Hi,
This email is mostly relevant to people who currently pay by Google
Checkout, or who really hate PayPal. If that doesn't apply to you
then you can safely ignore it.
- Google Checkout goes bye-bye
Google are shutting down their Checkout payment service on November
20th, so anyone who currently pays BitFolk by that means is going to
have to switch to something else from then on. I'm kind of glad
really because GC had the highest transaction fees of any payment
method, but I kept it around because it was the only choice for some
people.
In addition, PayPal have been getting increasingly hostile towards
customers who use them to pay by credit card without having a PayPal
account and I've now had several instances where this has proven
impossible for the customers concerned. So, something new needed.
- Stripe for credit card payments
I'm currently working on integrating
http://stripe.com for credit
card payments, and the initial minimal implementation is nearly
ready. That will just allow one-off payment of invoices using a
card whose details you supply on the spot.
I could do with some testers for this. If you've got (or shortly
will have) an invoice ready to pay, you don't currently pay by
PayPal subscription or recurring Direct Debit, and you're willing to
give it a go, could you let me know off-list please?
I need to get the initial version ready before GC shuts down, but
after that I will improve the implementation to have more useful
features like saving credit card details¹ and continuous authority
(ability for BitFolk to charge your card when it needs to, without
your action).
Those who currently pay by Google Checkout and don't like any of the
other existing payment methods are going to need to pay by this
method from 20th November.
Since Stripe's transaction fees (2.4% + £0.20) are less than
PayPal's (3.4% + £0.20) I would prefer it if everyone moved to
either Direct Debit (1%) or Stripe, but whatever works for you.
Cheers,
Andy
¹ Stripe handles all the card details without passing any of them to
us; it does it in Javascript in your browser between you and them
and never lets any of the secure card data reach us, so it does
not require our side to be rated for storing or handling any of
that data.
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting