Australian payments processor Pin now out of private beta | Hacker News Reader

Australian payments processor Pin now out of private beta

pin.net.au

hopefully this will be the Stripe of AU. Accepting cards in Australia is a nightmare.

The email I just received:

    Hi people,
    Just a quick note to let you know you can now 
    activate your Pin Payments account to accept live
    credit card payments whenever you're ready.

    Log in to https://pin.net.au to activate!

    Your clients, colleagues, customers can now sign up 
    too, so do let them know about us :)

    As always, happy to discuss any questions, just hit
    reply or tweet @pin_payments.
    cheers,
    -Grant

Payments has been a nightmare for Australian startups for a while, so this is great news.

I'd like to understand more about why you think it's a 'nightmare'. I set up a merchant account with St George in 2009 for my startup at the time and the whole process was fairly straightforward and hassle free. The fees were about $50/month + 0.8% of each transaction.

The standard complaints:

"Your business model isn't a fish-and-chip shop, please go away".

"You don't own a home we can seize, please go away".

"You want to bill and bank in USD/EUR/not-AUD? Please go away unless you are already successful".

"Congratulations on being approved! The next step is to apply all over again to a completely different service. We don't actually take the payments ourselves".

I didn't have problems 1, 2 or 4 with STG - we were tiny and none of us had any assets (I don't think they even asked).

We didn't try to do number 3 maybe that's the problem?

(I'm from Pin Payments).

Yes, foreign currencies (e.g. USD) are a huge problem for small/new businesses here. Way too difficult.

It depends on your business model. Mine wasn't a straightforward buy-a-thing-sell-a-thing model and this makes small business banking heads kersplode with great ferocity, it would seem.

"What is it you do again?"

"{{explanatory_statement}}"

"... so, um, what products are you going to sell?"

Annnnnd because my turnover is less than $ferrari, I'm always flicked to a small business banker. If I needed a loan for a commercial deep fryer I'd be talking to the right person.

St George belongs to Westpac now, FWIW.

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