Samwers Clone Stripe

https://www.paymill.de/index.html

by themichael • 14 years ago

151 163 14 years ago

aristidb2• 14 years ago

That's a bit bizarre, because one would expect a German clone to support the payment variants that are far more popular than credit cards in Germany.

EDIT: The biggest payment variant I was thinking of is direct debit (German: Lastschrift), which is highly convenient. However, wiring the money before getting the goods is also surprisingly popular here. Many people just don't have credit cards. (I do, but I also use some US services like Github which only allow credit card payments.)

rmoriz10• 14 years ago

because nothing works like a credit card. e.g. the popular direct debit payments can be charged back very easily + you just have to search for an valid account number (= fraud).

The only payment method that works with recurring and more or less "final/instant" transactions is credit card.

So there is no alternative for SaaS or in-app-payments to credit cards (or some direct debit risk mitigation business like paypal)

white_devil• 14 years ago

the popular direct debit payments can be charged back very easily + you just have to search for an valid account number (= fraud).

This sounds highly doubtful. Care to explain?

pgeorgi• 14 years ago

Charge back from credit cards works just fine, too. And using it with either banking system gets you in rather serious trouble if you're found to abuse the charge back mechanism.

Safe payment methods are advance payment (since there's no reason to allow someone to charge back an order they've explicitely placed at their bank) and cash on delivery (though that's expensive). Which is why some large merchants (eg. Neckermann) restrict payment options to these two for the first transaction.

mhd5• 14 years ago

Yep. Without direct debit, I don't see this working as a single source payment solution, and if you have to add some other API for the missing solutions anyway, this becomes much less enticing.

eddie_the_head2• 14 years ago

I am curious what the alternative but far more popular payment variants in Germany to credit cards are.

lacerus• 14 years ago

Direct debit and instant wire transfer are very big in Germany. Many places, especially supermarkets, do not even accept any credit cards but only debit cards. Our checking accounts have evolved very differently to the US - nobody has been using cheques here for years, even before the internet is was all debit and wires.

lobster_johnson4• 14 years ago

Does the German direct-debit system work with online payments?

We have the same direct-debit system in Norway, called BankAxept, which is managed by a consortium of banks; banks typically issue cards with both Visa and BankAxept built in. However, BankAxept does not work with online payments.

A new system, BankAxess, has been launched for online payments, but it has not been widely implemented yet, so most online stores offer payment by Visa/Mastercard. Visa/MC's fees are somewhat exuberant, so most stores also offer COD and payment by wire transfer as alternative options.

blumentopf• 14 years ago

Direct debits as a buyer: You enter your bank account number in the "buy" form of some website and that's it.

Direct debits as a seller: You file the direct debit with your bank. This can normally be done online through a web interface or various APIs (e.g. HBCI). The transaction is then processed through the Eurozone's TARGET2 system, i.e. the amount is withdrawn from the buyer's bank account and credited to the seller's bank account. This works in the entire Eurozone and is supposed to not take longer than a day. In practice, some countries take longer. E.g. I've seen payments between Germany and Italy take 3 days, but between Germany and France or within Germany it always takes 1 day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TARGET2

majani• 14 years ago

The Samwer bros are probably building to sell to Stripe, so they're using credit cards for Paymill to easily integrate into Stripe when that time comes.

tzaman4• 14 years ago

That's actually great news, why would Europeans have to wait for an undisclosed date Stripe gives (or rather, doesn't give).

timruffles• 14 years ago

I agree, it's been a long time coming. Might be a pain for Stripe but competition is great for everyone else.

drsim• 14 years ago

I was initially appalled when I first read about the Samwar clone factory. Now I agree, in cases like this they're filling a gap in the market.

rmoriz10• 14 years ago

The only gap is, that Recurly and Spreedly were not able to tell the EU founders that their service is available and working perfectly fine with European payment gateways.

