Ask HN: Best payment gateway for small transactions?

2 points by Tallianar 5 years ago | 4 comments

I have a web app that offers a simple service for a one time fee of $0.99. Payment fees are killing me right now as almost 50% of the revenue is going to fees.

I pay $100/month + 3%/transaction + $0.3/transaction.

All the gateways I looked at seem to have a relatively similar fee structure. Because of the low price of the service the $0.3 fee is really huge.

I don't need a store or subscription billing or anything fancy, I just want the customer to pay and I get a ping on an webhook. I really can't increase the product price either. It's a small impulse purchase, making it more expensive would completely remove any appeal.

I looked at:

- Stripe

- Podia

- Gumroad

- Mollie

Any other suggestions? Thank you very much.

ssimoni 5 years ago |

I feel your pain. The flat cents make small online transactions hard to do.

If you can add a 30 cent transaction cost at checkout then you are just paying 2.9 percent on the cart price.

I know that isn’t a great answer to your question. “Raise prices”.

I do think there is room for pricing model innovation at the vendors you looked at. But I don’t see it happening in the next few years.

Tallianar 5 years ago | |

That's a real shame... I will consider raising the prices but I am really worried about it because it's really just an impulse purchase for a very small thing and I feel like almost no one will be interested if the price is too high.

tobltobs 5 years ago |

As far as I know there is nothing. If your customers do maybe buy your product multiple times you could sell credits (10x, 20x). If not you are out of luck.

Tallianar 5 years ago | |

Guess I'm out of luck :/ thank you anyway!