Payment Processing with Braintree
The best service providers are the ones that you never notice because they do their job, do not fail, and do not charge painful fees. For payment processing, Braintree has been awesome.
When we were getting ready to launch v1.0 of our product, we started vetting merchant account providers for credit card processing. Being from Atlanta, we tried to use the Sandy Springs-based largest merchant account provider, Global Payments. But Global Payment’s process was incredibly bloated. And they had a big hangup about selling software over the internet without shipping a physical CD. The saleslady there told me to change our website for a week to say we were shipping CDs so that the underwriters would be comfortable with our business model, then we could switch back to do whatever. I was uncomfortable lying to underwriters even with the instructions to do so directly from Global Payments. It was unbelievable that in 2008, Global Payments still would not accept payments for downloadable software.
So we looked around and found Braintree which had started less than a year previously themselves. The founder, Bryan Johnson, answered the phone when I called. It was risky then, but ultimately an awesome choice. Braintree has had a tremendous growth story since, now at revenues over $10M. We were a Braintree early adopter.
Braintree’s system is super simple and fair. Their API which we use on our website has been flawless. Their backend reports and billing has been straightforward.
What service do you use for payment processing? What other services do you enjoy?
Update 5/May/2013 – Great article recently came out in TechCrunch describing Braintree’s story, http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/04/how-to-go-from-0-to-1000000-in-two-years/