They all have JS and REST-APIs and a lot more:

- http://recurly.com/

- http://spreedly.com/

Nikkki• 14 years ago

Stripe is now in hot pursuit ;)

rmoriz10• 14 years ago

Looks like they're a PHP shop and only offer PHP client libs yet. Seems they didn't even understand the message Stripe has in kinds of developer focus.

Also: Why would I use a payment service of the biggest copy cat company in the country? To deliver them my revenue numbers on a silver plate so they can decide if they should "enter my market"?

They don't even openly publish the upcoming fees and just want you to "vendor lock-in" (or dig around to find the transaction fees somewhere hidden on their site). really sad :(

andreasklinger• 14 years ago

The reason why you might consider it: Payments are still a very annoying topic in Europe. (imho)

methodin• 14 years ago

I think that's an important point. They are successful because the American-only companies typically take a while to move into foreign markets, if ever.

eitland• 14 years ago

The first few examples I saw where all JavaScript or Curl.

Are we reading the same thing?

arkitaip3• 14 years ago

Why would you even care if they are a copy cat or not? Surely what matters is things such as delivering on promises, reasonable prices and quality of service.

As an European I can tell you that no one is going to wait years for a valley startup to establish itself in Europe when there are sufficiently good alternatives right here and now.

charlesdm2• 14 years ago

I want European credit card billing _NOW_. Sadly, the only support german companies it seems. :-(

ph0rque• 14 years ago

An opportunity to clone the clone in other European countries?

mmahemoff3• 14 years ago

They have operations across Europe. Pretty likely they'll have plans to roll out everywhere soon.

What I'd like to know is which consumers are supported, and what's the experience like, e.g. for American consumers paying through this.

lobster_johnson4• 14 years ago

> Looks like they're a PHP shop and only offer PHP client libs yet. Seems they didn't even understand the message Stripe has in kinds of developer focus.

The APIs are REST. You don't need a client library.

andy_boot2• 14 years ago

http://www.izettle.com/

Have been around for a while too

seanmccann2• 14 years ago

That's a square competitor. Still awesome nonetheless.

andy_boot2• 14 years ago

Actually these guys are like Square not Stripe - getting my payment companies confused.

seanmccann2• 14 years ago

I think this is great! I assume Stripe didn't have imminent plans to launch in Germany anyway. Looks like they have a rate of 2.95%, which is pretty good. Especially for outside the US.

seivan• 14 years ago

Will never be as good as Stripe. Mostly because Stripe is coded by it's founders, get support questions answered by their founders who will even teach you how to use git. :)

richardw• 14 years ago

That stuff is great, but doesn't help EU customers if they can't use it. So at present this thing is already better than Stripe, because "90% of success is showing up". The repeated message from EU countries is "get here, we need you", and the repeated answer is "we'd love to, but can't yet". That's handing the business to Samwers on a silver platter.

I'm in South Africa. I can't even begin to imagine how long it'll take Stripe to get here.

(btw, didn't downvote you)

NonEUCitizen• 14 years ago

You should start the South African Stripe ?

adrinavarro• 14 years ago

Nobody cares about that. Customers will care whether they can have service at all in their country. If Stripe isn't there, then others will take over. It's all about business, not who's the nicest guy in town.

furyg3• 14 years ago

Fantastic. Maybe this will put some fire under Stripe to launch in Europe...

helipad• 14 years ago

Only seems to support German bank accounts at the moment (not any European) - though they're not terribly difficult to open.

rmoriz10• 14 years ago

consider alternatives:

- http://recurly.com/

- http://spreedly.com/

+ WireCard.com as gateway/acquirer. Works for all EU countries.

simonbrown• 14 years ago

also:

http://chargify.com/

https://cheddargetter.com/

hnwh• 14 years ago

I'm a french citizen, do you know what is required for other EU citizens to open a german account? E.g, In the UK its a nightmare, but in Spain, it seems easy

Kudos• 14 years ago

You also need a German business license.

webignition• 14 years ago

This is great news. I'll be adding subscription payment options to my UK-based startup in a few months.

I'd love to be able to use Stripe and I hope that the introduction of Paymill brings Stripe support to the UK more swiftly. If not, I can use Paymill.

Gring3• 14 years ago

I don't get it. Why do US net startups very often make the same mistake of not expanding into the whole world quickly?

It took eBay something like 4 years to go to Germany, by which time there was a local clone there that proved to be uncatchable. The expensive result was that eBay had to buy the clone (Alando) for 43 million dollars to become relevant.

Kickstarter is still US-only. Stripe as well. So are countless others.

We're not talking about products that you need an huge infrastructure in the country. This is mostly about translation, and not explicitly prohibiting things.

The expenses seem miniscule to the possible upside. So why do all those fancy startups hold themselves back?

niyazpk2• 14 years ago

You are vastly underestimating the effort required in setting up a payment gateway in a country.

Gring3• 14 years ago

Why? It's just some contracts and APIs. And it doesn't explain all those other startups that deliberately limit themselves (and then later have to buy local clones because they did not expand quickly enough).

Ecio783• 14 years ago

But if you are Stripe and you get millions in investments ( i.e. http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/09/sexy-payments-startup-strip... ) you can afford to hire specific european nation experts, lawyers etc.. to get into these markets quickly

gadders• 14 years ago

Those difficulties and processes would be the same for Stripe as Samwers.

mmcnickle2• 14 years ago

The founders don't have the local knowledge and contacts to get through the regulatory hoops involved in launching a new payment gateway in dozens of countries.

I think there was an article on HN where someone was talking about how these kinds of startups (the ones with difficult regulatory barriers) are the only ones that you should consider cloning in other countries for this very reason.

stef252• 14 years ago

> The founders don't have the local knowledge and contacts to get through the regulatory hoops involved in launching a new payment gateway in dozens of countries

With the millions of dollars these companies get from investors you'd think they could hire local knowledge to figure it out for them.

tomblomfield• 14 years ago

AFAIK - The founders are from Europe and originally tried to set up Stripe in Ireland. They couldn't find a European bank willing to work with them.

andygcook• 14 years ago

I think this is the article you are referencing: http://bernardi.me/2012/06/startup-copycats-youre-doing-it-w...

And the original HN comment thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4091462

Interestingly enough the first startup the author suggests should be cloned is Stripe.

JCB_K• 14 years ago

Funny that all 3 companies you mention are money-related, which is a tough nut to crack in most countries. There's so many rules and regulations which all differ from country to country that I think it's quite understandable for companies like these to focus on 1 country first.

BTW, obviously all startups handle money in some way, but for these 3 it's a bit more complicated, as they're providing financial services to third-parties. (Ebay+Kickstarter to sellers/buyers, Stripe to sellers.)

arkitaip3• 14 years ago

The challenges that finance related startups face on a global market are complicated and costly but to me the underlying problem is how startups are organized in the first place.

You have a small team, often located in the valley or major US city, that expects to spend years working on developing their business model, product and infrastructure. Even if they are fabulously funded all efforts seem to be US centric because there's no way you can split so few people across so many countries when you're still developing the foundations of your business.

Instead of the typical startup organization that all but guarantees that you will expand too slowly to other markets, startups should look into more flexible forms of organization that allows them to set up partnering organizations in other markets. Imagine if your startup from day 0 has co-founders that are solely responsible for offshore markets development, pr and marketing. These co-founders would be an interface between your business and a specific country or region that actively engages with his market so that customers knows what is happening and what your startup's plans are for their market.

