Pin is Australia’s first all-in-one payment API

https://pin.net.au

by gbpin • 14 years ago

184 94 14 years ago

pin.net.au

garazy• 14 years ago

I really hope this works out, the idea is awesome. I suspect there's a fair amount of red tape to get it launched.

gbpin2• 14 years ago

Thanks. Plenty of red tape so far, but we're handling it.

nopassrecover• 14 years ago

I wouldn't say there's a whole lot of idea in this ("bring Stripe to Australia please" is not new) but I'm hoping the implementation and pricing are both great.

dekz2• 14 years ago

Finally something in Australia with possible potential. No information on pricing other than a monthly fee + transaction fee.

I'm not sure what a JSON REST API is though.

What does "scheme" in the JSON response correlate to? I'm also not sure why so much information is essentially echoed back?

gbpin2• 14 years ago

It's supposed to mean that the API responds with JSON data (as opposed to, say, XML). "REST" here just means we use standard URL patterns and rely on HTTP verbs (e.g. GET), to get stuff done.

dekz2• 14 years ago

Sorry I was probably being overly pedantic, I do understand the concepts of REST and the JSON format. I've never seen it as one buzz phrase though.

ishi2• 14 years ago

I think you're missing a "currency" field in the request, particularly since you support both AUD and USD.

ishi2• 14 years ago

I really wish there was something like this that worked globally, other than PayPal.

oceanic2• 14 years ago

The major problem with financial transactions is that each country (or I guess, _most_ countries) have different laws regarding banking, fiduciary responsibility etc.

Paypal/Amazon/GCheckout work globally because they use CC and charge handsomely for the privilege. Companies like Pin, Stripe and Dwolla are trying to cut out the idea of merchant accounts (which create the major hassle for a lot of small practitioners), but that means tailoring your service for local laws = hard problem.

steveh733• 14 years ago

Amazon and Google Checkout don't work globally (for sellers)

mnbbrown• 14 years ago

Firstly, its fantastic to see a service that will hopefully provide a breath of fresh air to a sector that has almost become archaic, and therefore difficult to use, in Australia.

What sort of red-tape has been causing you the most trouble? Also, are you partnering with one of the banks?

djtidau2• 14 years ago

I can't tell you how happy I am to see this. I was excited to hear about Braintree expanding to Australia a couple of days ago, but this is much more promising.

Do you have plans to incorporate recurring charges as well?

I've added myself to the invite list.

benkant• 14 years ago

> Do you have plans to incorporate recurring charges as well?

Yep.

mvboeke2• 14 years ago

I would be curious to know why you think this looks more promising than Braintree.

Disclosure: I work at Braintree. I'm not trying to shill here - I'm genuinely curious about how people think about our stuff vs. other payments companies.

boundlessdreamz2• 14 years ago

Kinda offtopic: But since you work at braintree, please have a look at my comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4069105

djtidau2• 14 years ago

Mostly on my end it is because it is because they are a new player in the game and need to make an impact (be it via lower pricing or other value-added means) and also because they are an Australian company. I'm also hoping that this will bring a little more competition to this space in our country as it has been stagnant for quite some time.

In saying that, 'more promising' was probably a poor choice of words and I am not discounting Braintree at all. As an early stage startup your pricing took me back a little but not enough to sway me away. I have signed up to your mailing list to be made aware of when you guys launch here and am also looking forward to checking out your offering.

Thanks for the interest. It is always good to see companies provide a presence on these forums and certainly accentuates your products to me.

jkahn• 14 years ago

Looks fantastic. I'm interested already and we don't have an immediate need for the API - but even the web UI looks great.

Very little information on your site, though. Some questions strike me:

- What path does the money take from the customer to the user of your service (e.g. me), and how long does it take to get there?

- What kind of backing/insurance/licenses do you have? If you're a tiny startup, there's risk for users of your system if you go bust and any money in transit disappears.

jbrendel3• 14 years ago

Very good points. I hope you will put up more substantial information on your web site.

