bryanjohnson

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thank you for posting

If that’s the case, they’re losing money on your account because that pricing is below the wholesale bank costs (which is the same for everyone). You probably want to check the fine print or your monthly statement.

Our (Braintree) pricing is actually very competitive. It may look higher because we disclose all our fees. Nearly every provider we know obscures fees both during the sales process and in the monthly reporting statements so merchants never really understand what they're paying. Here's an example of pricing trickery http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/Costco-your-ma...

No, I didn't.

This is Bryan from Braintree. I was working for a different company at the time I visited my former customers. I honored the one year non-compete I had with my former employer.

We (Braintree) don't require fax usage. It's an option but not a requirement.

This advice is hard earned. Great write up.

We're on the opposite side of the spectrum as a company in that we're not well known, we're not well connected, we don't have outside capital, and we're not creating the next generation of search. We do, however, have similar goals of finding and retaining the best people, building an enduring and rewarding culture, and continuously exploring better ways to do things. We actually blogged today about what we've learned as a startup in trying to find the best people who are also the right cultural fit.

http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/inside-braintree/re...

Good for them. They've worked very hard and been extremely thoughtful about how they've built their business.

The DataPortability Project has been at the forefront of addressing challenging data portability issues that affect all of us. We (Braintree) are really excited to see our Credit Card Data Portability initiative be adopted by them. This is their first initiative for B2B data portability. We were unsure what to expect from our efforts but are really excited to see that it's starting to get traction.

Original Credit Card Data Portability announcement: http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/data-portabili...

Open Letter to the CEO's of Authorize.net and Paypal: Help End the Credit Card Data Hostage Situation http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/open-letter-to...

Not directly related, but we (Braintree) recently blogged about credit card expiration dates. Here is a snippet: "If you run a transaction in our gateway and enter a date in the past for the credit card expiration date, you may be surprised to discover that we don't validate it. We run the transaction knowing that the card is expired. Why do we do this? The short answer is that financial institutions will still approve transactions with expired expiration dates."

http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/credit-cards-a...

We (Braintree) have no contracts and no termination fees. Merchants can leave whenever they want and for whatever reason without penalty. Some of our sponsoring banks unfortunately have cancellation fee language (that we don't control and are trying to get removed) but we provide an addendum to every customer that states they will never be responsible for any cancellation fees.

We (Braintree) now work with companies of all sizes, including a lot of startups, and have no volume requirements. In the past we did have volume requirements. We were a smaller company then and were trying to balance maintaining a high quality of service when working with more leads than we could handle. We'll be blogging about this in greater detail.

bryan.johnson@getbraintree.com

Sachin - the online payments industry is indeed very complex. I'm impressed that you both took the time to write this up and did such a nice job. I would add a few things. (Disclosure: I'm with Braintree)

1) There is much more than meets the eye when choosing a merchant account provider, and not all are created equal (it's very true that few understand online payments). We will be first to say that providing merchant account services to online merchants is very challenging for a host of reasons. Because it's so complex and because there are so many moving parts, no one is immune to mistakes, misunderstandings, complex situations and difficult situations. With that said, the importance of choosing the right provider cannot be overstated. Merchants need to find a company they can trust because when stuff happens (i.e. account closure, reserves) you need someone in your corner that can help navigate. In our experience, merchants are most likely to make mistakes when solely focused on price.

2) I'm very pleased to see you call out data portability. We were the first in the industry to start raising the alarm bells about providers holding stored credit card data hostage. It's a huge issue with very serious implications. To address this problem, we created the Credit Card Data Portability Standard and invited all providers to participate (http://bit.ly/a0i86v).

We've been blogging about the industry for years now trying to help educate merchants. Here is are two resources to contribute to yours:

a) New to Payments - http://bit.ly/cIY58t b) Don't get duped. Use this checklist - http://bit.ly/dliMpH

It's actually between 2-5k per month, depending on average ticket. For merchants looking to maintain volumes less than that for the long term, other providers will cost less in monthly fees (but may have a higher total cost when including other items such as pci compliance, recurring solutions, etc.).

We (Braintree) are one of the gateway and merchant account providers that Chargify supports.