What you pay in equity and title you get back in a vibrant presence and a highly skilled and competent person that can guide you through each country's customs, laws and regulations, and bureaucracy.

dcaranda• 14 years ago

the regulatory environment variations between countries is a great point

to address the point more generally, the IFC (private investment arm of the World Bank) does a report ranking the ease of doing business across countries: http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings

Tichy• 14 years ago

Why bother - they know the Samwers will do it for them and are very happy to sell.

mbesto4• 14 years ago

Groupon took your advice and (in my opinion) has contributed to their poor numbers. The problem is that when an established US company looks to expand, those countries tend to put a premium on expansion there. For example, if Groupon expands to the UK, sales people will ask for more money up front and put a premium on "acting faster".

Oh, and pretty much what everyone else mentioned... It's extremely difficult for any newly establish company to estimate how much red-tape (translate -> money) they will need to go through in order to trade in another country.

rmoriz10• 14 years ago

Facebook didn't do the mistake of buying the local German copycat (StudiVZ). StudiVZ is now dead.

itsprofitbaron2• 14 years ago

Groupon makes more revenue outside North America than it does within it (in Q2: $308MM for international; $260MM for N.A. on a total customer base of 38MM users)

Groupon already has a presence in the UK, its international expansion particularly in europe was helped via an acquistion of another Samwer Brothers company MyCityDeal.de which became Groupon.co.uk, Groupon.de etc.

The reason Groupon is only growing 31% in Europe compared to in North America's growth of 66% is for several reasons including the fact that their deals are more expensive compared to their North American offers (this is confirmed by both Apple & Groupon in both of their earnings calls), the merchants aren't getting the same value from Groupon in Europe as North America which is because of the underlying fact they want higher prices AND finally because half the stuff that Groupon does in North America doesn't even exist/is in its early stages here; Deal personalization = early stages, Groupon's mobile offerings = not as advanced/early stages, its deal bank (searchable, unused Groupon deals) is at the same stage as well.

Carioca2• 14 years ago

Guess who implemented Groupon outside of the US? The Samwer brothers. They created CityDeals, that merged with Groupon. One of the brothers has been in charge (unofficially, I think) of Groupon's international operations ever since.

Edit: Actually, Marc Samwer was head of international operations until earlier this year: http://gigaom.com/europe/marc-samwer-out-as-groupons-interna...

herval2• 14 years ago

Paypal's biggest problem on it's entire history was related to expanding internationally too fast. You open a door to larger profits, but also open a huge window for frauds of all sorts. Not to mention the regulations, that differ A LOT in different countries (just as a quick example, crediting dollars in an account in Brazil is forbidden - there's no "support" for this kind of transaction, so you have to go through a conversion process that is not only bureaucratic, but also VERY error prone and time consuming...)

kanamekun2• 14 years ago

Kickstarter is US-only because Amazon Payments is US-only (well at least, they only denominate payments in dollars).

Kickstarter's payment needs are pretty different from other crowdfunding sites, as the credit card is authed right away... but not charged until the project is funded AND the deadline is reached (up to 60 days). There are very few payment vendors that will hold a conditional credit card charge like that, and certainly not any that will hold off on charging the card for 60 days.

Amazon Payments recently announced that they are going to stop "boarding fresh crowdfunding accounts at this time," and also kicked book crowdfunder unglue.it off their payments platform. Amazon's explanation was that, "we have regulatory obligations as a licensed money services business for how we operate."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120809/09213019977/amazon...

In order to expand beyond the US, Kickstarter needs to either wait for a major payments provider to support their unique payment requirements... or to build up their own international payments provider. It's hard enough building a startup; building a second payments startup is a huge additional endeavour.

In short: payments is often much harder than it seems. It's not just a matter of translation and miniscule expenses... there is real engineering work required to tap into international payments and understand how payments work on a country-by-country basis.

naz2• 14 years ago

> the credit card is authed right away... but not charged until the project is funded AND the deadline is reached (up to 60 days).

Do you have a reference for this? I'm under the impression they only charge the cards once the funding goal is reached. Amex in particular only allows pre-authorizations to last up to a week.