Consider that we are supposed to trust you with our customer's credit card information, their and our money. Currently I'm thinking: Who are you and why should I trust you? There is no information on your site which would give me any confidence. I'm sure you have all the info, but please share it with us.

treelovinhippie• 14 years ago

OMFG THANKYOU!!! We've been ridiculously disadvantaged with no Stripe, Dwolla, WePay, Square etc. So many startups have been launched and funded (in the states) that were possible primarily due to Stripe integration. Not much of a choice here other than PayPal.

cynix2• 14 years ago

None of the other services you listed have a monthly fee. But I guess we Australians should be used to being ripped off by now.

se85• 14 years ago

yes. :-(

jusben13692• 14 years ago

"But I guess we Australians should be used to being ripped off by now" With such a "dog beaten" attitude I'd say it's self fulfilling. Perhaps wait to see what those fees are, relative to your other options in Australia, before drawing such a depressing conclusion?

davidlumley• 14 years ago

I'm very interested to understand why they have a monthly fee - surely having an easy to implement payment API would mean AU developers flock to it given our lacklustre other choices?

coenhyde• 14 years ago

I'm so excited! Current payment gateways are certainly a pain point for Australian developers.

nemesisj• 14 years ago

Does this work in non-AUS countries (like possibly the UK?)

mpclark• 14 years ago

Let's hope the 'gb' in the username is a clue.

oceanic2• 14 years ago

No, "gb" are the initials of one of the developers. They're targeting Australia first, but I guess world domination is always possible if things go well.

jameswyse• 14 years ago

This looks absolutely awesome, Signed up instantly.

thetron• 14 years ago

Brilliant. Thank you. :)

xal2• 14 years ago

contact me at tobi@shopify.com to get this into Shopify from the beginning. We really need a better partner in Australia

sparknlaunch2• 14 years ago

Please elaborate? Would be good to hear your perspective given your experience in the market.

heretohelp• 14 years ago

Going to take a wild guess and say that dishing on an extant partner in an internet forum isn't the best way to conduct business.

xal2• 14 years ago

Paypal is the most common option in Australia but for one reason or another they never launched Paypal Pro there which means that people are stuck with the older IPN based flow which has some disadvantages ( More confusing, doesn't make it clear that you don't need paypal account, poor Google Analytics integration )

Aidan• 14 years ago

Ohhhh thank goodness! We've been waiting a long time for something like this. It's ridiculous how long it takes to get set up on WPP or eWay with a merchant account.

mattmanser• 14 years ago

Something sticks out like a sore thumb in that API. Where's the param signing with a secret key?

Cogito• 14 years ago

This was exactly what I thought as well.

Using an HTTPS connection is all well and good, but it is not enough. HTTPS is susceptible to man in the middle attacks [1], and securing the params with a pre-shared secret key is essential.

The extra cost in 'complexity' is really far outweighed by the (warranted) extra security.

[1] http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/sslstrip/

asharp• 14 years ago

Would you mind elaborating?

ssltrip requires a valid root ca, or an ssl library that doesn't check the signing chain. After using it though, the parameters are unencrypted and so can simply be sniffed.

Are you attempting to reencrypt the parameters with another key? If so then why run that through https?

johnrob• 14 years ago

I can't see any point in signing the params - an attacker only cares about the CC info, not some hash value. The only use for a secret key would be to encrypt all the params. But SSL already does that...

pbreit• 14 years ago

Is it really necessary? I don't believe Stripe does it.

noveltyaccount2• 14 years ago

I was thinking about this too--what access does that API key give someone? Even if it's just to charge a card, it's a risk since it can be used by bad people to validate stolen credit cards.

Either I put my secret key in the javascript and initiate the request in the browser (thus leaking my secret key), or I accept the inputs onto my server and forward the request to Pin, thus increasing PCI compliance burden because now sensitive data is passing through my server.

I'd like this more if it functioned closer to Braintree's transparent redirect. https://www.braintreepayments.com/developers/api-overview No sensitive data ever touches my servers (customer's POST goes to Braintree, and then they redirect to my server with a query string token that I use to validate the tx with Braintree).

brycecammo2• 14 years ago

It looks like they provide pin.js so that your server never has to accept the credit card details, but rather a single-use token (much like Stripe, I believe).

https://pin.net.au/docs/pin_js

chubs• 14 years ago

Absolutely brilliant! I'm so glad you made this. Thank you, thank you.

PostOnce• 14 years ago

What are the fees? Does it work in New Zealand?

veb• 14 years ago

+1 there's absolutely no reason why they cannot get it working for New Zealand -- considering most of our banks are actually owned by Australians, and typically use the same systems!

te_chris2• 14 years ago

++ - to note though, it won't be a computational problem, but one to do with regulation, I would love to not have to deal with DPS and BNZ though.

steveh733• 14 years ago

I'm not sure on the backend, but they don't seem to on the frontend - CBA and ASB's web interfaces are very very different, at least.

nathan_f77• 14 years ago

That's great to hear! I'm a NZ developer, and this would be a pretty big incentive to get a few of my small startup ideas off the ground. Paypal sucks.

damian20004• 14 years ago

Awesome, thanks for this. A couple of years ago I was trying to get setup with a merchant account at BankWest for online C/C processing - the BW guys in their online merchant team were totally taking the piss. Kept me waiting for 8 weeks without an answer - so in the end I had to go with PayPal.

huragok• 14 years ago

You've made me so very, very happy.

frontier• 14 years ago

Really hoping that this will be like the old PayPal, where you could just setup an account (or multiple!) and just go and start collecting credit card payments.

