Validate your problems, startup ideas to create products which people want

On-premise gumroad alternative #paymenthost #payment

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 13:36:00 +0000

Gumroad is a digital marketplace platform/payment host using which one can sell their digital files and services. It can serve as a host for digital files with paywall.

It's widely used by indies to sell their books, music, art etc. Yet their reviews at trust pilot is poor.

Much of the grievances seems to be related to,

Payments (Failures, Delays, Refunds).
Two-sided marketplace issues (End user unhappy with the purchase).
Account Suspension (Likely due to the violation of policies largely dictated by Gumroad's banking partners).
Customer service (Lack of thereof).

I believe all the above issues could be resolved with an On-premise Gumroad alternative, Are you looking for one?

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Self-hosted Patreon alternative #patreon #payment

Mon, 30 May 2022 15:30:00 +0000

Patreon is the de-facto solution for collecting recurring donation payments, When compared to solutions which charge commissions by transactions ( /problems/313 ) they charge a percentage over monthly revenue according to the plan.

At the time where anyone could create a payment workflow easily, Patreon still seems to be holding relevance due to its membership-communication and tier based features.

But Patreon has several shortcomings,

Stripe option only available for U.S. residents.
Different projects require separate accounts.
Tax collection support is limited to select countries.
Lack of configurable tax-invoice/receipt support.
Patreon commission/month + Payment gateway commission/transaction is expensive for small-time creators.

I think a self-hosted patreon alternative can address these issues, Are you looking for a Patreon alternative?

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Geo-redirection for stripe payment links #payment #stripe

Mon, 30 May 2022 14:14:00 +0000

Stripe payment links allows payment workflows to be created without any code and hence has wide range of applications from casual payments to small-business transactions even without a website.

For multiple-currencies, Separate payment links has to be created i.e. one for USD, another of GBP etc. and there's no built-in option to redirect the customers from different locations to the correct payment link.

This defeats the purpose of payment links as complete no-code tool as the business owner has now got to implement Geo-redirection on their website to present the payment link for appropriate currency as per the location of their customer.

Let me know if you're facing such a problem and would like to have no-code solution.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Avoid unnecessary taxes for donation #payment #tax

Mon, 22 Nov 2021 21:49:00 +0000

I'm working on a side project that's not yet fully-baked. As such, I don't want to collect real money just yet because I don't want to increase my personal tax burden. In addition, having to pay more taxes is just annoying at an early stage of building a product.

In short, I prefer not to have to add to my tax return when I'm still prototyping my SaaS idea.

Currently, there are a good number of places to accept donations, such as: ko-fi, Patreon, Buy Me A Coffee, liberapay, Github sponsors However, all of these websites pay the project owner money, either through Stripe, Paypal, Payoneer, or a combination of.

My task here is for a platform for me to ask for donations or payments that pay me not in dollar amounts but in virtual gift cards, so that I can:

Validate my idea
Use the payments to pay for operational costs: if I can collect payments in the form of virtual gift cards, I can use them to pay for web server costs.
Avoid having to deal with taxes that come with collecting real money, at least until my product has been fully built out and has real users.

5 points posted by skyisblue

Book meetings easily and pay for that time #consultancy #payment

Mon, 10 May 2021 14:04:00 +0000

I'm a consultant and I charge by hour my clients for advice. Nowadays the meetings happen through video calls and I charge my clients through PayPal or wire transfer.

If there was an automatic mechanism to charge those who attend the video calls based on hourly rates it can save time for me and my clients. I think this might be useful for all consultants involved in similar work.
5 points posted by Jerry

Buy Me a Coffee without commision #payment #donation

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 13:56:00 +0000

Buy Me a Coffee is a good way to receive payments without much effort and a widely used method to support indies.

But with the introduction of Stripe Payment Links it doesn't make sense to use BMaC type services anymore, Especially since we'd end up paying commissions to both BMaC and Stripe. I myself use stripe payment links on static websites like my blog and other places where I used BMaC before.

But BMaC does have some features like listing recent payments and comments which might result in better conversions. Features which requires custom implementation and might be out of the reach of no-code developers.

There is a need-gap in bridging Buy Me a Coffee and Stripe Payment Links.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Frictions in B2B Forex #money #finance

Sat, 03 Jul 2021 02:26:00 +0000

Frictions in consumer to business payments have largely been reduced due to innovative solutions by payment gateway and hosts but it remains in business to business transactions.

Account payable teams of large multinational corporations still rely upon legacy wire transfers for foreign exchange incurring huge transaction fees, delays in receiving the money and often have to visit the bank in person for Forex remittance(In today's remote first world!) . The problem is more pronounced when one of the parties is from a developing country and compliance hurdles adds up to this problem.

So I feel there's large need-gap in the solutions for B2B money transfer.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian