Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to check these links since I already know it's going to be the same. I will not hold my breath for international support either.
Someone recently suggested checking out paymate.com. Yes, they're international and best of all, they say they're committed to reducing unfair chargebacks that PayPal customers have become so accustomed too.
I've tried Moneybookers, but they're a little iffy (bad reports about account limitations). So next step is definitely PayMate.com. Fingers crossed.
1) We don't have a lot of money to build this thing (Samurai).
2) We are in Chicago, IL, USA. We are familiar with the laws and customs in Chicago. We speak the local language.
3) The laws and language from Chicago, IL, USA happen to be more or less applicable across a very large and fairly wealthy single market. Merchants near Chicago, IL, USA tend to be in their offices when I'm awake and my kids are at school.
4) Let's start with that market and expand to others once we get the resources to do so.
Honestly, American startups don't purposely omit non-US markets. But when you're trying to get to profitability on limited funding, this train of logic will come up and you really need a good reason to decide to pick an unfamiliar market to start.
I'm not sure "there are plenty of viable US options" is entirely accurate. I've tried a bunch of options, and found them all to suck to one degree or another. We're currently using PayPal Web Payments Pro...it also sucks. But, at least their pricing is sane and comprehensible, and I don't hate life when dealing with them fro chargebacks and such (it's all on the web, and no faxing is involved, as was the case with every other merchant services provider I've ever tried or contacted, including supposedly modern options).
Merchant services is shockingly archaic in the US. It may be even more shockingly archaic in the rest of the world, but it's definitely not good here. I'll definitely look into this when it becomes available.
Anyway, payment processing is a solved problem in the Netherlands. Which other countries have sensible, cheap payment, easy-to-implement solutions that are widely used?
The options I have looked at in the Netherlands all seem really bad or run on ancient technology. You can't even get Paypal Payments Pro, Amazon payments or google checkout. You can't get Braintree or any of the other web 2.0 payment processors.
Ogone looks sort of OK, but I don't know of any others.
But if you want to do international recurring payments you don't have that much options in the Netherlands.
You can go with one of the following: Spreedly+Ogone (which needs extra tweaking to support VAT) or Recurly+WireCard
Or pick a more expensive all-in-one solution such as Avangate.
Am I missing others?
We would LOVE to deal with non-US companies and people and hope to do so soon, but for our particular business it's a bit hard right now. Creating relationships with credit card processors we trust (and that you should trust) is really hard.
Another part of it is honestly just that the US market is so big and we have room to grow here, and it's not as easy as it seems - For example, we have phone and chat support during normal US business hours. I don't know what we'll do when we have European or Asian customers. Other issues include taxes, currency and currency risk, taking payments, etc. There's a lot to think about there. We really want to do it, but to do it right requires a lot of thought, and we just haven't done it yet.
In Canada we have a number of processors but there are only two (TWO!) acquiring banks. TD and CIBC if I remember correctly. I believe that relationship has caused a monopoly at the top and extremely conservative processors here in Canada.
I base this on information I've gathered over the last year and a half as a merchant and represents my best knowledge of the industry - if I'm incorrect in any of this I'd love to hear it as it may provide a path for me to loosen some of the chains. It's very, very difficult to progress with an innovative payments model in Canada due to this.