Noca - Payments Simplified | Hacker News Reader

Noca - Payments Simplified

noca.com

75 pointszengr73 comments

god damnit no. the issue is NOT rates, the issue is NOT security, the issue is NOT how "nice" the company is, the issue IS international support.

Paypal are "winning" and will forever "win" because they support EVERYONE. Finding a person who can't use Paypal (who is over the age of 18 and isn't a previously terminated customer) is very hard because it supports (almost) EVERYONE yet these "new" "paypal killers" don't and they won't gain any traction because of this.

and even then there are still bigger issues, but the biggest issue is international support.

Can't send money to a Russian friend over PayPal.[1]

[1] http://profy.com/2011/08/30/paypal%E2%80%99s-epic-fail-in-ru...

or Lebanon ( http://paypaldev.org/yaf_postst6666_Paypal-in-Lebanon.aspx )

The #1 issue to hit "live chat" support on my sites is potential customers in Pakistan hitting a roadblock because they can't use PayPal. There are over 60 countries where PayPal is not available.

I hear you. Though you have to admit that Paypal's heavy-handed "fraud protection" is a big part of why people want a viable competitor.

Compared to my own experiences with even normal merchant account providers, and what I've read of 3rd party processors like 2Checkout, and looking at the state of payment processing for adult sites... if the same people that use PayPal and had problems with fraud were to go anywhere else, they'd probably find it even worse. You only hear about PayPal because it's so ubiquitous with 232 million accounts, so many of them with no other experience with any other method of accepting payments.

It's a difference in expectation. PayPal tips the balance incredibly far in favor of the person spending money, to the point of royally screwing people who receive money, because far more of the former exist and the latter want to get paid. People don't just want another PayPal, they want something less broken. We could do with some decently balanced payment systems, as well as a few "caveat emptor, all sales final" systems, but all of them have to get traction with the people spending money and those people don't see any problem with PayPal.

There are lots of bad stories about Paypal, but I've made a different experience today:

Paypal: Used it for years without any problems so far. As buyer and as seller.

Dwolla: Registered an account several weeks (months?) ago. Didn't use it since then. Today I've tried to log into my account and it seems that essentially the account has been locked and I'm required to upload a photo ID in order to get my account unlocked.

So it seems that other payment providers aren't really better than Paypal. I'm glad I don't have any money stored on Dwolla - let's see how they handle the situation.

my theory is that any payment provider that grows large enough will eventually become just like PayPal

when you enable international processing fraud rates spike (double-digit percentages in some countries) and you end up building an agressive fraud protection scheme like PayPal have

the new startups have the advantage of only serving a relatively small less risky market, and being obscure enough not to be a target of fraud groups

these new startups have nice features such as simple API's etc. but I haven't seen anything yet that is revolutionary in terms of technology that will break out of the fraud/blocking cycle

Edit: to add, I am not being dismissive of the new startups, on the contrary I am using Swipe on a new product, and I really do hope that one of these guys nails this space

@citricsquid

International support will come over time. However Noca is more like a better alternative to Authorize.net. Paypal in shopping cart takes the Consumer away from Merchant site and requires the Consumer to have an account i.e. sign-up. Even with Paypal's high userbase only 1 out of 3 or 4 users in the US have an active Paypal account. Not a good idea to potentially loose majority of Payors/Buyers simply 'cause they don't have Paypal accounts

PayPal does not require an account. Simply click the "Pay as guest" link and it presents a standard billing form.

Further, when you're a small site, I'd think it's preferable to redirect your customers to Paypal's site when they enter their billing information as it gives them confidence that it's secure. As a user myself, I would think twice before typing my CC info into a small obscure website, as I have no idea what kind of security measures they have in place (https is only one piece of the puzzle).

I'm in Australia and am dying for a good alternative to PayPal.

"International support will come over time."

Hehehehe. That's what everyone says when they're getting into the payment game.

> For Secure Check(tm), the merchant needs to have a business checking account in a bank in the United States. And consumers can only pay with a checking or savings bank account with a bank in the United States. Currently for VISA/Mastercard Consumers can pay with Visa/Mastercard issued by a bank in United States. We are however opening up to accepting International cards/Checks soon.

So basically, no, this isn't a real competitor to PayPal at all.

When Paypal launched is did not do "foreign" accounts. We're still in early stage.