SebMortelmans• 14 years ago

Bears the question, why is Amazon Payment still US-only? We in Europe need stuff like that so badly. Hell even a lot of options that Paypal offers is not available in mainstream European countries. There is really a huge opportunity and need of Stripe / Wepay / competitors that work in Europe.

oskarth• 14 years ago

I would say 43 million dollars is quite cheap to get a whole continent. It is not unlikely that it would've been more dangerous and more costly to do it themselves.

mmahemoff3• 14 years ago

Startups are motivated to change the world. Regulators are motivated to keep the world stable.

Note I didn't say regulators are motivated to not change te world. Many individuals performing regulation are well-intentioned and want to improve society, but their primary objective is to keep risk levels low.

On an individual level, startup founders have huge financial upside if their plans succeed. The regulator won't even see a bonus for that. No-one's going to say "well done on letting those guys launch here, here's a bonus for your efforts". The main financial incentive for the regulator is a safe retirement plan, and that only happens if nothing hits the fan.

misiti3780• 14 years ago

nice quote

"Startups are motivated to change the world. Regulators are motivated to keep the world stable."

robk• 14 years ago

To their credit, Fab.com is one of the few companies to have thought of international expansion somewhat early in their lifetime (~12 months). They've acquired in the UK and Germany to date. It may have helped that the CEO has lived in Germany before however and had more of an international perspective than the typical US-born founder.

mmahemoff3• 14 years ago

Yes, although in this case, the founders are Irish and must have been acutely aware this could happen, but really had little choice at such an early stage in a tough industry like this.

runako• 14 years ago

Some suggested reasons, to add to the others cited:

0. You're obviously speaking mostly about startups that primarily interface with moving money or physical goods. Regulations and infrastructure in these areas are not insignificant operations. US startups working outside these areas (e.g. Facebook, Zynga, Stack Overflow) don't stop at US borders.

- Each market has its own customs, language, and tone. Marketing into a new country cannot be an afterthought, or it will not be successful.

- Language is a big deal. If you translate your website into German, you create the expectation that your customers will be able to email you questions in German and get help in German. You don't have resources for this unless it is a necessary step on the path to success. Even Stripe's $20mm isn't enough for this: remember that they are competing against very big, rich, public companies like eBay and Amazon.

- There is competition at home, in a very large, familiar, homogeneous market. If you are based in the USA and lose the American market, you will likely fail. (In fact, someone could become a competitor by starting the US-only version of your service to take advantage of your distraction.) So you need to win there first. Startups by definition have not won any markets yet.

- Non-US markets in industrialized countries are in general not all that big individually compared to the US market. Germany is like 20% the size of the US market; the UK about 12%, and Australia 10%. So it's really hard to get any major additional scale in one country, even after you jump through all the hoops to launch there and service their customers.

- US states are big economically. A startup trying to scale can probably get more mileage out of a big marketing push in a single state than by launching internationally. One sample choice: launch in the Netherlands (~15 hour flight from CA, different language, customs, regulations) or make a big push in Florida (~5 hour flight from CA, you're likely already in compliance with all their laws, your website is already in their language, your support staff speaks their language, etc.). Florida's economy is about the same size as the Netherlands'. Texas (~3h flight from CA, 4 metro areas over 2m people) has an economy and population roughly the size of Australia.

Startups need every advantage they can get to not take the default startup path (failure). The bottom line is that launching outside the US is not a barrier to ultimate success (your eBay example), but does introduce risks. So it's not often going to be a priority.

kimmiller2• 14 years ago

To add to this list:

- Being a market leader in your home market is much more important (and usually cost effective) than growing internationally. Stripe still has a huge way to go in terms of 'crossing the chasm' in the US, moving out of SV bubble and in to the main-stream.

- Geographical acquisitions when expanding globally aren't necessarily a negative. Although they feel dirty, a lot of the time they can be a win/win for both players (quick foothold in the market, market leading position, entry certainty, local hires etc).

SkyMarshal• 14 years ago

All good points. I also wonder if foreign finance companies like Stripe are waiting to see what happens with the Euro before making huge man-hour and investment commitments anywhere in the Eurozone. There could be big legal, financial, economic changes ahead there.