When choosing a payment gateway, merchants need to be aware that most providers will hold stored credit card data hostage. It’s a huge problem with significant implications.

We created the Credit Card Data Portability Standard to address this problem: http://bit.ly/a0i86v

I think you have two options. First, to become a payments aggregator as Dan Manges pointed out. You would essentially be performing the same function as Paypal does on ebay today: facilitating payments between buyers and sellers. That's a very difficult model for a lot of reasons.

The second option you have is to use Paypal's adaptive payments. I'm not familiar enough with it to know if it would fit your needs but it's the only solution out there that potentially provides enough flexibility to do what you want and get you out of aggregation.

I don't think Amazon's FPS has the flexibility or the international reach to do what you need.

I'm unsure if you are comparing apples to apples on the pricing as it looks like SecureTrading is a UK only provider. The UK and the U.S. have entirely different credit card processing fee structures. The wholesale rates, known as interchange, in the UK are lower and are structured differently. So a direct comparison is not applicable. I was specifically referring to U.S. providers.

In terms of your other comment regarding scaremongering, that is not our intent. We're just trying to raise awareness of hidden fees in the industry. We see it all day every day in competitor proposals. Credit card pricing is inherently complex and difficult to present to merchants. We've tried to simplify the complexity of pricing and buying merchant services by posting our pricing online and not hiding any fees. We try to raise awareness because at times it feels like we're the only provider out there that doesn't hide fees. I am sure that there are other providers that do not hide fees or present them in a way that hinders a merchant from properly understanding rates they'll pay - we just rarely ever see it.

That's language that one of our sponsoring banks unfortunately has not yet removed from the agreement. It's boilerplate language that is optional for us to enforce. Regardless, we're working with them to get it removed because we maintain that merchants can cancel their services at any time without a termination fee, and that language is clearly inconsistent.

Since that language is in there, we have always provided an addendum to the agreement that provides assurance to merchants that they can cancel whenever they want without having any termination fees. The addendum is located right next to application and is completed with every new customer that signs up. It states the following:

"WHEREAS, Braintree wishes to assure Merchant that Merchant will not have to pay any termination fees for the Merchant Agreement with Braintree or any of the processors used by Braintree; NOW THEREFORE, for good and valuable consideration, the receipt and sufficiency of which is hereby acknowledged, the Parties agree as follows: Merchant may terminate the Merchant Agreement with Braintree, and any processor utilized by Braintree. If Merchant exercises this termination right then Merchant shall not have to pay any termination fees."

We have never had contracts and have never charged a termination fee.

We (Braintree) have never had contracts or termination fees. Customers can cancel whenever they want and port the credit card data elsewhere.

As for our pricing, it's actually very competitive. It may look higher because we disclose all our fees. Nearly every provider we know of obscures fees both during the sales process and in the monthly reporting statements so merchants never really understand what they're paying. Here's an example of pricing trickery http://bit.ly/9NSZCa .

Prospective customers regularly do thorough pricing comparisons and we are consistently among the most competitively priced.

Yes, sorry, forgot to mention that I am with Braintree. You can contact Eric at ej at getbraintree.com and he will be able to provide some guidance.

Thanks @hga for the nice comment, we certainly try. Regarding the volume minimum, we did away with that about a year ago.

@j1477 - here are a few resources that may help you in your search for a solution:

1. You mentioned reserving an amount on a credit card. You can do this one of two ways. First, you can authorize a credit/debit card and then settle it at a later date. Authorizations do go stale after a few days (the general rule is 7 days, but it varies bank to bank) so if the time between authorization and settlement is greater than ~7 days, you'll need to reauthorize to complete the transaction. Also, authorizations cannot be settled more than once. For example, you can't authorize a card for $100 and then settle it twice, each for $50.

The second option is to do an Account Verification request. Here is more information on that: http://bit.ly/NlKuG

2. The second thing you mentioned was "transfer part of the buyer's deposit to a seller". I may not understand this correctly, but this sounds like you're collecting payment on behalf of a third party, which is known as aggregation and is one of the highest forms of risk in payment processing. Here is more information on that: http://bit.ly/775RkJ

If you're looking to transfer funds to payout out another provider, you could also move the funds via electronic funds transfer (EFT) from your bank to theirs.