But more importantly Noca is more of an alternative to Authorize.net than Paypal (the "Paypal competitor headline came from Techcrunch - not from Noca )

> Paypal (the "Paypal competitor headline came from Techcrunch - not from Noca )

So then why is Paypal part of the side-by-side comparison in the linked page?

Comparison is with 4 different providers and comparing just the rates, not the user experience.

I know PJ, who runs Noca. He's been working on it for several years (it used to be called Paybl). Unfortunately it suffers from the same problems as every other payment system in California that is regulated by the Money Transmission Act, which is to say it's basically illegal as of July 1. Then again, maybe he's changed the business model in some way I'm not aware of.

See...

http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/In-Fifty-Days-Payments-...

http://www.thinkcomputer.com/corporate/whitepapers/heldhosta...

This isn't the first time I've seen a "finally, a real PayPal competitor!" post on Hacker News. I don't think people get it. There isn't going to be one any time soon. PayPal raised a hundred million dollars. It has licenses in 45-ish states and Washington, D.C. that cost about ten million dollars alone. It supports multiple currencies. The dot com boom (and the comparative lack of regulation at the time) is just about the only thing that allowed PayPal to exist. Venture capitalists (and banks) know better now, and they're not enthusiastic about investing in red tape just so Jamie Dimon and friends can make more of it.

Interesting. If that's truly the case, I'd try and shop this to a bank (Chase?) that could help clear those hurdles and let them run like a startup still.

Never going to happen. Chase just launched its first person-to-person payment platform. It's terrible. Despite being for Chase customers only, it's not even real-time.

How long did it take them to build it post-PayPal you might ask?

Twelve years.

Google "c2it" it was a P2P competitor launched by Citibank circa 2000 to take on Paypal. Never went anywhere. So I generally agree that Chase's attempt (combined with Wells and BoA - which I believe are other two banks in the consortium called ClearXexchange ) is unlikely to succeed unless they have some "out of the box approach"

@Aaron (and others who want to change the current payments landscape):

Noca is more of competitor to Authorize.net than it is to Paypal.

"Paypal competitor" headline was written by Techcrunch - not by Noca. As anyone who has been "Techcrunch'ed" knows they don't get to say what they want but instead what Techcrunch wants to about them (No complaints here - I was aware of this when I talked to Techcrunch)

Unfortunately I have little control on how to steer information about my company once the "buzz" has been created.

I will regardless continue to do what I believe in i.e. Build a payment system that doesn't suck! I have been doing it for a while and the opportunity simply keeps getting bigger.

Noca did start with Check payments, however we've pivoted to doing Credit Cards (the reason/explanation is long, maybe I'll post it sometime )

About the Money Transfer licenses - it's not required for Credit Card transactions. Also for "Check" transactions there are limitations and exclusions. If we need to operate without restrictions we will need Money Transfer License, but can operate within restrictions

Just a tip - bloggers will fill in parts of the narrative that you haven't fed them. Readers love comparisons - 'heroku for x' , etc. and if you don't give them one, they will create one for you

tech savvy ppl may roll their eyes at the comparison headlines and call them out for being lazy - but since readers spend seconds scanning headlines you need something that can be grokked by non-tech users quickly

thinkcomp, why the crusade to out every payments related startup with your lay-person opinion that what they are doing is illegal? We wouldn't know for sure until an actual action is brought. As WePay has suggested, there may be ways to conform inexpensively. And other companies may have more appetite for risk, and as PayPal did, wait for success before becoming fully conformant.

Patrick,

Crusade? It affects all of us. Read the law yourself:

http://www.dfi.ca.gov/licensees/moneytransmitters/

If an actual action were brought, PJ (or I or anyone running such a company) could be in jail. But perhaps you're willing to take the risk?

Aaron

You need to stop posting this stuff on HN every time anything payment related comes up.

This is a useful payment offering. However, I'd still offer Google Checkout, Paypal, and Amazon to customers in most contexts, since they're more willing to do a transaction at all -- even if you pay a higher rate, it's better to have the transaction happen. Maybe offer this in addition, but I always feel better when I see multiple payment options.

Stripe (http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/28/stealth-payment-startup-str...) is a great option, when they launch.

Square is 2.75% and no fees for card present; 3.5% and $0.15 for card not present.

ACH (checks) can be $0.25-0.50 flat-rate.

Offering multiple payment options is just fine. Specifically with the "equal preference rule" being rescinded a Merchant can now offer incentives for a specific payment system.

