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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

It's a different kettle of fish in the UK. It's a lot easier to get a merchant account for a non-established business in the US. While the British banking system has become incrdibly liberal in the last 20 years, it still lags in the merchant account department and you have to do a bit of legwork. It's not uncommon to need to send a business plan or spend time on the phone convincing a provider of your worth, for example.

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It's different in the UK but it's even worse for mainland Europe. Many subscription billing services don't support businesses that don't have a registered bank account or address in the US or UK. Many payment gateways won't work with you unless you're located in the US or UK, especially the larger American ones like Braintree or Authorize.net. And unfortunately, it's these larger ones that have solved most of the integration and vertical problems that you end up still having to face in Europe. So you end up having to settle for a second-rate, customer-unfriendly, enterprise-oriented, backwards payment gateway like Ogone or Atos Worldline (both of which we had to settle for). The only reason these guys are still in business is because the American services haven't spread to Europe yet.

Thankfully, Spreedly does support European payment gateways, and that's why Spreedly kicks ass.

I remain stunned that neither Google, Amazon, or PayPal have brought serviceable solutions to the continent yet. It's 2011, for Christ's sake!

Maybe it's European banking regulations and laws that are the reason for a) the current sad state of affairs and b) the inability for Google and others to enter the marketplace? I don't know much about the situation, but given the size of the market, I wouldn't be surprised if that's what's getting in the way.

The fact that there's such trouble in handling something as fundamental as getting payments from customers really imposes a significant impedance on tech startups in the region. I can see why some Euro companies are compelled to relocate when they want to seek significant, unimpeded growth.

We techies live in a borderless world, but alas, the rest of the world doesn't. Sigh.

Amazon have no plans to do so in the near future either, their AWS Evangelist Matt Wood told me so last week at their London conference.

I wholly agree, certainly don't try to obtain a merchant account for an online travel agency, we were viewed alongside porn and gambling.

On a more recent note though I have been looking for a marketplace merchant solution, Braintree and Amazon flexible payment service are pretty much the only real solutions out there for my needs. Braintree requires I have a US registered company and a US office (I'm working on that part for the application) and Amazon has no plans to extend FPS to the UK (the answer coming direct from the horses mouth at the AWS conference I attended last week).

Is it any wonder with constraints and lack of VC funding in the UK that the country cannot garner growth and has lost it's ability to be a leading entreprenuerial force.

Agreed. Though I don't find it too surprising. The UK is merely a fifth of the size of the US, has localization requirements, and has a conservative populace in relation to tech issues (where's the UK's Reddit, Facebook, or Y Combinator that has gathered serious traction or name recognition?)

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