. There is an additional $25 transaction fee every time I want to transfer money to/from the account. Access to my USD merchant account is possible either by going to a branch (yes, physically in person) or via their "National Online" software. This software requires a Windows machine (works on my Bootcamp Mac) and a 56k dial-up modem.

CBA also have a product that deals with USD, but it is in beta and not opened to the general public. You need to have large transaction volumes in order to be eligible for the beta, and I wasn't able to meet the criteria.

eWay provides a SOAP/XML api to create a managed customer account (ie credit card) and handle payments. Recurring payments is done via a monthly scheduler from my end which invokes the api periodically with the managed customer id and the payment amount.

The integration to the gateway and my code was relatively simple (1-2 days of work) but the admin and paper work associated with getting setup and compliant was unnecessarily painful and drawn out. The main things they look for are:

- SSL

- About us

- Contact details

- Terms and Conditions

- Privacy Policy

- Refund Policy

- Business plan (revenue projections, transaction volumes)

Both eWay *and* NAB require separate accounts for every currency supported. This isn't a problem for me as I only deal with USD, but this is clearly not a scalable solution if you're looking at expanding to other currencies.

If you're reading this in complete shock, you're right. I can't believe that it is 2009 and Australia doesn't have a viable payment gateway solution to support online/recurring services. We can talk about growing the startup community via Silicon Beach all we want but the sad fact is Australia doesn't have enough support structures in play to make it easy to start an online business.

Happy to help if anyone has further questions.

Dave Cheong

da...@mobiusly.com

Mobiusly Pty Ltd

FormBinder is a zero-fuss service to help you create surveys and forms, configure their look and feel and host them online to collect data. It's super easy and fun. You don't have to be a whiz at technology, install any software or worry about hosting, security and backups. We take care of all that. All you have to do is type in your questions, choose a theme, tweak some colours and start collecting data.

http://formbinder.com

[Elias Bizannes]

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 10:50 PM, Dave Cheong <d...@davecheong.com> wrote:

If you're reading this in complete shock, you're right. I can't believe that it is 2009 and Australia doesn't have a viable payment gateway solution to support online/recurring services. We can talk about growing the startup community via Silicon Beach all we want but the sad fact is Australia doesn't have enough support structures in play to make it easy to start an online business.

That's exactly the point! Bring smart people together - get them talking - create the change we need :) Up until yesterday, I didn't even realise this was an issue for Australian business.

It's amazing how much knowledge has just been poured into this discussion - next step is to identify what is ideal and let the banks know as a broad industry response. Worst case scenario...is that things stay the same.

Elias Bizannes
http://eliasbizannes.com

[Hendro Wijaya]

Now I'm shocked with $1200 setup fee + $25 transaction fee and business plan.

Although this sounds like an opportunity for another startup to shake-up that old banking industry.

 

I'm curious how other Australian startups did it. GoodBarry, Atlassian (well, when they first started out).

Theoretically, they're employing the same freemium model.

 

Cheers,

Hendro

[Dave Cheong]

Hi Elias,

Thanks for the reply and you're totally right. Sorry, if I came off slightly negative - thinking about payment gateways has reopened an old scabby wound :) And yes, I'm in total support of the Silicon Beach effort and I hope our discussions lead to concrete changes that help newbie entrepreneurs like me and make the barriers to starting up less daunting.

dave

[Dave Cheong]

Hi Hendro,

To be honest, I had already forgotten about the $1200 setup fee. It was a hard pill to swallow at first, but it's a once off and you can amortise the cost (monetary, coding, integration and infrastructure) over any and all products your company will deploy over the cost of its life. 

