Hi Kevin, Your post has compelled me to finally press the "Join" button to Silicon Beach :-))
I can give you some insight on how we set up things for DxO Labs (dxo.com) a software start-up based outside of the US (France) but where the US quickly became our first market. We operated through an e-commerce third-party but what I'll describe is applicable for a direct e-commerce setup as well. 1) You are right to want to present US$ pricing and invoicing for the US. Great country the US but they're not usually over-aware of anything that is foreign. (DxO has Euro / US£ / GBP and Yen pricing) 2) Initially we set-up VISA and Mastercard. Amex is always a pain. I don't think you have to worry too much about not having AMEX at launch as in the US people/organizations usually have multiple cards. You might want to add PayPal which I guess would be quite prevalent in the web/start-up space. Our local banks in France were all pretty hopeless when it came to e-commerce. If we wanted to borrow money to buy forklift carts they could understand but setup ecommerce to sell software globally...no. 3) Our provider used two payment gateways: Datatrans (http:// www.datatrans.ch) and Bibit (www.bibit.com). Datatrans is a swiss organization so probably not too helpful but Bibit I think are good and worth you having a look at. We also had talks with Digital River who are a massive presence in the software e-commerce market but never went through with them. They seemed expensive compared to Bibit. 4) Even if you work with a reputable payment gateway, be prepared to handle payment exceptions and incidents. There is a whole "black magic" that goes on the other side of the gateway and that you have no control over. Sometimes inexplicably a customers card gets refused by the gateway even though they used it the same morning on another site. Many of these incidents are user-generated (card over the limit, behind on payments, disingenuity...). But sometimes it seems like a business rule behind the gateway that has gone mad. I was on the receiving end of this recently when all HSBS Efptos cards were being refused by companies in the Coles group... 5) I would be very very careful before opening a US company given the tax/regulatory burden associated. At the very least you would want advice from an international tax/law adviser who's been there before. I think it's very feasible to setup a great customer experience for yor US customers without actually having a to do this setup. DxO Labs has been operating and selling in the US for nearly five years and all the e-commerce is still offshore (relative to the US). 6) One final thought, you might want to speak to banks that are present in Australia but have a strong US presence. I'm thinking HSBC or BankofAmerica for example. They might be able to provide some level of "bridging" between a US ecommerce system and an ozzie bank account. I hope this helps. Let me know if there you have any other questions relative to your e-commerce setup. Regards. - Luc On Dec 12, 5:59 pm, spellrus <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Guys & Gals > > Thought I would ask you fellow start-up folk to share some of your > experiences. > > We are preparing our producthttp://spellr.usfor paid launch soon. > As much of the interest in our product has been from the US we have > chosen to charge in $US and want the users to have nothing to do with > $AU. > > We also wish to offer VISA, Mastercard & Amex (all charged in US$). > > Interestingly this is not a simple thing to do. > > The options we face are: > > 1) AU payment gateway + NAB multicurrency account. Great solution > except this only works for Visa & Mastercard. AMEX AU provide no > service to accept $US if you are an AU company. > > 2) Paypal - doesn't accept Amex if you are an AU business. > > 3) Worldpay - challenges on recurring billing > > 4) Opening up a US bank account and obtaining a US merchant facility. > > I would be interested to know any AU companies that have had the same > issues and how you approached it. I am also interested to know how > easy/difficult it is to set-up a US company + Bank account + merchant > facility. > > As an aside in my travels researching this issue I found the following > interesting links: > > 1) Good diagram explaining the online payment > process:http://www.usaepay.com/diagram.htm > > 2) List of online payment gateways/payment > gateways+merchantshttp://www.x-cart.com/payment_gateways.html > > Looking forward to getting other peoples' experiences. > > Regards, > Kevin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Silicon Beach Australia" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