Gring3• 14 years ago

Great points.

vitno• 14 years ago

I was actually talking to the Stripe president about this. He was talking about the difficulties in expanding to new monetary markets and how they have to partner with banks and such. However, They are expanding to Canada, UK, & Germany very soon.

junto• 14 years ago

I just hope that Stripe don't make the mistake of forcing users who want to operate in Germany of using the site in German. Paypal assumes that everyone is German, who is in Germany. I live in Germany and I'm not German. I know lots of other people here who aren't German. Europe has a fluid movement of people between different countries. Physical location and language preference have no direct relationship over here.

US startups needs to heed this advice. The minute you plugin that IP-to-geolocation technology, remember it is a guide, not a rule and it definitely does not translate to a language preference.

What puts me off Paymill is that I have no way of choosing a language preference. If I could select English I'd be there like a shot.

Google translate only goes so far...

pbreit• 14 years ago

This is a disastrously limited view of what it takes to roll out a good service in a different country while retaining a good service in the home country.

gawker2• 14 years ago

Now that Europe has had this, where's Canada? Am I still stuck with PayPal as my only viable option for payments?

estel2• 14 years ago

* Germany has this. Doing payment processing in a range of countries is hard.

gawker2• 14 years ago

My apologies for the mistake. Yeah, it's hard which is why I think the brothers are just doing a great job of exploiting opportunities.

mooism2• 14 years ago

Stripe's Canadian beta started within the last week -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4355507

herval2• 14 years ago

On a related note, they also cloned Square in Brazil and Europe (payleven.de/.com.br)

mjbellantoni• 14 years ago

They've even copied someone's logo!

  http://www.launchbit.com/

Carioca2• 14 years ago

Well, in their defense, the Samwers' incubator is called Rocket Internet, so it's more like they're copying themselves.

http://www.rocket-internet.de/

lobster_johnson4• 14 years ago

I don't see the Samwers' names on any of the Rocket Internet pages. Are you sure they are connected?

Edit: Never mind, googling "rocket internet samwer" shows a lot of connections. Still surprised there is nothing on the Rocket Internet pages.

aquaphile• 14 years ago

There are _so_ many payment startups, so Paymill is the least of Stripe's worries. Just an ad-hoc list that have been recently funded:

Approve.io Ogone Zuora Recurly Stripe gocardless.com (Royal Bank of Scotland) blinkpay/blinksale (no funding) Buck (fka Billing Revolution) Gumroad Dwolla Braintree ZenCash WePay Bango Clover PayOne (fka PaymentOne) Isis (verizon, At&t, etc.) Fee Fighters' Samurai Bump Pay BeamIt LEaf Dynamics Corduro Paydici Jumio Paymetric MiCash HelloWallet iZettle Card.io PayLeap BluSynergy PayTap Payleven TraxPay MineralTree CurrencyCloud Square LevelUp ZipMark Paymill

biafra2• 14 years ago

BTW: Payleven is also a Samwer (Rocket Internet) incubated company. Payleven is obviously a Square clone.

nemesisj• 14 years ago

I wrote a blog post asking for this to happen in the UK awhile back. http://peebs.org/free-business-idea-for-a-united-kingdom-sta...

Glad to see it starting to happen in Europe!

dudurocha• 14 years ago

I would love a Stripe Clone in Brazil. It's really annoying and expensive to set up payment in web apps here in brazil.

Somebody knows what would take to clone a startup like these? Besides money?

r3m62• 14 years ago

Everybody is taking about Stripe. But how is Stripe different from existing/established services like Digital River or Plimus?

