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Paddle

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Brilliant use of Vine for the demo!

And speaking of PayPal: Max Levchin, who co-founded PayPal, recently founded Affirm, which appears to be a competitor.

https://affirm.com/

The site looks like an ad network shop ca. 2005

Why do you say that? Curious, the site looks modern to me. Is it because of the "Learn more"s ?

Maybe there's something wrong with me, but the video moves way too fast for me to process. Of course, making me feel stupid creates negative associations with the product.

I didn't catch it all the first time either; luckily it is 6 seconds long and loops continuously, so you can take as long as you like to dissect it (or go to their site if you want to read about it instead). I think it's an effective way to drive home how fast the process is.

I actually think that's sort of the brilliant part. You end up watching it all 3 or 4 times. 1st time = 70% catch, 2nd time = 90%, 3rd time = 100%, 4th time = just to be sure. Nice way to hammer it into your brain 4 times!

One thing that I learned (accidentally) that helps when watching a fast paced Vine video like this, you can click the video to pause it, and again to resume playback (useful for trying to read the buttons that are being clicked, for example). Maybe everyone else already figured that out, ha, but I think GIFs conditioned me to think things like this didn't have pause built in.

The design is inconsistent. If you only use color to signify buttons, making top and bottom banners with the same solid color as buttons is confusing, especially when several buttons are embedded in the top or bottom banner.

That aside, it is a good, clean interface.

Also, way too many people are colorblind to some degree for it ever to be acceptable to only differentiate buttons by just color.

I was expecting him to hit "Pay with Paddle" and then get his butt beat endlessly until they closed his account for no reason, taking his money.

This is pretty cool.

Clever marketing. I've seen Vine videos explode as examples for things in the last few weeks, along with news and blog Vine embeds. Interactive marketing is going to get a lot more interesting with Vine clips (until of course we get saturated with those marketing messages and don't find them as unique anymore).

I'm if the 15 second timer on instagram will be more popular for product demos than Vine's 6. It's probably irrelevant (since Vine could just change the timer to compete), but may have an interesting temporary influence on adoption.

Now, If you really want to make it big create you need to create an app that only takes 9 seconds of video and is only for product demos. /sarcasm

You're right, 7 seconds is brief. I didn't get a chance to play around with the Instagram video yet, but at first glance it wasn't as easy to use (of course I didn't give it enough time and they JUST launched).

Never seen an ad done well on vine. Tasteful, succinct and classy. Kudos.

Reminds me of minbox but with less loud words blasting in my face to the sound of Nicki Minaj's ass.

I haven't used Vine at all, so this may very well be a restriction of the platform rather than an oversight by Paddle, but surely they could have placed a link on the page back to their site? or is everyone just expected to know that "@" means, find us on twitter? I can understand that works perfectly fine for the HN community, but for most audiences, surely they're missing out.

Well, if you know what vine is, I'd say there's a very high chance you understand '@'.

Direct link: http://www.usepaddle.com/

The irony, of course, is that PayPal works very much the same today. You don't even need an app.

I also hope this is a joke: http://i.imgur.com/MnshKxO.png Mobile first does not mean to forget the interface for everything above 4.7 inches.

If any founders are considering to do the same thing, I much prefer a GIF-based demo like the one used for Sublime Text: http://www.sublimetext.com/.

Why?

I think he mostly means the clarity of a screen capture vs. a shaky shot of a physical screen. I like the indy feel of this but it did give me a headache to watch (even though it's only a few seconds). If you want to feature the actual phone, maybe have it resting on a hard surface or otherwise steadied.

Ah, that makes more sense.

It obviously makes sense in this case, given the novelty value of it - it being on the frontpage of HN - but I think there's a better alternative for the frontpage of a service's website.

The Paddle animation isn't a GIF. It's a video. That's why I asked you why you thought Sublime's GIF (which isn't actually a GIF, but a compressed PNG animated with JavaScript) was better.

You mean animated PNGs?

http://www.sublimetext.com/~jps/animated_gifs_the_hard_way.h...

Why does that need JavaScript to load?

From the very same article you tried to read:

> JavaScript turns the PNG and JSON into an animation, using either the canvas element, or emulating it using overlaid div elements for older browsers.

PayPal had eBay to crack the hardest part - acceptance of a new payment type. Are you a new payment type or are you effectively a wallet and passing underlying credit card information over?

This is very impressive! installed the Android app, now looking for someone who really accepts the system to try it out properly!

They have a test store on their site. http://paddlemegastore.com/

I didn't really read your comment, and clicked on the link. It took me a few seconds to realize it was a "demo site". Initially i was amazed that we were all enamored by a table tennis paddle store, which seemed believable considering that a few years ago this guy with a bingo card making website was on the frontpage every other day.

Venmo looks like it's trying to make a dent in Paypal's market. They've got a pretty good mobile solution. Though, I hear their eating losses with almost every transaction right now (everything is free, other than debit cards)

Debit and bank transfers are free. Credit cards cost 2.9%

Ah, thanks for the correction!

Based on that headline and the number of startup redesigns that show up on HN, I was expecting a redesign mockup of PayPal - not an actual product. Took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. But great job!

If Google Wallet ever offers one-click payment, this is what it will look like

It's a testament to corporate inertia that PayPal hasn't been an innovator in payment processing for a long time. Square and Stripe have been making inroads, and Bitcoin is lurking out there somewhere. There's a fistful of money to be had in this arena, and I'm glad that it's evolved over the last few years.

Best of luck to Paddle!

Damn, that is nice! Paypal has been lacking. Payment using Paddle seems a lot easier.

Right now you can't add a US bank to your account if you are outside the USA

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