Online payment service recommendation?

Question

We're currently in the process of looking for an online payment service that will allow us to accept credit cards, etc. However, our business model also involves revenue sharing in a model similar to that of iTunes. That is, content creators will be able to sell content through our site and we take a small percentage of the revenue.

Can anyone recommend an online payment service that supports this model? We're also interested in:

• Accept all major credit cards
• Being able to do international transactions in the appropriate local currency
• Recurring transactions (monthly, yearly, etc.)

Additionally, if the service provided a Java API for integration or the ability to broker PayPal transactions that would be an added bonus.

I know Amazon provides a hosted payment service, but I'd prefer not to require all of our customers to have an Amazon account. That provides an additional barrier to entry that we'd prefer to avoid. I'd appreciate any recommendations you can provide!

Answer 1

This may be the obvious answer:

PayPal does all of the listed functions and additionally handles PayPal transactions quite well.

See: http://x.com.

With regard to taking a percentage off the top, the choice of payment processor isn't likely to matter much. That sounds like something that you're going to have to do yourself anyway (because you are going to apply whatever your business rules are).

Answer 2

There is an alternative to PayPal called PayByCash (I have no experience with them). Their site claims: "Through PayByCash® merchants gain the ability to easily accept an unprecedented breadth of payment types. Customers can use more than 70 convenient payment options."

If nothing else, it's interesting to peruse their list of accepted payment methods - which includes other companies such as: POLi, the Smart way to pay online

And they seem to accept a number of international systems, such as RuPay, which is used in "Ukraine, Russia and other former CIS nations". And I see others for Australia, China, etc...

Answer 3

Braintree supports all of the features you mentioned.

I personally don't have any experience with them, but 37signals (of Basecamp, Ruby on Rails) use them, so I take that as a good reference.

They also provide a good introduction to online payments.

In addition, here's an article that introduces you to online payments: internet merchant accounts, payment gateways, etc. It's a bit too long article and not very well structured, but it's the best I could find on the topic.

Introduction To Online Payments

You might also be interested in the discussion about online payments over at Hacker News.

Answer 4

I know I'm probably not exactly an unbiased party here (I am an AWS developer), but why rule out Amazon FPS?

It supports all major credit cards, can do international transactions (though in US dollars only), can do recurring transactions, has a well-documented API, and comes with an SLA. They even provide sample Java code.

Perhaps the need to have an Amazon account is burdensome, though honestly how many people have one of those compared to Paypal? I am sure I have a Paypal account somewhere, but it's been years since I've used it, and I don't particularly trust the company.

I'm not a member of FPS, nor have I really looked at competitors' products, but I presume the rates are at least reasonable. So perhaps check out the FAQ one last time before ruling it out as an option. At the very least, evaluate whether you'd want to require your customers to have to go through one of the Worst Companies in America rather than America's Most Trusted Brand with their financial information.

Not trying to astroturf, just wanted to question the notion that having an Amazon account is higher bar than having a Paypal one.