ExpiredLink• 14 years ago

This just a payment provider like many others. The only difference I see is that they use a 'REST-like' API instead of the usual Web-Service API.

ojr• 14 years ago

This is a beautiful twitter bootstrap site...

shell0x2• 14 years ago

Sure, startups & companies should operate worldwide, but the Samwer business model is really scummy. I could understand if they would build the clone with the background to avoid monopols, but they just try to fill a niche market with a stolen idea and make money with it. Just look at http://www.lazada.com.my/, an amazon clone for countries, where amazon doesn't operate(d) yet. They even use the same layout. I wouldn't say that cloning something is bad in general, if your main focus lies on the extension of an existing idea, but the Samwer brothers nearly copy the idea 1:1 without innovation and creativity and sell it to the mother company later. Thats a really bad motivation for the real entrepreneurs, who try to be innovative. Startups should really start worldwide, to avoid that these copycats make further money with their ideas.

therandomguy• 14 years ago

You are assuming that all businesses should innovate. That is not true. Mostly businesses are about execution and price. Samwer is playing by the rules and winning.

yen2232• 14 years ago

As a Malaysian, I know more people here who use Amazon.com than those who use Lazada.com.my, even though Amazon doesn't technically serve our country.

Branding and the first-mover advantage are very important.

shell0x2• 14 years ago

Interesting, thanks for bringing this up. Does amazon.com charge extra money for the delivery to Malaysia or do they ship for free, because they doesn't serve Malaysia(yet)?

nekopa• 14 years ago

For people thinking about international expansion as just translation: beware, here be dragons.

When I moved (back) to Europe 8 years ago, I used my web skills to help make some extra money on the side (I'm an English language teacher because I love it, but it doesn't pay for holidays and toys :) and there is so much more to developing multilingual sites. Think more along the lines of multicultural.

That color on your call to action? That's our color for cowardice. Ед завыл бела два won't fit on that button. (sorry to any Russians here, I just typed out randomly on the keyboard, but it illustrates the point) most of our customers like to go to the post office to pay for products; oh, and our country's POs are still based on old communist operational principles.

This is without all the different regulatory matters involved. Try iterating quickly when a country's national bank has to vet all the founders to issue the proper licenses... International expansion can mean a lot more than just translation.

[edit] formatting

nathan_f77• 14 years ago

Well, that was inevitable. I don't care if it's Stripe or someone else, I just want a service like this for New Zealanders.

newlogg• 14 years ago

The Samwer's are effectively a tax on innovation.

They contribute nothing new, only cut into the potential profitability of web innovators

g8oz• 14 years ago

They are delivering value to people around the world. Those people now don't have to wait on the expansion plans of companies which don't have globalization built into their DNA. Also they are a live example of what relentless execution looks like.

biafra2• 14 years ago

But they are here in Germany where Stripe is not! So for us germans the do contribute.

nasmorn2• 14 years ago

If I get to repeat a patio11 by integrating them they might earn me a lot of money. Also how innovative is Stripe really. They provide a service that is fairly obvious when you worked with Paypal or a large bank. The point is providing the service is a lot of hard work, thats what we pay them for. The mere idea of payments should not suck this hard is not their business. It is actually depositing your customers money in your bank account and frankly they don't offer that in Germany.

s04p• 14 years ago

I'm not a big fan of the Samwers, and try to avoid using any of their services. And this time I might end up using their service. I simply have no option. This is not only proof of their lightening fast execution, but also how all others fail.

German/European startups: fail. None of them were interested to get into this space. They all want to become the next payment / mobile solution and all had no interest about serving the biggest platform- web.

Stripe: fail. I know how startups work. I know that expanding is not easy. But they have raised $20 Million. You could pay a local team of 10 a year, and would have not even spent 5% of your funding. There is just no excuse. German developers wanted stripe BADLY.

German / European banks: total fail. They completely lack of any vision, and are busy enough staying alive.

habosa• 14 years ago

The best part about Stripe is, and has always been, their amazing understanding of developer needs and their top-notch customer service. No copy-cat can provide that at the same level as Stripe. Helping a website accept credit cards is only half of the equation.

Samwers Clone Stripe

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