Some suggestions

[lalo98]

Hi benubois. Feedbin looks almost perfect for me, except: a.You need to add Paypal or Gift Card function. $20/y is not a problem, but credit card blocks many potential users. Also you need to allow people try for free, even on a demo or a sandbox. b.There's a function called Note in Reader of Google Reader, it could be placed as a bookmark by javascript, but Google cancelled it. It's a really important function, if you can rebuild it, you even can get many Evernote's users. This is same important as Starred function. c.If possible, add Google 2-step verification, I've heard it's not real complex. Some people live in Vietnam/Iran/China/Cuba, the news they read also could let them go to jail, if you live there you will understand. So in my opinion, Rss reader account is same important as Gmail account. I have so many ideas, and I'm still shilly shally between newsblur, feedly, netvibes, theoldreader and Feedbin. Hope you can make Feedbin be real different.

[tschloss]

Hi, I would like to join, but since I hate to put my credit card details into unknown channels I can't.

Because of this, "Fever" did win yesterday but after a day I am not getting warm with it.

Any plans for Paypal? If you want you can send me a Paypal address. (I am not sure if I can do a recurring payment, but otherwise I could take the yearly model for now)

Thanks Thomas

[benubois]

@tschloss I understand your hesitation to fill in your credit card just anywhere. That's a smart thing to do online.

However for a variety of reasons I doubt Feedbin will ever support PayPal. There's just too many horror stories about frozen merchant accounts for me to trust them with my business.

I do trust Stripe, Feedbin's credit card processing company. I encourage you to check them out as this is where your credit card information is going: http://stripe.com

At no point is your credit card data stored on Feedbin's servers or even accessible to anybody but Stripe.

[tschloss]

Thanks for your quick feedback. I have heard many stories more about theft of credit card details than about frozen accounts on Paypal. Nobody prevents you to draw your money immediataley to your banking account. Besides iTunes and Amazon I do all my transactions via Paypal - it can't be that bad for the merchants. But - fair enough - if you are not interested, I have to stay away for now. I am absolutely sure that you would double (or more) your sales by offering Paypal. But of course I respect your choice.

Thomas (disappointed, because screenshot on website looks great)

[benubois]

No worries @tschloss

I don't want to turn away any business, but I have received less than 20 total requests for PayPal support.

[tschloss]

It costs quite some effort to get in touch with you. 1) One must have enough energy to be willing to ask you and write a text 2) the e-mail address does not work and 3) to go to Github to open a support case is another high barrier. In these times customers are gone in seconds if not everything is really easy! So don't underestimate the 100's or 1000's who turned away without giving feedback. You may want to add a button "I would buy if Paypay woul be offered" and optionally "please inform me when Paypal is available". Or at least use eselerate or something more popular. I have never heard before of your payment service. Thomas

[yrn1]

I agree with tschloss that it is quite hard to even find contact details. At least 1 link somewhere on the UI to a support page would be welcome.

[kugelzucker]

since i can't belive that there are so few people in need of an alternative to credit cards i'll throw my hat into the ring ... i think that there are a lot of google reader refugees from europe where credit cards are not so common. i would have to pay 25$ just for having one per year, and that doesnt add up for me.

i understand that you dislike paypal for their practises, but there are alternatives like international bank transfers or paypal-like webservices. please consider this opiton since i really like your service and would like to be your customer.

cheers

[molstrangler]

Hi jsteidl,

I assume your joking right? Credit cards are available and widely used globally, and in the case of Europe since the 1960s. It's complete nonsense to think credit cards are not widely available used everywhere!

Also PayPal is popular but you will find that most will have a PayPal account alongside a locally owned service such as www.payson.se, where citizens of Norway & Sweden prefer to use a local provider to purchase local products and services rather than PayPal.

The same people will use their PayPal account for international purchases. There is no general dislike of PayPal, it's just people making a decision to use a locally owned service for national purchases.

The problem lies in there being a sense of fear for most people when entering their credit card details into a website they do not frequent, most (if not all) would have no problem with giving Amazon, Apple etc. their credit card details.

But for a small operating like FeedBin, its essential alternatives are offered as its an unknown entity to a potential customer. And where there is risk, most will not take the risk with their credit card details.

Tim,

[Zegnat]

But for a small operating like FeedBin, its essential alternatives are offered as its an unknown entity to a potential customer. And where there is risk, most will not take the risk with their credit card details.

I wonder if this could be solved by making the Stripe logo stand out more, or even designing a kind of box around the payment form that gives the impression of it being an external payment provider. Stripe is a well respected payment processor used by many, including the EFF. While we might have gotten less ‘exposed’ to Stripe compared to PayPal, I certainly do trust them more than I do PayPal.

[tschloss]

From my persepctive it is less important that credit cards are less common in Europe (which certainly is the case). For me (and I am sure many others) it is more important that I don't want to use these cards on the Internet (or at least as seldom as possible and only to very few controller merchants: Amazon, Apple, Paypal). Every week a site gets hacked and credit card information stolen. As long as I have an alternative I don't want this. Feedbin would have been an option but in the meanwhile I opted for one of the alternatives which is working good now. I assume in 2014 after the exit of G-Reader has settled I will reevaluate the "new world".

[Zegnat]

I don’t want to use these cards on the Internet (or at least as seldom as possible and only to very few controller merchants: Amazon, Apple, Paypal). Every week a site gets hacked and credit card information stolen. As long as I have an alternative I don’t want this.

To me, this is the most interesting part of the debate. And I would love to see other people joining in to clear this up. What could Feedbin do to make people feel comfortable using their creditcard, and using Stripe?

@tschloss, and many others I know, trusts Amazon, Apple and PayPal. What have they done to gain this trust? And what should Stripe do to encourage you to start using them as well?

Stripe will already tell you exactly how secure they are. Unlike some of those other services.

People seem to trust PayPal, but PayPal is also known to freeze accounts when they detect an influx of income (among other reasons). Such as when a product goes on sale or – I would wager – when a couple of hundred people move from Google Reader to Feedbin in one weekend. (speculation) Had @benubois trusted PayPal he might have incurred extra costs instead, and he would not be the first.

On the other hand, people also move away from PayPal.

[tschloss]

I answer not to convince anybody, just as a feedback to whom it may be interesting.

Amazon, Apple and Paypal had no alternative for me. I trust Amazon and Apple out of my guts. Paypal (it was not yet ebay at that time) was not the company I had my very best feelings on, but enough and better than 99% of the merchants I could buy with through PayPal. So with just 3 companies I can pay over 95% of my e-Commerce spendings. Rest I try to do with cableing the money (what is very popular in Germany, some require up front, some after invoice).

Stripe may be well known somewhere, I have never heard of them before. Zero credibility in my world.

[benubois]

@tschloss just out of curiosity do you pay for GitHub?

GitHub uses Braintree for payment processing. A very similar payment gateway to Stripe.

[tschloss]

No, I have a free tier account here. Braintree is a no name for me, too; "similarity" to stripe wouldn't help me ;)

[Zegnat]

I answer not to convince anybody, just as a feedback to whom it may be interesting.

All I was asking for, the discussion is more interesting than the answer anyway. Thanks for your views!

Rest I try to do with cableing the money (what is very popular in Germany, some require up front, some after invoice).

And popular in the rest of Europe. I probably transfer money on 99% of my bills. Including to my domain registrar and hosting company. But when it comes to America-based companies there is often no other alternative than creditcard (via PayPal or otherwise).

I wonder if Skrill (Moneybookers) would ever be a good solution. They aren’t very public or much used (as far as I can tell) but offer a slew of different payment options including bank transfers as well as localised systems such as iDEAL in the Netherlands (an instant online payment system build by the banks themselves).

iDEAL (NL), Payson (SE), … different countries have different popular systems for instant online payments. A system that would combine them all would easily be the most trusted. But is a faraway dream.

(Keeping this discussion going only out of a personal interest as an economics student.)

[benubois]

I'd like to be able to offer an alternative to credit cards, but the product PayPal offers today won't be it.

My thinking on PayPal or any alternative payment provider is this.

Payment processing code is tricky and too important to get wrong. The more payment processors Feedbin supports, the higher chance for errors.

Before Feedbin I've worked with a number of gateways and other payment systems. Integrating another processor adds a lot of initial development work all of which is more complicated with PayPal and many other systems than Stripe.

• New payment flow
• Cross-grading accounts
• Canceling account
• Discounts/coupon codes
• Refunds
• Receipts
• Payment history
• Suspended accounts

Stripe is also heavily event based so when a payment succeeds or fails Feedbin gets a notification and can take action. With PayPal I believe you are stuck with polling for changes.

In addition more payment processors mean more backends to manage customers. Stripe makes this easy on me by having a great interface for looking at customers, transactions, coupons and payments. PayPal does not.

Support request-wise a large chunk of time is already being spent helping people with billing issues and having two systems for this would only increase the time spent not developing Feedbin.

At this point I'm prioritizing feature development and improving what's there, but I'll re-evaluate after July 1st has come and gone.

[tschloss]

Understood! So if Feedbin gets far ahead of the competition I at some point would have to accept payment providers ;) Good luck (web frontend on the screenshots is already looking nice). I personally hope that there at some time will be a defacto standard for the protocol between client and backend (which was the case in the GReader epoche and helped to convey the app eco system).

[dantewang]

Just as someone stated, it's hard for people to trust a something new when talking about money.

I handed my credit card info to name.com, a large and famous domain registion provider, and some days ago I got an email telling me "hackers have retrieved encrypted credit card info but failed to get the key" -- I am lucky. Remember Linode? They stored public keys and private keys on the same machine. The attacker got hundreds of thousands of credit card infos easily.

That's why I decide to stop handing my credit card info to any other website, especially for the payment services that I've never heard.

For any other thing I want to buy online,

if it supports Alipay (e.g. Steam), I use Alipay; if not, I choose Paypal; if neither, I wait for it supporting any of the two I mentioned above.

[kugelzucker]

@molstrangler no, i am not. i know that they are available. i meant the fact that EVERYBODY has a debit-card in europe but creditcards are not that common. i rarerly need one and i hope it stays that way.

[elFakir]

Hi guys, paying directly online the Feedbin subscription, why not. But here, my bank account currency is euro, which means that I'll pay some additional foreign exchange conversion fees (often a base fx fee plus a percentage according the transaction amount), that's where PayPal is more interesting. Even if their conversion rates already include some fees, they are less important, and I will only see a single operation, in euro, on my bank account side. My two cents.

[crsrusl]

Sorry mate - but I agree - very surprised you don't offer paypal.