Can't do this anymore as they only allow you to link your bank account to a single PayPal account. Also there are a lot more ID requirements nowadays, so you can't just setup a virtual business like you used to - a separate account for each new website.

I can understand why, but surely a suitably long holding period (account probation period) would solve the fraud and chargeback issues caused by the scammers who ruin it for the rest of us!

goatforce5• 14 years ago

AUP? What can I (not) sell via your service?

ChrisArchitect• 14 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4073620

sparknlaunch2• 14 years ago

>> "Transparent Pricing - Monthly service fee + only pay for successful transactions."

I cannot see the pricing. Any idea of the monthly service fee and cost per transaction?

shawndellysse• 14 years ago

I was really hoping that everything would be upside-down on that page.

jQueryIsAwesome• 14 years ago

    if( !Australia )
        document.body.setAttribute("style","-webkit-transform: rotate(180deg);")

10dpd• 14 years ago

Can someone explain why a separate payment system is needed for Australian developers? My nieve understanding is that credit cards are global from a consumer perspective (i.e. a credit card will work in any country in the world). Are things different from a developer perpective? If so, why?

jusben13692• 14 years ago

There are two sides to the equation. Owning a credit card and using it and b) accepting a credit card and processing money. The latter part is all driven by local/national banks and rules and regulations.

Silhouette• 14 years ago

Are things different from a developer perpective? If so, why?

Broadly speaking, because the credit card industry is a massive, bloated, inefficient mess, and the effort and liability required for a small business to participate in that mess directly can literally be business-destroying. And that's assuming the Powers That Be graciously allow you to play their little game at all, which may take several weeks of approval process to decide, and will almost certainly come with silly levels of fees on each transaction and terms so one-sided they could right a sinking ship even if you do jump through all of their hoops.

Having an intermediary that can provide a simple API that just works instead of having to integrate with some absurdly complicated and poorly documented API offered directly by the big players can save weeks of hassle. Similarly, having an intermediary that can take care of compliance with the dreaded PCI DSS (the industry security standards) is also a huge win. Finally, because the intermediaries tend to be bigger fish in the pond, you will often get a significantly better deal out of them in terms of how quickly you get your money, and how much of your money you actually get to keep.

All of this is particularly true for start-ups with no trading history, which of course will include just about any new on-line business. Once you've got a proven track record you can give solid answers to the financial questions and actually make the big boys compete for your business as they should, at least to some extent, but if you're starting from zero then the first thing a lot of these companies see is a huge potential fraud risk, particularly if you're in any kind of "dubious" industry or, again like many on-line SaaS businesses, you want to use a continuous payment authority to take recurring payments from a customer's card and not just a one-off transaction.

Unfortunately, there has to be some sort of big player on the other side of any intermediary (or, possibly, several big players used for different kinds of transaction) and so it's not unusual for these intermediaries either to be limited in geographic scope or to provide a partial service but still require you to sort out your own connections with a payment gateway and/or merchant account based in your region (though the intermediaries will probably be able to help with that process, which is still better than nothing). Thus while the US appears to have an effective and fast-growing young industry in payment processing services, those of us in other regions can only look on with jealousy and bow down before the mighty PayPal/Google/other vast multinational with a self-contained payment service.

grecy• 14 years ago

> My nieve understanding is that credit cards are global from a consumer perspective (i.e. a credit card will work in any country in the world).

As someone who has credit cards from 3 different countries, I can tell you that's very wrong. I'd like to think my CC works anywhere, but oftentimes when they ask for a ZIP and I don't have one, that's a deal breaker. Sometimes when the person sees the card is from another country (name of country is in the bank name) they refuse to use it, even when it matches my accent and driver's license.

