BTW, WorldPay is another popular option among Australian companies as we get enquiries for that too, however I believe pin.net.au and BraintreePayments would be game changers, hopefully to disrupt in this market.
I don't mean to be negative but it feels like this expansion has come at the expense of what made Braintree well, Braintree.
A few things from the application-
- They ask for an ABN. This would give them most of the entity information they are asking for otherwise.
- They ask for a BSB/Account number and also ask "Is this a nab account?". A directory of BSB's is freely available and would enable them to identify who the bank account entered belongs to.
- Their questions relating to card mix and links to all of the required pages make this no easier then applying for an account with nab or any of the major banks directly.
Have I missed a page on their site that explains what makes Braintree in Australia worthwhile?
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)
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.
Kristi from Braintree here. To be totally honest, although we've been beta testing for a few months, we're still new to the market, and there are still some unknowns.
We could've launched with a standard high rate to cover for those, but we decided that offering custom tailored pricing would be more favorable to individual businesses. All of that being said, we're fast learners and should have standard pricing for Australian merchants within a few months.
Precisely my question too - why should I have to "sign up to tell us about your business" before I get even indicative prices? Especially when that not-so-useful offer is arrived at from various "See Our Pricing" links.
I was quite excited about this until I bumped into that.
In most APAC countries, one underlying theme is the yearly or monthly fee. Will be interesting to know what BraintreePayments charges in Australia.
For reference look at this: http://www.eway.com.au/pricing/
BTW, WorldPay is another popular option among Australian companies as we get enquiries for that too, however I believe pin.net.au and BraintreePayments would be game changers, hopefully to disrupt in this market.