He took a few days off work and flew out to Utah, where his old customers resided. He asked them if they’d switch their processing to his new company, Braintree.
Every company I've worked at has strictly forbidden this kind of thing via a noncompete agreement. Essentially, it's in the name: "Noncompete Agreement"
Be careful what you sign, and be mindful of what you have signed in that past!
This is Bryan from Braintree. I was working for a different company at the time I visited my former customers. I honored the one year non-compete I had with my former employer.
For anyone who hasn't used them yet, it's the one-stop-shop and their API that really sets them apart from the competition. You submit one set of paperwork and they take care of all the accounts: merchant, gateway and api. No need to chase down different accounts and get them all working together.
The fantastic API literally saved hundreds of hours of integration and build time, as the recurring billing, discounts and everything is completely programmatic and just works.
I just signed up within the last few weeks and throughout the whole process I could tell they built it up with developers in mind, not as an afterthought.
"Who are the customers Braintree decided to write off? “It was a fool’s errand to try selling medicine to those who hadn’t yet experienced pain. Payment processing is complex. It’s difficult for inexperienced merchants to recognize value. We’d spend countless hours trying to explain ‘pain’ and our cure but some just didn’t care because they hadn’t felt it yet...'"
That's money right there. And noted for the future of my business. People will pay for you to take away the pain of their bad experiences with an inferior service/product.
Perverse idea/thought experiment: what about creating two versions of some service X which are ostensibly competitors; one is a free/cheap version A with no support and one is a much higher-priced, supported and professional version B. The answer to support requests on A would mostly be "no", with the occasional "if you want that, use service B". Sort of an extreme take on freemium/market segmentation. A acts simultaneously as the top of a funnel for B (users who actually need the service and have experienced the pain of a bad offering) and as a screen for bad customers (the ones you'd "fire" for consuming more than their fair share of your resources).
Oh how I wish Braintree was accessible in Canada. We've haven't been very pleased with our payment processor as of late.
About a year ago I actually managed to get someone from Braintree talking with someone from Chase Paymentech Canada (since Braintree supports Chase Paymentech). Unfortunately, BT is integrated with CP Salem whereas CP Canada only processes through CP Tampa.
If anyone has tried to do this in the last year and succeeded, please comment.
Tyler - We're getting ready to launch in Canada... In a couple of weeks you should be able to use http://feefighters.com to compare payment processors apples-to-apples!
I'm excited to give Braintree a go someday, but what I really wish is that someone would come up with a system that was orthogonal to and independent of the existing banking system.
The banks and the regulations make all real credit card processing a major PITA, and while Braintree eases the process, they are not an exception as far as I can tell. They still have to underwrite and they still have to vet accounts for underwriting. If you have bad credit or anything else that would prevent you from getting a loan, you're not going to be able to process cards without PayPal, which means it's difficult to bootstrap yourself out of a bad situation.
One of the main reasons I think Bitcoin is cool is because it's a great experimental platform for this kind of stuff.
True, banking fees really do take up a significant post in the P/L, and the smaller you are, the more you're paying, why it's not optimal for startups. A startup bank would be a cool idea.
These guys are awesome—they power all our payments. The one thing I wish they could somehow add support for is outgoing EFT/ACH transfers.
We do have one funny story about them from Getaround... one night, early in the morning, we got a call directly from their CEO. Apparently we had written some bad code that was just hammering their servers—basically, we were accidentally DoSing Braintree.
Got it fixed up quickly, and have loved them and used them ever since!
While this is valuable, it is really a company that shouldn't exist - banks needs to be forced to use a standard API and be barred from abusing their government monopoly.
[+] [-] MicahWedemeyer|15 years ago|reply
Every company I've worked at has strictly forbidden this kind of thing via a noncompete agreement. Essentially, it's in the name: "Noncompete Agreement"
Be careful what you sign, and be mindful of what you have signed in that past!
[+] [-] bryanjohnson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thematt|15 years ago|reply
The fantastic API literally saved hundreds of hours of integration and build time, as the recurring billing, discounts and everything is completely programmatic and just works.
I just signed up within the last few weeks and throughout the whole process I could tell they built it up with developers in mind, not as an afterthought.
[+] [-] haploid|15 years ago|reply
V/MC Non-Qualified: 2.89% + $.30
Cybersource+WFB clocks in at roughly half that for V/MC( although Amex rates are around that level ), with per-transaction at 10 cents or less.
[+] [-] stevenbrianhall|15 years ago|reply
That's money right there. And noted for the future of my business. People will pay for you to take away the pain of their bad experiences with an inferior service/product.
[+] [-] LiveTheDream|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LiveTheDream|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tylerrooney|15 years ago|reply
About a year ago I actually managed to get someone from Braintree talking with someone from Chase Paymentech Canada (since Braintree supports Chase Paymentech). Unfortunately, BT is integrated with CP Salem whereas CP Canada only processes through CP Tampa.
If anyone has tried to do this in the last year and succeeded, please comment.
[+] [-] xal|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pitdesi|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cookiecaper|15 years ago|reply
The banks and the regulations make all real credit card processing a major PITA, and while Braintree eases the process, they are not an exception as far as I can tell. They still have to underwrite and they still have to vet accounts for underwriting. If you have bad credit or anything else that would prevent you from getting a loan, you're not going to be able to process cards without PayPal, which means it's difficult to bootstrap yourself out of a bad situation.
One of the main reasons I think Bitcoin is cool is because it's a great experimental platform for this kind of stuff.
[+] [-] alexjawad|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avree|15 years ago|reply
We do have one funny story about them from Getaround... one night, early in the morning, we got a call directly from their CEO. Apparently we had written some bad code that was just hammering their servers—basically, we were accidentally DoSing Braintree.
Got it fixed up quickly, and have loved them and used them ever since!
[+] [-] workhorse|15 years ago|reply
Their API & API Documentation are fantastic.
[+] [-] tomjen3|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcdowall|15 years ago|reply