You can expect the same solid customer support from Braintree as always, delivered by the same support, accounts, and risk teams. You can also expect even more innovative technology and products to come during this new chapter for Braintree. If you have specific questions about your account, you can always talk to a real person at 877.434.2894 or support@braintreepayments.com.
At Braintree we have always earned our merchants' business every day. We were the first payment platform to offer data portability, because we don't believe in locking in our customers, and that doesn't change. As we enter this new chapter, will we continue to earn your business with same great support you've come to expect and even more of the innovative technology you've come to love. Our support and accounts teams are still just a call (or email) away: 877.434.2894 or support@braintreepayments.com.
anthonys - thanks for your good suggestions on improving Briantree's signup process. We rolled out a new version of our signup form today, and we are now using the BSB number to determine the type of bank account. We also eliminated a few other fields from the form and are working to simplify it further, by removing the ACN field (which it turns out is embedded in the ABN/ARBN number headslap) and a few others.
I looked into your suggestion about using the ABN number to look up information about a merchant and found http://abr.business.gov.au/. It looks like that will provide the merchant's name along with the city, state, and postcode of their location. Are you aware of any other services that would provide more information?
I am fairly certain nab will be doing a similar search so maybe you can work with them on that or have them reimburse you for Braintree performing the initial search.
Re. ABN/ACN there are certain (very rare) situations where the ABN and ACN differ apart from the additional 2 numbers at the start of the ABN.
This is Michael from Braintree. I worked on the signup process and other parts of our Australian launch.
anthonys - Thanks for you feedback. We're just getting started in Australia, and we'll continue to improve the onboarding process over time. Leaving the signup process aside, I think there are lots of great reasons to use Braintree in Australia:
Integration - Our elegant API, and client libraries in the language of your choice, mean that you can complete your integration over a cup of coffee.
PCI Compliance - When you utilize Transparent redirect and our Vault, you can achieve PCI compliance with almost no effort, because the credit card data skips your servers and is stored securely with Braintree.
Support - We’ve built a reputation of providing the very best support in the business. Even though our team is based in the States, our clients around the world tell us they get better response times than with their old local providers - and those responses come from friendly developers and payments experts.
I hope you'll give us chance. Please let us know if we can help in any way.
I _know_ there are reasons I'd like to use Braintree, but the signup process is the first and most impression-leaving point of contact users will make with you, and the choice of signup process you've made makes cynical-me suspect this is all about gathering competitive information and acquiring all _my_ business information without bothering to tell me even even ballpark figures of what you're going to cost me.
Maybe I'm not your target market, since I don't find eWay or SecurePay or Paypal's "integration" particularly onerous - but as one of the tech guys in a small web dev firm, I talk a customer or two a month through the process of getting an Internet Merchant Account with one of the local banks so they can accept payments for their Magento/Shopify/WooCommerce/WPMU/Concrete5 shop. I'm unlikely to jump through your "tell us all about your business before we give you prices" hoops only to possibly find out you're barely competitive with Paypal and not even _close_ to what my clients can get via Westpac/Securepay.
It's all about trust. "Tell me everything about yourself before I tell you the most important thing about me" doesn't portray the sort of trust I'd expected given your reputation...
Two of Braintree's core values are transparency and simplicity. Due to the complexities of pricing in the Australian market, those two things aren't compatible in this case. So we decided to err on the side of simplicity and didn't publish our Australian pricing.
One thing we learned on our very first day in the Australian market is that Aussies aren't shy about sharing their opinions. We've heard loud and clear that you expect nothing less than complete transparency from the very beginning, even if that means getting into the messy details. We're grateful for that feedback.
So we're adding pricing to our website, and expect to publish it in the next few days (we're taking a bit of time to design it to be as clear and understandable as possible). In the meantime, feel free to shoot us an email and we'll be happy to send you pricing.
