Forge - an easy way to accept payments online, powered by Balanced (YC W11)

http://blog.balancedpayments.com/balanced-powers-forge

by jareau • 13 years ago

24 27 13 years ago

blog.balancedpayments.com

dylangs10303• 13 years ago

A few points:

Why is this different (in a worthwhile way) from existing payment options? Like Stripe?

What else can you cite that Paypal does wrongly that you can implement correctly?

I don't mean to be critical, just asking hard questions. "Taking on" big companies like Paypal has been a de facto way to bring attention to projects since the early 2000s, but it's hard to actually achieve that level of eminence and market share. Being good isn't enough.

kevinholesh11• 13 years ago

Designer at Forge here.

Those are both great questions. We're aiming Forge at people who cannot write their own backend payment processor to use Stripe, and only know basic HTML. If you have the skills and the time to code and maintain payment processing and a checkout form, then Forge isn't for you. We're aiming it at non-techies who want to sell something online.

PayPal certainly has its advantages, but we're trying to solve two main problems: the checkout experience and the withdrawing of funds. The checkout experience on PayPal has 5 or 6 steps and redirects you away from the merchant's site to complete a payment. Ours is on one page and is embedded directly in the merchant's site. Click "buy product", checkout form pops down, fill out 6 or so fields and click "buy now." Done.

Also, we automatically deposit your profits into your bank account every Friday. Our goal is to get this down to the next-day. You sell something Tuesday morning, ship it Tuesday afternoon, and the money is in your bank account on Wednesday morning.

dylangs10303• 13 years ago

Thanks for the quick reply Kevin.

Will you also be implementing a hardware system for the iPhone/iPod like Square? Or are you going entirely online?

Paypal has a card reader as well. Just a thought.

tvladeck2• 13 years ago

At the bottom they lay out the charges. All of us can do the arithmetic, but their example works out to 6.4% of a $20 sale!

And of course once you back out the overhead and direct costs of selling, the amount of your potential profit that eats up is some multiple of that.

They charge 2.9% + $0.30, and then 2%.

Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30.

So they are approximately 65-70% (2/2.9 = 0.69) more expensive, depending on your average charge.

kevinholesh11• 13 years ago

You are correct. We are more expensive than Stripe if you're just looking at money.

But we look at it from a time and capital perspective. With Stripe, you have to code and maintain your own payment solution on the backend and your own checkout form. You also have to worry about a million other things like emailing your customers when they place an order, and handling refunds. If you don't have the coding skills to build that yourself, you have to hire an expensive developer to build and maintain that for you.

If that extra 2% cost savings is worth it to endure the hassle above, then Forge isn't for you. We're aiming at people who don't want to deal with all that and would rather concentrate on growing their business doing things like launching a new product and marketing their current ones.

flexie2• 13 years ago

The extra 2 percent - that is 'only' 2 percent of revenue but for a webshop it is easily 20 percent of profits.

tvladeck2• 13 years ago

Point taken. You're right, it's a different market. Good luck!

nicksergeant2• 13 years ago

If you want to stay competitive, you'll probably need to drop your fee down to 1% to match https://spacebox.io/ (which is powered by Stripe)

jbrooksuk• 13 years ago

Yet another Payment processor which doesn't work outside of USA/Canada. I hate being in Europe.

kevinholesh11• 13 years ago

Believe me. We're bummed about that too. We're working as hard as we can to get into other countries, but we had to start somewhere.

runaway• 13 years ago

The word "forge" seems to me an odd choice for a company that deals in finance. Three of us here independently saw negative connotations when it comes to money, security, trust, etc. but nobody else has brought it up yet so perhaps it's just us. Best of luck to them.

kevinholesh11• 13 years ago

That's certainly a valid point. We're trying to convey that you're forging a lasting online business and doing the hard work to be independent from a corporate job.

If the name turns out to be losing us business, then we'll have to address it.

sabalaba• 13 years ago

Stripe is going to be a tough organization to compete with. I wish you the best of luck.

kevinholesh11• 13 years ago

I don't see us competing with Stripe. If you're a developer and have the time to write and maintain a payment solution around Stripe, then Forge definitely isn't for you.

We're going after the people who don't want to code all of that themselves and just want to sell something and get money deposited into their bank account.

dylangs10303• 13 years ago

Forge and Stripe are technically not applicable to the same audience.

Developers are attracted to Stripe for extensibility and customization through coding.

Non-technical users will like Forge because it's non-technical and quick to start up, in a "just works" sort of way.

kevinholesh11• 13 years ago

Couldn't have said it better myself.

jusben1369• 13 years ago

Gumroad might be a better analogy (I think built on top of Stripe) They're 5% and 25 cents.

trungonnews2• 13 years ago

Are you guys doing the exact same thing as Stripe Checkout? https://stripe.com/docs/checkout

jordanmessina• 13 years ago

Stripe checkout button only sends a charge token to a backend that you have to write. A backend that needs to trigger the actual charge and everything that goes along with that, like generating emails and receipts.

Forge takes care of all of that so you don't have to worry about it.

trungonnews2• 13 years ago

Ah. Thanks.

Forge - an easy way to accept payments online, powered by Balanced (YC W11)

Related Stories