choosing a payment processor for donations

[Cade Cairns]

Hi everyone,

I've been spending time on and off lately investigating possible payment processing solutions so Vila Pinto can start accepting donations through their website. I was curious to find out what kind of rates they offered and had discussions with various people within TW about what kinds of solutions they used. I've been looking into payment processing with the following objectives in mind:

• Make payments to possible through multiple sources
• Credit cards
• Brazilian banks
• Facebook
• Support recurring payment schemes
• Choose an approach that we can hopefully reuse on other nonprofit websites within Brazil

When evaluating sites I considered the following:

• Can payments be made without leaving the nonprofit's website?
• Fees
• Setup fee
• Monthly fee
• Cost per transaction
• Discount for being a nonprofit?
• Is a Ruby/Rails API available?
• How difficult is it to register as a nonprofit? e.g. US processors require 501(c)(3) status
• Are funds held in BRL? USD?
• Will the processor freeze funds as PayPal does?
• What kind of security is employed?
• Is there any indication the processor's security has ever been compromised?

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get pricing information from some of the nonprofit payment processors I saw such as Braintree and Blackbaud. PayPal was the best I've found so far with a fee of 2.2% per transaction plus $0.30, assuming we're able to register as a nonprofit.

Rodrigo sent me a list of some processors in the past. His vision is to suport accepting donations in the way http://www.101viralatas.com.br/ does. Since I don't know Portuguese well, I need some help from people to investigate the following (and find others!)

• Pag Seguro
• Moip
• PayPal (does paypal.com.br have a fee schedule for Brazilian nonprofits?
• Mercado Pago
• Action Aid
• All Pago

Can a few people help me assemble data and identify more Brazilian payment processors?

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Cade Cairns

ThoughtWorks Canada

[Alexandre Klaser]

Hey Cade,

Don't forget the dreaded "boletos"... (ask anyone from iba about that)

Maybe we can come up with an alternative solution, using some crowdfunding site (like www.vakinha.com.br or some devoted specifically to social causes). 

I'm not aware of possible legal implications that may make this option impracticable, but maybe it's worth looking.

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Alexandre Klaser

ThoughtWorks Brazil
+55 51 9976.1704

[Edilson Junior]

IMO the problem with vakinha is that you need targets/campaigns to get good results. I don't know how it would work for Vila Pinto.

@Cade: did you send this email outside of Vila Pinto email list? I think we can find folks from the office that have already used one of theses alternatives or another we don't know.

Regards,

Edilson Ales - http://about.me/juniorales

Consultant Developer @ ThoughtWorks - POA

[Rodrigo Salles]

Hey Cade,

I think the points that you touched are indeed the most importants. If we can find out how the different brazilian payment processors work, we can make a decision. On the other hand, as you have the information from many collegues that PagSeguro is the best, we could check their conditions and try it.

Rodrigo

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 7:59 PM, Cade Cairns <ca...@thoughtworks.com> wrote:

Here is the email I sent to our list with criteria for researching payment processors.

[Fabio Maia]

Hey guys,

I have some points about pagseguro gateway:

1) Good: It's one of the easiest to implement in Rails because they provide ruby gem for it.

2) Good: We don't need to keep users payment data in our system.

3) Good: It does not required the site to have a secure connection (SSL). The users are redirect to the pagseguro domain during the payment step (Pageseguro domain has a secure connection during the payment).

4) Good: There is a lot of payment options including "boleto"

4) Bad: It's not integrated with our site because the users are redirected to other domain to finish the donation payment.

5) Bad: The users need to create an account in the pagseguro to finish the payment. This can make users to give up to donate.

6) Bad: Pagseguro does not provide recurring payment option.

If we are looking for more options I know about Braspag (http://www.braspag.com.br/). I never used it but what know is:

1) Good: It's one of the most used payment gateways in Brazil. Some of their clients are: americanas, submarino, netshoes, dell (http://www.braspag.com.br/clientes-e-parceiros/)

2) Good: I was told that the taxes are less expensive than pagseguro

3) Good: We can implement the payment in a transparent way. We'll be able to implement the payment system in the site ithout the need to redirect to another domain

4) Good: The user won't need to create an account before donation. I think this will make the process much faster and the donation rate can be increased.

5) Good: They provide recurring payment

6) Bad: Our site needs to have a SSL connection.

7) Bad: They provide a webservice. I don't think we have a gem for it.

8) Bad or Good?: The owner of this payment gateway is the Grupo Silvio Santos (mais ôee, ha hai, hi hi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoYsrNSj9OM)

Regards,

Fabio Maia.

 

[Nelice Heck]

Fabio and Cade,

Thank you very much for your inputs!

Adding Girão since he has been working with several payment gateways and might help us to solve the questions raised by Cade and Fabio.

Girão,

Please, take a look on this thread and see what you could suggest. I liked the braspag option and I know we were about to implement it on iba. If you have something in specific about these payment gateways..please go ahead and share it!

Regards,

Nelice Heck

ThoughtWorks Brazil 

Business Analyst
nh...@thoughtworks.com 

www.thoughtworks.com

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