Google Checkout, Paypal and Amazon payments all require the Consumer to sign-up or already have an account with these services. While a number of Users already have an account with Paypal, Google checkout the majority don't. e.g. in case of Paypal (estimates vary ) but only 1 out of 4 online users in the US has a Paypal account. Would you as a Merchant be willing to loose upto 75% of your users ?

As far Stripe: Not live yet but hopefully will be good

Square: is irrelavant since its for Card Present space primarily. Noca is for the CNP Card Not Present space

ACH for $0.25-$0.50 has been around for decades. Its hasn't taken off because nobody has their routing number and account number handy. Take a look at Noca's check offering, it obviated the need to repeatedly input Routing number and Account number. Basically making ACH easier for the Consumer and hence way different than traditional ACH.

Got a link about the "equal preference rule" being rescinded? Sounds interesting and I hadn't heard of it. Googling "equal preference rule credit cards" didn't help me.

At a 3.49% credit card rate, I'm not sure how much of a real competitor it is. No fixed fee helps for smaller sized transactions though.

Notice the rate for Checks its 1.49% Less than half of Paypal's rate. Paypal is able to route approximately 50% of the users to pay using bank accounts which costs almost zero yet they charge the Merchant the same. With Noca the Merchant saves directly when the Consumer pays using Checks so the average rate is much lower than 3.49% (Plus No Other Charges Apply )

(PS: As I posted/mentioned in this thread, Noca is more of an alternative to Authorize.net than Paypal)

Is it common that people are paying for online things with checks? (honest question, nothing I do is worth charging anyone for, so I don't know).

I can tell you (from looking at real world stats) that only 1% of people use eCheck when paying through PayPal.

So it's kind of irrelevant.

The first paragraph of the "About" page is garbled - doesn't inspire confidence, which is paramount for services like this.

What about WePay!? 3.5% flat fee. Supports international payments. Dead simple API. No merchant account required! Plus, it's only 50¢ for e-checks vs Noca's 1.49%. https://www.wepay.com

Looks good, but WePay lacks a number of features found in PayPal, such as recurring payments (aka subscriptions).

Looks much improved since the last time I looked at it. Last time, it looked awesome except that customers had to provide bank account information to pay with it, which will instantly drive away a huge number of customers. Now it looks like they accept credit cards, too, which makes it a viable contender.

In particular, they now have everything they need for the "lightweight payment system market". They still can't address the surprisingly large "I want to pay but I don't have any kind of credit card at all" market, though.

@JoshTriplett

About the "I want to pay but I don't have any kind of credit card at all" - that's where Noca's "Check" system comes in. It allows payments using bank account without having to type in the cumbersome Routing # and Account #

A flat 3.49% (not even including the 20% discount at volume) for credit cards is substantially better than PayPal and Amazon for micro-transactions.

Is there some kind of hidden fee or limitation I'm missing?

There is no other fee. (NOCA = No Other Fees Apply). There is a minimum transaction size, currently at $2.00 i.e. Noca will not accept transactions less than $2.00

Bummer. 99% of our transactions are $1, and so far PayPal is the only merchant that supports this.

It was indeed too good to be true. I think you guys should mention that on the site.

It's not really fair to compare yourself to Amazon's micro transaction fees but not actually accept micro-payments.

I'm waiting for someone to disrupt the "Card Present" side of the industry. I work for a large Point of Sale software provider and the choices and for Payment Gateways are awful. We need things like Noca and Braintree for transactions in the real-world. Our NextGen product is going to be HTML5 web-based client, but we can't find good Payment Gateway partners with a Restful API. If your out there and and working on this, please let me know. Our customers process billions in transactions.

Watch "square"; they're interesting.

They're an interesting company, but not for these reasons. If someone built a payment gateway in the same fashion of Noca and Braintree, but for "Card Present" transactions, it could make it easy for many independent developers to build their own "Square". That's what's missing in the "Card Present" space.

btw....Square uses Authorize.net

Pretty spammy submission. The previous title was "Real competitor to PayPal is here - Noca.com" and it links to a "Fees" page that provides little support (for starters, PayPal is generally less expensive).

The new title "Noca - Payments Simplified" is not much better considering the link is still to the fees page and Noca does not seem simple at all (ex: the signup page is painful).

Finally, the service doesn't appear to be new.