The business plan isn't as scary as it sounds - I whipped mine up in 2 hours with some Excel wizardry. All they are looking for here is transaction volumes and the dollar amounts you are going to pump through their systems over the next 12-24 months. I don't think they have the expertise in your specific business domain to validate if your numbers are off track or unrealistic.

dave

[Sriram Panyam]

Wow $1200?  I know this sounds silly (and slightly off topic), but all of a sudden Apple charging you 30% to handle payments and distribution seems like pittence doesnt it?  Atleast for a smalltime developer whose only assets are his/her coding and design skills?

cheers
Sri

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Hendro Wijaya <hendro...@hotmail.com> wrote:

--
Blog: http://panyam.wordpress.com

[byro...@gmail.com]

Hi Hendro,

I work for DPS / Payment Express out of the Sydney office. If you like
I can have a chat with you with all your available options as NAB
might not be your only choice regarding merchant acquiring. You can
contact me via my direct line which is (02) 8268 7703 or alternatively
on 1800 006 254.

Regards,

Byron Kelly
Ecommerce Analyst.

On May 10, 3:53 am, "Hendro Wijaya" <hendro_wij...@hotmail.com> wrote:

[Nathan de Vries]

Hi Hendro,

You should give Daniel Goncalves a call at United Payments (1300 306
679). My understanding is that he runs the only non-bank merchant
banking facility in Australia (out of Sydney). I haven't worked with
him professionally, but we always have a good chat when we bump into
each other at the local café. At the very least he'll be able to point
you in the right direction, since his head has been in this space for
a number of years.

Cheers,

Nathan de Vries

[Hendro Wijaya]

Sure. Thanks.
I will give both Daniel and Byron a call.

Cheers,
Hendro

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Nathan de Vries" <nat...@atnan.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 10:45 AM

To: <silicon-bea...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [SiliconBeach] Re: Which payment gateway?

>

[Joseph Renzi]

All,

This has been a really useful discussion (thank you) ... I am looking
for a slightly different solution and I was wondering is anyone has
any answers for me ...

In summary, we already have a WorldPay account, which will allow us to
collect in multiple currencies, but this only allows us to redeem the
money into our Australian bank account .... but we want to redeem our
money in different currencies to OFFSHORE bank accounts.

For example, we would like to collect USD and have that deposited into
our US bank account (as USD, with no currency conversion) and also
collect GBP and have that deposited into our UK bank account (as GBP,
with no currency conversion).

Anyone know any service providers that can do this for us?

[Andrew Rogers]

Joseph,

My understanding is that the reason for needing services such as that
which WorldPay offers is to be able to accept payments in currencies
associated with countries that you don't reside in or have bank
accounts in. If you have a presence in the UK or US to the degree that
you were able to establish a bank account there, wouldn't you also be
able to also establish a standard merchant services account there?
Once you have the merchant account you would configure a payment
gateway from a third party or directly with the bank to process
payments.

I might be missing something, but I would have thought it to be the
same as setting up an Australian merchant account clearing into an
Australian bank account in AUD except you're doing it in the US/UK in
the respective local currency?

> --
> Andrew Rogers - Managing Director
>
> Hosting ruminations : http://anchor.com.au/blog
> We did the thinking for you : http://anchor.com.au/wiki
>
> Anchor Systems Pty Ltd - Hosting Heavyweights
> Level 4, 81 York Street, Sydney NSW 2000
> andrew...@anchor.com.au - http://www.anchor.com.au
> Phone: 1300 883 979 - Direct: 02 8296 5100 - Fax: 8296 5199

[Joseph Renzi]

Andrew,

The main difference is that to establish the merchant account in each
country often requires you to set a up business in those countries (we
are fortunate enough to have bank accounts in other countries without
having to set up a company in those countries).

Additionally, we hope to add additionally currencies, like CAD, EURO,
NZD etc and we hoping to find a global solution that handles a number
of currencies.

Yes, we could obtain a merchant account in each different country, but
this would cost extra establishment fees (and other fees) for each
country as well as the cost of programming each different solution
etc ... I was hoping for maybe a global solution that accepts multiple
currencies and will redeem that money into different bank accounts in
different countries.

Any further thoughts?

