At Spreedly Core we see a lot of European and Asia Pacific customers sign up due to our API and flexibility to change gateways. However, no one outside of Stripe (and so far Stripe is the only one in the US) who has nailed the instant sign up piece.

2checkout is an option for payments outside the US. They are a bit pricey, but they're one of the few international payment processors around, and have very good customer support, both for buyers and sellers.

[I used to work for 2co. I don't any more.]

In Australia, Pin (https://pin.net.au) is very similar service: no merchant account required, nice API.

Basically, no. (I'm in the UK and am poised to jump to Stripe as soon as it becomes available).

There is the option of GoCardless (https://gocardless.com/) in the UK, however they use the Direct Debit system rather than card processing which does somewhat limit you geographically.

Aren't they really the "Anti-Stripe" more akin to Dwolla? Banish Credit Cards altogether? Also, I heard there were changes in European direct deposit/ACH laws (the approach Gocardless takes) that will allow them to be European, not just UK, very soon.