@pbreit

Compare it with Authorize.net not Paypal (as I have said in my earlier posts, the "Paypal competitor headline was written by Techcrunch - not Noca )

It will take you a month or so on an average to setup an account with Authorize.net (if you are a small entity ). The signup form that we have at Noca will give you virtually instant sign-up

Plus did I tell you our API doesn't suck. (It's not perfect yet, we are working out some kinks but basically accepting payments should be simple and easy for any entity launching on the web - something that incumbents don't do )

Authorize.Net is a gateway which seems quite different from Noca. Noca looks more like ProPay, 2Checkout and Stripe.

Fair enough. Noca's look and feel is indeed different

There's a pretty big difference between a gateway and pseudo-merchant account provider.

This looks like a good service, but I still really haven't found anything that is even close to as easy and simple as Stripe.

I am in Australia so have to watch from afar, but I am really keen to see exactly how Stripe operates.

As far as I can work out (I obviously don't have a login) part of what will make them brilliant is they enable you to accept payments in minutes, I.e don't require you to hold a merchant account / create one for you.

Is this correct? Keen to know more as PayPal are really the only other service that do this and their increasingly difficult fraud protection barriers must be a result of the complexity of managing such a service.

Sorry about the late reply, but yeah, that's entirely correct. It's pretty sweet.

Competition is always welcomed in this market. Don't know how much users are going to use checks instead of a card, and the example only seems good in prices comparing agains authorize and paypal for small transactions, not big ones.

I keep on hearing Foo: Payments Simplified, and yet payments are still complex. Is it perhaps that a lot of what people consider accidental complexity in payments is necessary complexity?

@pjg: Do you accept customers having a TPPA (Third Party Payment Aggregation) business model? What are the requirements in order to be accepted as customer?

@gst

We may. I hate to use the phrase "it depends" but unless we know more I cannot give you a conclusive answer. If the TPPA is doing "low risk" transactions e.g. utility billing with a service charge lets say, it should be ok. Higher risk items will be tougher. Send an email to "support@noca.com"

About -> press leads to a 404.

The video player popup moves with mouse on Firefox 6.

Is there a direct link to the demo video? I couldn't get it to play on the site.

Anyone used this?

impt question: international customers?

i add another: international merchants?

In the FAQ is says 'Is this legal is all 50 states' so I'm guessing its USA only.

They need to add this answer to the FAQ

THIS NOT SUPPORT MECHRANTS OUTSIDE UNITED STATES ;-( like amazon and authorize.net

PayPal Win;-)

What about Amazon Payments? Is that a good Paypal alternative?

2.9% + $0.30 for transactions above $10

So it's exactly the same costs.

https://www.xkcd.com/918/ seems to apply perfectly to that.

Yay !! for micro payments.

3.49 is too much for large transactions.

>minimum transaction size is $2.00

PayPal does a number of things (stored value system, aggregation, virtual terminal, etc). I'm not sure how Noca is a competitor at all. Also, this page has a number of inaccuracies. For example, chargebacks don't exist for checks, Authorize.net as a standalone doesn't enable payments at all (it is a gateway, you also need a merchant account, which you could get cheaper than at Noca), etc. It does NOT take months to sign up with Authorize.net, you can get setup in an hour.

Noca is relevant if it is somehow 3.49% for all transactions though... It would make it a cheap option for transactions <$10 or so.

@pitdesi

I do need to compliment you on deciphering Noca's service - it is more an Alternative to Authorize.net than Paypal (Thank you for pointing it out ). You are correct, Authorize.net is not a gateway but an aggregator (most people confuse them for a gateway) and yes Noca will will provide a similar service much better

About Chargebacks: They do exist for Checks. They're just not called "Chargebacks" instead they are called ACH returns, specifically return code R10 (google "ACH return code R10" )

Its just that ACH i.e. Check payments are not pervasive online hence knowledge about Chargebacks or the ability of the individual Payor i.e. Consumer to initiate a chargeback is generally not known. Unlike Credit Cards, Checks do not have an "800" number printed on the back that the Consumer can call to dispute a payment. However the rules set by the Federal government i.e. the Fed are similar/identical (google "Reg E" or FED regulation 12 CFR 205 specifically 205.6 if you really want to read the rule ). So the issue is more of Consumer interface/UX/UI and Consumer education - something that can and needs to be solved.

Can I make deposits to a client account using this? Instead of debiting from the accounts of my users I want to deposit in them (presumably using their account and routing numbers.

Not yet. But our Marketplace solution should be able to provide you with you are looking for. Send an email to "support@noca.com"

Thanks! I will.

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