Ask HN: Foreign startup collecting payments from US companies?

by tb on 12/3/2010, 1:17 AM with 3 comments

Hi hackers,

After years of lurking on HN I have my first serious startup idea, the big problem for me is that I am Australian. The target market is mobile and web game developers, most of whom are in the US, and I'm wondering how to set up payments. So there's really two questions:

1) If you're a US startup/developer, how would you prefer to pay a foreign partner - is PayPal appropriate for business-to-business transactions? Credit card? Bank transfer? Some other way?

2) If you're a foreign startup, how did you collect payments from US customers? Do I need to get an Australian merchant account to accept CC payments? Can I, as a non-US citizen, start an American company so that BrainTree can give me an American merchant account?

I'm not asking for legal advice here, just some indication of how others have solved this problem before me.

  • by petercooper on 12/3/2010, 3:28 PM

    I've used PayPal for over 10 years without any issues for payments between $12 and $5000. It's not the cheapest or least risky (we've all seen the horror stories) route but it's certainly the easiest and, in my experience, very few people really give a crap about using it (I've lost perhaps a few hundred dollars of business in that time due to PayPal no-goers).

    (I don't know about Australia but in the UK we can use a "Payments Pro" system with them that offers a more merchant account-like experience and it allows you to hide PayPal from the customer.)

  • by skowmunk on 12/3/2010, 5:41 AM

    I am not sure if this is a direct answer, but I think it can be indicative of possibilities. I worked with a contractor on Odesk, he was based in India. This is what used to happen - I used to pay him through Odesk, he had a paypal and XOOM account, and a bank account in an Indian bank in India.

    He used to transfer money from his Odesk account to his Indian bank account using Paypal and/or XOOM.

    Btw, fyi, I am based in the US.

  • by gallerytungsten on 12/3/2010, 2:27 AM

    I have used Paypal, but one foreign vendor was also able to take a US bank check. I was a bit surprised as I did not know this was possible. I'm sure it varies by country, but if it's possible in your country, larger companies, in particular, may prefer to pay by bank check.