Braintree launches instant underwriting

http://pandodaily.com/2012/10/01/a-new-twist-in-the-three-way-payment-wars-braintree-finally-offers-instant-underwriting/

by thehammer • 14 years ago

67 29 14 years ago

pandodaily.com

programminggeek• 14 years ago

This is a big win for Braintree as it opens up the door to a lot of great opportunities they didn't have previously. For example, when starting up a new idea, I never would go with Braintree simply because I wasn't guaranteed I'd sell enough to be worth the monthly minimum. I'd rather take the no risk approach and pay a higher fee per transaction.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who looked at Paypal, Amazon Payments, or Stripe for that reason alone.

daniel_levine2• 14 years ago

Loving the competition in the payments space. More innovation and companies (developers in particular) win.

mobweb• 14 years ago

Reading about all these innovations in the payment market is great, but unfortunately for most of us in Europe, PayPal is still the only option that makes sense most of the time, unfortunately. :(

daniel_levine2• 14 years ago

Would love to hear some of the reasons for that. Lack of credit card usage? rates? I'm curious and I bet companies in the space would love to hear some of the reasons why.

aristidb• 14 years ago

It's probably a combination of credit cards being far less popular in Europe (there are numerous local alternatives for online payment), and many of these services not being available to European companies at all.

jaequery• 14 years ago

i'm assuming it's the banks. perhaps they are less cooperative than US banks.

to most card processing gateways, their main source of bread and butter is their relationships to banks. technology comes second.

wahdeh• 14 years ago

Can't speak for Braintree, but generally US-launched financial services take some time to expand internationally for two reasons: 1) tons of compliance and regulation unique to each country, and 2) having to interface with the specific payment technologies in that country.

PayPal is one of the best international payment options because it's had more time and money to throw at these problems than almost anyone else.

klynch8• 14 years ago

Kristi from Braintree here. Good news- we recently launched in Canada and the EU. We plan on rolling out support for local payment methods in 2013. You can check out what our current international payment capabilities are here: https://www.braintreepayments.com/tour/international

jkaljundi3• 14 years ago

Will the international sign-up become faster (instant?) as well? For now the list of docs required is huge amount of bureaucracy and paperwork.

zakshay3• 14 years ago

I'm not sure if this is comparable to Stripe's signup process.

I just tried signing up from: https://apply.braintreegateway.com/

At the end of it, my application for queued to be manually reviewed (~24 hrs) by an underwriter. Am I missing something here ?

callmeed• 14 years ago

Yeah the article says something about a 30-min process.

I suppose "same-day" would be more appropriate than "instant", but honestly what do you expect from Pando Daily?

zakshay3• 14 years ago

UPDATE: My application was approved within 30 minutes.

klynch8• 14 years ago

That's great! Not sure if you saw this answer to @davidandgoliath where I elaborate a little more on our process:

Most applicants will be approved instantly. There are some circumstances, such as the specifics of your business model, that may require a brief manual review. At most this will take 1 business day, but many reviews will be much quicker - as fast as 20 or 30 minutes.

The difference between Braintree and others is that when we say yes, we mean it. That means your business is good to go from day one and you won’t have to worry about paypal-like shut downs.

Kristi, Braintree

davidandgoliath• 14 years ago

Signed up & was told I'd be contacted in ~24 hours -- not much different from my previous attempts signing up.

zakshay3• 14 years ago

Same experience here. Not sure whats new.

klynch8• 14 years ago

Most valid applicants will be approved instantly. There are some circumstances, such as the specifics of your business model, that may require a brief manual review. At most this will take 1 business day, but many reviews will be much quicker - as fast as 20 or 30 minutes.

The difference between Braintree and others is that when we say yes, we mean it. That means your business is good to go from day one and you won’t have to worry about paypal-like shut downs.

Kristi from Braintree

jkaljundi3• 14 years ago

20-30 min also for all the international countries?

jkaljundi3• 14 years ago

Their sign up form seems to be only for the US, so is the instant underwriting news absolutely correct or is the instant thing for only one of the 200 countries in the world?

At least just a few days ago the international forms and documentation they asked for to sign up was miles long.

klynch8• 14 years ago

@jkalkundi - Kristi from Braintree here.

Currently, the instant underwriting process is only available to our US based merchants. We've made underwriting for merchants outside the US easier than many of the current international alternatives. But we’re still working hard to make sign-up instantaneous for merchants based outside the US and expect to be there soon. As you probably already know, international banks can often be much more risk averse.

mamcx• 14 years ago

Also, any plans for latin-america (I'm from Colombia). Paypal open here and then close, and I can't get out the money (except buying stuff). Now I'm with fastspring but wish to have options...

jim-greer• 14 years ago

"A recent acquisition of digital wallet company Venmo gave it another key arrow in the quiver: The promise to extend one-click payments across its entire portfolio. In other words if you’ve ever purchased an Uber cab– or anything else on a Braintree powered site– you can now make a quick one click purchase on any of its other sites."

I don't see any mention of this sharing of one-click payment info on Braintree's site. Can anyone confirm this is really coming?

klynch8• 14 years ago

Yes, we do have a universal checkout product in the works with the Venmo team. We’ll provide more details as we get further with the product but expect to see more from us on this soon, and the Pando article captures the essence of it. We want to take the seamless checkout experience that we’ve enabled for companies like Uber, HotelTonight, Fab and thousands of others and make it available across every merchant that uses Braintree and every consumer that uses Venmo.

-Kristi from Braintree

tisme• 14 years ago

One step away from a braintree wallet!

tzs2• 14 years ago

I don't understand how instant underwriting works. I thought the the reason it normally takes a while to get set up to take credit cards is because your merchant account provider is liable to the credit card providers for chargebacks, even if they can no longer collect that money from you because you went under months before.

Who assumes the risk for chargebacks in the instant underwriting scenario? How does that party control their risk?

klynch8• 14 years ago

Kristi from Braintree here.

We wrote our own underwriting software that connects our online signup process with years of data and experience underwriting tech companies. That combination of better software, years of data and more experience with tech companies makes us way more efficient than traditional payment providers.

As for who assumes the risk: the merchant is responsible for chargebacks first. If the merchant fails to cover those chargebacks, the risk then typically sits with the payment provider. If the payment provider is not able to cover the risk, the bank then stands behind the payment provider.

BallinBige• 14 years ago

pretty sure you are just an aggregator. Visa & MC are making this more 'feasible'

Braintree launches instant underwriting

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