Comment by rickmb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rickmb | Hacker News Reader

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Funny enough, I came here to argue more or less the opposite.

In many countries, the standard payment problems have been largely solved locally, at least for the local markets. In the Netherlands, a wide selection of payment providers will give you the ability to receive payment through virtually any method.

Merchant accounts are easy to get, and the most popular local form of payment, iDeal (direct "my bank to your bank" payment), is supported by all banks and can be easily implemented without the need for any payment provider. The vast majority of all only transactions in NL go through iDeal.

Most payment providers also offer multi-currency support, but it's only a very small part of the market that needs that. The use of PayPal is very rare and becoming rarer by the day. It's about as old school as seeing a "made for Netscape" button on a website.

There's only one area where PayPal is easier and more accessible, and that is very low budget private stuff like donations on a small software project. But given the constant horror stories about PayPal, any solution that targets that market effectively will wipe PayPal away in a matter of months. And then PayPal will be history in the Netherlands.

< In many countries, the standard payment problems have been largely solved locally, at least for the local markets. In the Netherlands, a wide selection of payment providers will give you the ability to receive payment through virtually any method.

Is it really? Sometimes I feel the Netherlands is the only country where it's been solved. Who of you live in a country with a satisfying, cheap, standard local payment provider?

In Germany and Finland direct bank transfers are a usable option. They have no fees for the buyer and very low fees for the seller (as a business account holder at an average German bank, you pay 45 cents per transaction regardless of size to receive payments). In Finland, depending on the bank, you don't even have to pay that. This is similar for all eurozone countries. In the UK there are a multitude of local payment providers as well. The real issue is cross-currency, cross-continent payments. There is no simple solution for selling to US customers paying in dollars if the seller is in the EU. The only serious player in that field is paypal.

In Sweden you can either use bank transfer, invoice (provided by Klarna), and I do not think accepting credit card payments is hard either.

Almost no Swedish businesses who target the Swedish market use Paypal. Paypal is mostly use by Swedish companies when they want to target any country in the world (for example Minecraft).

Dealing with the Swedish credit card providers isn't really any nicer than dealing with PayPal, but it feel better to be dealing with a local company in case something goes wrong.

In Europe bank transfers solve the person-person transfers so there's no need for PayPal for those situations, but for small fry accepting credit card payments it's hard to beat.

>Funny enough, I came here to argue more or less the opposite. In many countries, the standard payment problems have been largely solved locally, at least for the local markets.

Well, the same is true for the US --there are worthy PayPal killers there. But it doesn't matter much in a global era. If you want to be able to accept payments from and to everywhere, PayPal is the only game in town.

For an internet business that is not a pizza delivery or a local florist, the Netherlands only solution you describe is a non starter.

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