[LRUG] Recurring Payments and subscriptions

[Richard Taylor]

I've recently setup Barclays Business -> Barclaycard Merchant Services ->
SagePay -> Spreedly and can say even though it has taken months to do, the
service and support of all four companies has been excellent.

The only condition on the account is that I don't get the money for 30 days
- because of the no trading history thing but they have said they will
review that in 12 months time which I find fair.

I am working on a startup (https://subsify.com/) that aims to make this
whole process as easy as possible and take care of UK/EU VAT but as you can
imagine it isn't very straightforward.

I also applied to PayPal Pro in the first instance and was declined for no
reason - they also suggested I checked a few Credit reference agencies,
which I did and they were all fine! - their loss.

Stating the obvious but don't forget you don't have to worry about VAT until
you're VAT registered.  Makes life a lot easier when you're starting up if
you don't register until your turnover exceeds £70k at which point you'll
have a great trading history and have your choice of the banks and other
services.

On 28 January 2011 15:30, Jason Green <jason.green at nogeek.org> wrote:

> OMG that is a bad experience with google checkout.
>
> We have built quite a number of sites here with many different types of
> payment gateways and billing management and I can say that the one that has
> disappointed the most is SagePay which has been consistently bad over the
> last year (service outages, invalid transactions etc,,,), paypal has been
> consistently good but thats just my experience.
>
> I think you can create subscriptions in paypals merchant account to roll
> your own billing system?
>
> Jason Green
> http://www.dynamic50.com
>
>
> On 28 Jan 2011, at 15:21, Paul Wilson wrote:
>
> >
> > On 28 Jan 2011, at 15:13, Jason Green wrote:
> >
> >> Maybe I am missing the point here, but why not use paypal, or google
> checkout (if you don't need recurring)?
> >
> >
> > The plan up until this morning was to do recurring.  Circumstances have
> forced us to reconsider, and we're kicking off with PayPal.
> >
> >>
> >> Paypal does recurring:
> https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/subscr-intro-outsideand also micro-payments.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Yes, but that involves "rolling our own billing system".
> >
> >
> >> When you get to the stage that paypals' 5% is loosing you more than it
> would cost to implement a proper payment gateway, the company bank account
> would be showing a healthy enough balance and history to get verified /
> credit checked.
> >>
> >
> > The risky side of PayPal is that (in my experience of dealing with them
> every year for the Scottish Ruby Conference) they are a massive and faceless
> bureaucracy that frequently suspends accounts with little warning or
> explanation.  I think they are risky to rely on.  Google don't seem to be
> any better(*)
> >
> > (*)
> http://slash7.com/2009/03/26/google-is-evil-worse-than-paypal-don-t-use-google-checkout-for-your-business/
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Chat at lists.lrug.org
> > http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
>
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