I find it hard to believe that we are the only people looking for such
a solution.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Joe

On May 13, 9:11 pm, Andrew Rogers <andrew.rog...@anchor.com.au> wrote:
> Joseph,
>
> My understanding is that the reason for needing services such as that  
> which WorldPay offers is to be able to accept payments in currencies  
> associated with countries that you don't reside in or have bank  
> accounts in. If you have a presence in the UK or US to the degree that  
> you were able to establish a bank account there, wouldn't you also be  
> able to also establish a standard merchant services account there?  
> Once you have the merchant account you would configure a payment  
> gateway from a third party or directly with the bank to process  
> payments.
>
> I might be missing something, but I would have thought it to be the  
> same as setting up an Australian merchant account clearing into an  
> Australian bank account in AUD except you're doing it in the US/UK in  
> the respective local currency?
>
> > --
> > Andrew Rogers - Managing Director
>
> > Hosting ruminations :http://anchor.com.au/blog
> > We did the thinking for you :http://anchor.com.au/wiki
>
> > Anchor Systems Pty Ltd - Hosting Heavyweights
> > Level 4, 81 York Street, Sydney NSW 2000

> > andrew.rog...@anchor.com.au -http://www.anchor.com.au

> > Phone: 1300 883 979 - Direct: 02 8296 5100 - Fax: 8296 5199
>
> On 13/05/2009, at 8:15 AM, Joseph Renzi wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > All,
>
> > This has been a really useful discussion (thank you) ... I am looking
> > for a slightly different solution and I was wondering is anyone has
> > any answers for me ...
>
> > In summary, we already have a WorldPay account, which will allow us to
> > collect in multiple currencies, but this only allows us to redeem the
> > money into our Australian bank account .... but we want to redeem our
> > money in different currencies to OFFSHORE bank accounts.
>
> > For example, we would like to collect USD and have that deposited into
> > our US bank account (as USD, with no currency conversion) and also
> > collect GBP and have that deposited into our UK bank account (as GBP,
> > with no currency conversion).
>

> > Anyone know any service providers that can do this for us?- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Gary]

Hi Hendro,

I have also been looking for a payment gateway solution but I'd rather
save the money I'd have to spend setting one up elsewhere so we use
PayPal. I guess it depends on the size of your transactions, mine are
between 29-49USD subscription a go so PayPal works well.

PayPal doesn't cost anything you just pay a small percentage of each
transaction. It accepts major credit cards, works in most currencies
and also allows people with PayPal accounts who don't have credit
cards to use the account.

It's quick off the ground and we use it for subscriptions to good
effect on http://builtwith.com. PayPal provides "instant payment
notification" services so we can setup customers who pay automatically
for the service.

We charge in USD to everyone and then just transfer it to a local AU
bank account which I do whenever the account reaches the equivalent of
$1000 AUD whatever that is in USD at the time. The bank account
doesn't have to be a merchant account.

The only downside to PayPal is the payment page, it has their look and
feel and all you can do is put a banner image at the top of the page.
That is the only reason I would change providers, to have my own
payment screen for a more professional look.

I went to CEBIT the other day and eway had a deal (http://
www.eway.com.au/offer code:start) for a cheap starter package but they
still charge a % of each transaction as well as a $29AUD monthly fee
which is $29AUD more than using PayPal.


Hope that helps,


Gary
http://builtwith.com
http://optimizer.builtwith.com

[Hendro Wijaya]

Hi Gary,

Thanks a lot. That is very helpful.

Yes, after learning about all those hassles, i am also considering to go
with PayPal first in the early days.
At least, until the market etc is proven, then, we might consider to switch
to eWay and other providers.

Cheers,
Hendro

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Gary" <gbr...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 10:00 PM
To: "Silicon Beach Australia" <silicon-bea...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: [SiliconBeach] Re: Which payment gateway?

>

[Aussie Phil]

In my last company I did as you ask - we put $US into a US account,
$AU into an Australian account. But we did this by having two
different payment solutions. We ran a US subsidiary, which allowed us
to take advantage of the US tax and business laws, funded by $US
sales. Something to think about.

P.S. Take a look at these guys - http://www.fiftyone.com/ haven't
used them, but looks very cool.

[IPscape Simon]

We have used eWay (www.eway.com.au) successfully in Aus for over a
year. I assume they can manage multi currency but do check that.
Email the Founder and MD, (Matt Bullock) on c...@eway.com.au - mention
my name and see how you go.

regards
Simon