Also it would have been nice if VISA had a global "credit rating" instead of a separate one for each country. Unfortunately, I now have zero credit in my new country, which is painful when I have amazing credit in my previous country. (all VISA cards)

sjwright• 14 years ago

Visa provides a transactions gateway, your bank is responsible for providing the line of credit.

patio11• 14 years ago

Pro-tip: if you deal with a bank that has branches in both countries, and you're sufficiently good of a customer that they can justify an hour of work for you, you can get around not having a credit history in your newest country of residence. CitiBank, for example, has an employee in Tokyo whose only job is being attached to an Experian terminal to make credit decisions for American expatriates. (It is highly likely that branch level employees at most CitiBanks are unaware of his existence, so the high-percentage plays are either speaking to their wealth management group, speaking to their "executive relocation" group, or sending the bank a letter.)

jmitcheson• 14 years ago

It's not the customer side that's the problem; it's the third party sevices. Nothing is available here. Stripe isn't available here. Google Checkout isn't available here. Recurly is possible through a PayPal gateway, but you still need a merchant account for that, and it's a huge mission to bill in USD (something you take for granted when you are inside the US, but by default, merchant banks will charge your customers in your local currency).

Hosted PayPal is country-agnostic, but it looks amateur hour.

jbrendel3• 14 years ago

I'll say "thank you" after I know more about the pricing and fees and how long it will take before my money appears in my bank account. It's great that you are setting up something like this and I really hope for the best. Would love to use it, but as others have commented, down here we are used to being ripped off, so when I see "monthly charges", I'm already a bit weary. Still hopeful, but a bit concerned.

Also, I really hope this will work for Kiwis as well?

toast762• 14 years ago

$50/month 3.0% + 50c per transaction https://pin.net.au/pricing

damian20004• 14 years ago

OMFG the fees are the same as the big banks, wrapped in a nicer API.

Suddenly PayPal looks attractive again @ 2.4% + 30c with no monthly fee. https://www.paypal-australia.com.au/business/manage-my-payme...

djt• 14 years ago

can anyone that has done the research write up the fixed and variable costs of different payment services and report back to us?

justinkelly• 14 years ago

sounds great - just what we need

questions: - any word on pricing? will there be a monthly min? - also can i set up recurring charges with pin?

great work

cheers

justin

jeaguilar• 14 years ago

The sample request is nearly identical to Stripe. Is it safe to say this is Stripe for Australia? What's the relationship between Stripe and Pin?

petitmiam• 14 years ago

PinStripe, hmm.

te_chris2• 14 years ago

How about NZD?

steveh733• 14 years ago

Great! Do you plan an having a hosted payment page ala DPS or PayPal though? I'd much prefer never seeing my customers credit card number at all.

Also please let me know if you're planning on adding support for NZ too, the situation for accepting payments here is just as dire.

zizee• 14 years ago

Awesome news. Like many Australian devs I have been feeling a distinct lack of love from other payment solutions. And now I see in a comment above that braintree is on its was as well.

Who knows, maybe VCs will start investing in Aussie based startup as well?

jacques_chester• 14 years ago

We have a few VCs in Australia, but only a few. Look up OneVentures, Southern Cross Venture Partners and Yuuwa.

davidbanham• 14 years ago

Don't believe the hype. It's more difficult to raise capital in Australia, but it's completely possible. You need to network hard in order to make connections, but the money is out there.

ropable• 14 years ago

Regardless of what the other details of this product are, the online payments space could definitely use some extra competition in Australia. Bravo.

dmboyd3• 14 years ago

Does anyone have any idea on the background on who's behind this?

The fact that there are no names doesn't exactly instill trust or confidence.

Closest I could get to info would be that the Southern Payment Systems Pty Ltd resolves on a google search to: http://www.southernpaymentsystems.com/ which seems to share the street address of a Designer(http://speakinteractive.com/), a real estate agency(http://www.eftosestates.com.au/) and a ruby on rails developer(http://brownbeagle.com.au)

[update: never mind, found one of the co founders, http://dompym.com/ pretty impressive, he's ex SAP and ex Clear Interactive, acquired by the NZ exchange]

damian20004• 14 years ago

and by the looks of things, Grant Thomas (fmr coach of St Kilda, 2001-2006). http://www.ferocia.com.au/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Thomas_%28footballer%29

dmboyd3• 14 years ago

haha, nice!

bcowcher• 14 years ago

As a former e-commerce web dev, I cant begin to tell you how much this was sorely needed in Australia. Best of luck to you!

TimJRobinson2• 14 years ago

Holy crap I love you guys so much! :D I have seriously been looking for a good payment processor that isn't paypal for over 5 years now, EVERYONE is US only.

THANKYOU!

Pin is Australia’s first all-in-one payment API

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