Hmm. I really like this, and I'm definitely going to use it when I finish my service. However, I have two small problems and one large problem with it:
- It's impossible to go back and select another payment option once you click one of them.
- You can't style your payment dialog. (This may be a good thing [consistency], but I think it'd be nice to be able to add custom CSS to the pricing dialog.)
My large problem is that the price is crazy; your 50 cent per transaction fee means that for all transactions under $7 you collect more in fees than Stripe does. With a $5 payment - very common for services such as the one I'll release soon - I'm paying 20% to you. With a $1 payment, I pay a prohibitive 83% in fees. That's a really large cut compared to using the Stripe API directly, and I think that for anyone looking to increase their profits it's a no-brainer to cut Snappy Checkout out of the equation.
To give a personal example, my service will be primarily receiving $5 payments. For the first 1000 payments or so, I'll probably stick with Snappy - the $500 I give up isn't worth the time I would've spent rolling my own solution. However, as soon as I can see that there's a clear market for my product, I'll roll my own with Stripe - I clearly wouldn't want to give up 20% to payment processing alone.
Meanwhile, Frank is selling antique vases on Facebook for $1.5k each, and he pays 50 cents a transaction to you.
However, if you were to switch to a flat fee + a percentage (say 1.5% and 15 cents), as Stripe does, you would probably retain my business for a lot longer. Suddenly, I pay a 4.5% cut to you as opposed to a 10% cut, which is quite reasonable. At the same time, Frank the antique vase seller doesn't really care about a 1.5% fee: a win-win situation.
tl;dr I recommend that you change to a percentage of the total sales: sellers of cheap items will use your service and sellers of expensive items won't care. There's a reason why Stripe, Visa, and every other payment processor everywhere ever does this.
It seems someone loses either way. Charge a flat fee and small transactions are more expensive. Charge a percentage and large transactions are more expensive. I suppose you could do some combination of both, but that would make the pricing more complicated to understand.
I don't know about everyone else, but I would care if I was being charged X% to sell a $200 item -- even more so if there were options to pay a flat fee.
There's a reason why every other payment processor I can name and probably hundreds I can't name charge a percentage - it strikes a balance between fairness for large and small payments. Almost no company I can think of would blink at a 0.25% fee - a sign your fees are too low. Meanwhile, nobody would want to pay 80% of a $1 purchase in fees. I really encourage you to rethink your fee model. Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, etc. all use a percentage. There's a reason why almost every payment fee in the last 50 years has used a percentage - because it works.
Personally, I just discovered Gumroad and I'll probably be using that instead. With them I pay 10% of a $5 transaction in fees. With Snappy I pay 20%. It's a no-brainer.
Finally, I don't think a flat fee plus a percent is too hard to understand. Stripe and Gumroad use it, and probably many more but I can't think of them.
[edit] I just found out I can't use recurring subscriptions with PayPal. I'm going with Gumroad. That said, you have a really nice looking product and I'd love to use it, but 20% in fees is ridiculous.
Every other payment processor charges a percentage -- agreed. So, it seems people have no choice right now. They are going to pay a percentage no matter where they go.
I'm open to pricing suggestions. I was just trying to do what I thought was reasonable.
If you (or anyone else) want to work out some kind of X% for less expensive transactions, then send me an email and we can work something out. I'm willing to discuss matching whatever Gumroad or anyone offering similar checkout products is charging.
Comments
Hmm. I really like this, and I'm definitely going to use it when I finish my service. However, I have two small problems and one large problem with it:
- It's impossible to go back and select another payment option once you click one of them.
- You can't style your payment dialog. (This may be a good thing [consistency], but I think it'd be nice to be able to add custom CSS to the pricing dialog.)
My large problem is that the price is crazy; your 50 cent per transaction fee means that for all transactions under $7 you collect more in fees than Stripe does. With a $5 payment - very common for services such as the one I'll release soon - I'm paying 20% to you. With a $1 payment, I pay a prohibitive 83% in fees. That's a really large cut compared to using the Stripe API directly, and I think that for anyone looking to increase their profits it's a no-brainer to cut Snappy Checkout out of the equation.
To give a personal example, my service will be primarily receiving $5 payments. For the first 1000 payments or so, I'll probably stick with Snappy - the $500 I give up isn't worth the time I would've spent rolling my own solution. However, as soon as I can see that there's a clear market for my product, I'll roll my own with Stripe - I clearly wouldn't want to give up 20% to payment processing alone.
Meanwhile, Frank is selling antique vases on Facebook for $1.5k each, and he pays 50 cents a transaction to you.
However, if you were to switch to a flat fee + a percentage (say 1.5% and 15 cents), as Stripe does, you would probably retain my business for a lot longer. Suddenly, I pay a 4.5% cut to you as opposed to a 10% cut, which is quite reasonable. At the same time, Frank the antique vase seller doesn't really care about a 1.5% fee: a win-win situation.
tl;dr I recommend that you change to a percentage of the total sales: sellers of cheap items will use your service and sellers of expensive items won't care. There's a reason why Stripe, Visa, and every other payment processor everywhere ever does this.
It seems someone loses either way. Charge a flat fee and small transactions are more expensive. Charge a percentage and large transactions are more expensive. I suppose you could do some combination of both, but that would make the pricing more complicated to understand.
I don't know about everyone else, but I would care if I was being charged X% to sell a $200 item -- even more so if there were options to pay a flat fee.
There's a reason why every other payment processor I can name and probably hundreds I can't name charge a percentage - it strikes a balance between fairness for large and small payments. Almost no company I can think of would blink at a 0.25% fee - a sign your fees are too low. Meanwhile, nobody would want to pay 80% of a $1 purchase in fees. I really encourage you to rethink your fee model. Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, etc. all use a percentage. There's a reason why almost every payment fee in the last 50 years has used a percentage - because it works.
Personally, I just discovered Gumroad and I'll probably be using that instead. With them I pay 10% of a $5 transaction in fees. With Snappy I pay 20%. It's a no-brainer.
Finally, I don't think a flat fee plus a percent is too hard to understand. Stripe and Gumroad use it, and probably many more but I can't think of them.
[edit] I just found out I can't use recurring subscriptions with PayPal. I'm going with Gumroad. That said, you have a really nice looking product and I'd love to use it, but 20% in fees is ridiculous.
Every other payment processor charges a percentage -- agreed. So, it seems people have no choice right now. They are going to pay a percentage no matter where they go.
I'm open to pricing suggestions. I was just trying to do what I thought was reasonable.
If you (or anyone else) want to work out some kind of X% for less expensive transactions, then send me an email and we can work something out. I'm willing to discuss matching whatever Gumroad or anyone offering similar checkout products is charging.