International expansion is new for Braintree - we're not a giant company with thousands of employees spread around the globe. We're really excited to be working with Australian companies, and we know we still have a lot to learn about you. However, I think you'll find that we are fast learners, and that we continually improve Braintree's service based on what we learn.
This unfortunately feels exactly the same as signing up for any other merchant facility. The API might be great, with with wrappers such as ActiveMerchant for Ruby, is that really such a big deal anymore?
No clear pricing, loads of info required to signup, monthly + transaction costs + merchant service fee, and a seemingly apparent affiliation with NAB's multi-currency merchant account.
How is this different from getting eWay, NAB and Chargify? You mention three points, integration, PCI and Support.
I've touched on integration already (ActiveMerchant). PCI - Chargify handles this (as does eWay using the token system).
So really the main point of difference is Support (and perhaps pricing, but can't be sure since it isn't transparent).
I think the answer is embedded in your question - Braintree is a full-stack payments provider, so you don't have to go to three different vendors to get everything you need.
In fact this is one of keys to how we provide great service to our clients. We are a single source for any payments help you need, from signup to integration to processing. If you ever have an issue, our team will navigate the byzantine banking system so you don't have to.
BTW - check out my response about pricing in the thread above (tl;dr we're adding pricing to our Australian website)
@corkill - I work on the signup and application process for Braintree, and I would be curious to know why SSN is a deal-killer for you. Do you not have a SSN, or is it just something you would rather not share? Feel free to email me at mboeke@braintreepayments.com if you would like.
Also, our company name comes from the town of Braintree, Massachusetts, which is the home of the American revolutionary John Adams. I hope you won't hold that against us.
The idea behind this offer is to help launch more startups. We aren't policing this with specific limits, but we're asking that you only use this if you are truly a pre-revenue start-up or just started to collect fees for your product. If you’ve already got your start, then congratulations - we would love to work with you and help you grow. And you'll probably find that our standard pricing works well for you.
I'm happy that you changed your pricing to 2.9% + 30¢ - it did actually feel too expensive before. Thank you for supporting The Rest Of The World too! If I needed a payment gateway right now, your service would be a total no-brainer.
Michael from Braintree, here. I helped build our instant signup process.
You make an astute observation here. PayPal (and other folks who imitate their business model) have a earned a poor reputation for servicing startups whose businesses actually grow. Braintree has been winning clients away from PayPal for years on this score, and we absolutely will not embrace their model.
We are actually doing something quite different with our instant approval process. We've combined an easy signup form with years of experience and data from working with fast-growing startups. The result is truly a full underwriting process that helps us to understand your business, and can approve most merchants to accept credit cards online instantly. With an instant approval from Braintree, you will have your own merchant account and the assurance that when your startup takes-off we will be cheering for you, not witholding your funds.
For us, that's part of getting to know our client. Your question implies that you don't think it's necessary for us to check a credit report - I would be curious to learn why. Feel free to send me an email at mboeke@braintreepayments.com if you want to discuss.
I would be curious to know why you think this looks more promising than Braintree.
Disclosure: I work at Braintree. I'm not trying to shill here - I'm genuinely curious about how people think about our stuff vs. other payments companies.
Mostly on my end it is because it is because they are a new player in the game and need to make an impact (be it via lower pricing or other value-added means) and also because they are an Australian company. I'm also hoping that this will bring a little more competition to this space in our country as it has been stagnant for quite some time.
In saying that, 'more promising' was probably a poor choice of words and I am not discounting Braintree at all. As an early stage startup your pricing took me back a little but not enough to sway me away. I have signed up to your mailing list to be made aware of when you guys launch here and am also looking forward to checking out your offering.
Thanks for the interest. It is always good to see companies provide a presence on these forums and certainly accentuates your products to me.
You can expect the same solid customer support from Braintree as always, delivered by the same support, accounts, and risk teams. You can also expect even more innovative technology and products to come during this new chapter for Braintree. If you have specific questions about your account, you can always talk to a real person at 877.434.2894 or support@braintreepayments.com.