Best and Worst Payment Processing Service Providers
I plan on opening up an online business of some sort in the near future, so I'm wondering who you think the best and worst payment processing service providers are? Please share any experience you have dealing with such service providers!
It really depends on your needs. I, for example, decided to rely on a reseller to avoid handling all the VATMOSS stuff myself, invoicing, and all the things that come with handling customers directly.
Gumroad, Paddle, Fastspring they all do this for you.
Thanks I'll check 'em out.
While I understand the sentiment here (it is a Stripe powered community after all) and I know of the horror stories about PayPal, I'm still using it for the sole reason that nothing else is available in my country. If I had all the options Stripe would probably be the best bet as it seems to have a very sane developer friendly setup. PayPal is horrible to integrate and is mostly trial and error + a bunch of random snippets + docs you pick up to make a full spec of what you need.
Stripe Atlas adds too much complexity for a small 1 man startup that is bootstraped.
What's the diff between atlas and regular stripe?
With Atlas you effectively start a US based company (with their help which afaik is great) and basically run Stripe with it. While regular atlas is just the payment processor we all know.
thanks. is it practical to start a US company if youre not based in the US tho?
Probably depends a lot on where you are doing it from. Generally they help a lot, but in my case still not worth the hassle, at least not early on - I'd be dealing with double taxation, accountants and probably a lot of fun legal stuff to get it all running smoothly.
IMO, Stripe is the best payment processor out there.
Ideally, though, you shouldn't have to worry too much about your payment processor. When you get to payments and billing, you should build a billing system where you're never tied down to a specific payment processor and your data is portable so you have freedom down the road to switch processors. For example, if you're processing a lot of $$$, for example, you might be able to get a lower rate with someone else.
Shameless plug--my day job is with Cheddar and their billing API is payment processor agnostic. (You can switch payment processors at any time)
Thanks for sharing. I'll def check it out. How would one go about creating their own billing system? Or were simply suggesting using a different API?
Yep, different API. I'm not sure what type of business you're planning on opening, but I chimed in to suggest worrying less about your payment processor and more on your billing system (and yes, billing api). As long as your payment processor provides data portability, you can always switch it down the line.
Best === Stripe. Don't even worry about the rest.
My experience - Stripe best, PayPal worst.
never had any issue with Paypal, why the worst? Stripe does not have microtransactions - if you have a $1 transaction you will have +$0.30 fee.
PayPal is certainly the worst. I've never used their payment processing service, but I've had to deal with their shenanigans on more than one occasion before!
Stripe is awful, just ask @csallen 😜
Lol but for real, my day job has stuck with the same payment processor for years despite them having awful customer service and APIs all because they have a super low rate. They don't recognize that our billing person spends 20 hours a week doing stuff she doesn't need to because of them. Sometimes you get what you pay for. I use Stripe for a handful of different things and I am a huge fan.
Lol who is @csallen?
The fearless leader of IH. Which is owned by Stripe. I apologise for my terrible joke lol
This is where I start editing all your comments to say "P.S. Stripe is awesome" at the end 😇
is it true, are you owned by Stripe?
ahh, what do you mean he's owned by Stripe? is this another joke?
@csallen isn’t owned by Stripe. Indiehackers.com is owned by stripe
when did Stripe buy indiehackers.com and for how much?!?!
Oh, it’s been over a year. I thought it was common knowledge. Here’s the post https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/acquired-by-stripe
i dont follow IH religiously...
🤔, scroll to the bottom of the page.
I've been going through this the past few weeks for my new startup. It really depends on what service are you after, what payment methods you will accept, how will the payments be taken (hosted vs self-hosted).
I'd recommend checking out Stripe, it's got one of the best APIs out there, really easy to set up and also works with many other third party software.
Otherwise, just search for payment processors and check out the reviews, you need to make sure that they have support - actual support that can help. I've ended up rejecting a few of the ones I initially tried due to this reason.
Hope this helps!
Thanks for the advice!