Ask HN: European online payment preferences? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: European online payment preferences?

2 pointsgyardley5 comments

We're implementing online payments for a subscription service used about equally by American and European clients.

We've already decided, for this first iteration, that we'd prefer not to get a merchant account, and that it's acceptable to bill in USD. (I know this isn't an ideal solution for Europeans.)

I would prefer to use a service like Stripe, where we don't have to store credit card data but the payment itself feels 'native' - it seems to take place entirely on our own site.

However, the European developers I work with tell me something like PayPal would be preferable, because the payment forms are not on our site - instead, the user is redirected to a third-party service they're more likely to trust. They tell me that apart from a few large services, this is the way it's done in Europe.

This fascinates me, because in my head, redirecting to a third-party site for payment feels amateurish. But this may just be my preferences as a Canadian who's only worked in the United States, and lacks extensive experience dealing with Europeans.

So, my question, primarily for the Europeans: taking both European attitudes towards security and European attitudes towards aesthetics into account, do you think European small businesses would prefer to pay for a service on that service's website or on the website of a third-party service like PayPal?

Our company is based in The Netherlands and in our country there is indeed a preference for established 3rd party websites. Everyone knows and trust those payment providers; they already have proven their credibility. So when you are company that no one knows yet (e.g. when you are not a household name), you still can earn trust by implementing these 3rd party in your payment system. Besides: consumers are used to seeing a 3rd party payment provider, so for them this feels not amateuristic at all. iDeal, which is the most used payment gateway on B2C sites, is also such an example (created by big banks, paying is like logging into your ebanking account to transfer money).

But if you feel this is amateurish, try your best that it does not look that way. Integrate as much as possible or do an iframe or whatever (I don't know if this is possible security wise). But like I said, people in the Netherlands (and by the way this also counts for the Belgiums who live in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium called Vlaanderen) are used to redirects to 3rd party site. I do not know how the other European countries do this.

Also don't forget to offer pages in all different European languages, because not everyone speaks business English that well.

I don't think it's a matter of aesthetics vs safety, or onsite vs third party (I'm Dutch). Yes, I agree that third-party redirects don't appeal to many users, but the same goes for a payment form hosted on your site. You have to understand that the credit card is a relatively new form of payment, where in the US almost everybody has one. If we order something online, we usually pay afterr we've received the shipment, or through a system called Ideal (in The Netherlands, that is. Can't vouch for other countries), which is basically some sort of API between the website and your own bank. Paypal isn't used much by European websites, other than the ones targetting the whole world and some shifty websites. fYI: most webshop CMS like Magento come with a built in Ideal shopping cart.

The problem is that, while one economic region, Europe is still a collection of separate countries. We all have our own banks, so the chances of one European payment provider coming are slim to say the least. What I would like to see is a universal payment provider with the same reputation as a regular, trustworthy bank.

So to answer your question: it doesn't really matter if the solution is onsite or third party, as long as it's trustworthy.

Regarding:

  Paypal isn't used much by European websites, other than the ones targetting the whole world

I completely disagree, in England most websites allow the ability to Pay Via PayPal even specifically stores which only sell to those in the United Kingdom.

Referring to the economic region of Europe, and the fact that we all have our own banks and...

  What I would like to see is a universal payment provider with the same reputation as a regular, trustworthy bank

Well PayPal actually is a universal payment provider [1] as it has a European Union banking license and is regulated as a bank by the CSSF where it was previously a Electronic Money Issuer which was approved by the FSA from 2004 until 2007 when it moved to Luxembourg. Actually because of that, UK customers aren't able to obtain legal redress from the company in UK Courts.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/2808982/PayPal-be...

Thanks for clearing that up, I was not aware that PayPal had such a big presence in the UK.

What I meant with the second quote though is that, although I know PayPal is a universal payment provider, it lacks the reputation that brick ´n mortar banks have. Maybe this is different in the UK, but here on the mainland there are some major trust issues with PayPal.

From my experience, in France, having someone savvy to enter it's credit card data on a website that is not Paypal or a known bank is hard. Trust issues.

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