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Ask HN: How do people prefer to pay online in your country?

Posted by lucumo on Monday April 20, 2009 @06:38AM
from the ask-hn dept.
Based in part on this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=569607

In that thread we discussed two countries where credit cards are the exception rather than the norm. It seems safe to assume that there are more places where this is the case.

Part of this is also based on our experience when accepting payments. It seems a lot harder to convert a free member to a paying one as soon as you leave the USA. It seems to me that how we accept payments (PayPal, MoneyBookers) is at least in some part responsible for that.

What do people in your geographical area prefer to use for online payments? Is it the credit card, plain old SWIFT/BIC or IBAN, some national payment system?

Is there a payment processor like PayPal that's very popular in your area? (Especially if customers need an account.)

( 9 comments | 8 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: How do people prefer to pay online in your country? by lucumo on Monday April 20, 2009 @06:38AM (#570448)
Link for your clicking convenience: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=569607
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How do people prefer to pay online in your country? by raquo on Monday April 20, 2009 @08:47AM (#570571)
In Russia, most popular online payment systems are probably webmoney.ru and money.yandex.ru

The major difference from PayPal is that 1) these systems are de facto local, and 2) your account is not linked to your debit/credit card, rather, you have to add funds to your account proactively. At least that was true when I last checked it.

Paypal does not work with some Russian banks' credit cards because they ignored this market for so long.

If you want free Russia-specific research, point google translate to fom.ru - there are some quantitative and qualitative surveys on payments via internet.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How do people prefer to pay online in your country? by andrewl-hn on Monday April 20, 2009 @09:24AM (#570625)
Moreover, people are very reluctant to use cards on the Internet in general there. For example a friend of mine wanted to purchase a domain name for personal use (blog, photos, CV, etc.) but eventually decided not to just because he had to use a card!

Lots of local websites accept SMS payments because of that. I have no idea why people consider it safer. It seems to me that as long as there's a HTTPS connection with a nice certificate (EV or normal) from the issuing company you've heard of you're most likely to be safe.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How do people prefer to pay online in your country? by Celcius on Monday April 20, 2009 @09:07AM (#570603)
In Sweden I'd say we almost always use Visa and to a lesser extent master card. If a website doesn't want to deal with credit cards, I think a local version of paypal https://www.payson.se is more common than paypal if it's a page that's only avaliable in Swedish. I'm only really basing this on my own experience and observations though.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How do people prefer to pay online in your country? by swombat on Monday April 20, 2009 @08:43AM (#570564)
In the UK, credit cards are very common, and most debit cards are Visa cards too.

I hear that in Germany, credit cards are very uncommon. I think I heard that "International Maestro" is the option that's much better supported there. I'm not sure about the rest of Europe, but I'd love to know too!

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How do people prefer to pay online in your country? by eru on Monday April 20, 2009 @10:25AM (#570728)
Debit cards (and cash) are much the norm in offline shopping in Germany. Credit cards seem to have taken off somewhat recently, but that may be just my perception. Credit cards also seem to be more common in corporate settings rather than in private hands.

Even for online shopping, one can often get a bill and pay via bank transfer (SWIFT/IBAN or more commonly the national system).

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Re:Ask HN: How do people prefer to pay online in your country? by lucumo on Monday April 20, 2009 @04:30PM (#571337)
How about Giropay? Is it taking of?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How do people prefer to pay online in your country? by eru on Monday April 20, 2009 @08:57PM (#571719)
Never heard of it before. But then --- I am a sample of one.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How do people prefer to pay online in your country? by lucumo on Tuesday April 21, 2009 @05:17AM (#572112)
But an Internet-savvy sample of one.

I just learned about it yesterday after researching the iDEAL system in The Netherlands. I bounced upon an online payment system of my bank which accepted the German Giropay. It said it was like the Dutch iDEAL. So I just had to ask :)

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