Comments on: Barclays hates tech startups

By: Taking payments online – merchant account & payment processor fees « Boxed Ice Blog

Wed, 20 May 2009 11:57:31 +0000

[...] a 45 day deferred payment policy for the sole reason that Boxed Ice is a software company. See this blog post for more [...]

By: bananasfk

bananasfk — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:05:13 +0000

Barclays is run by and managed by idiots at the lower levels, while they might appear to be ‘customer friendly’ this is an advertising myth. A daily telegraph blog entry had the scoop on why barclays does not retain most of there student accounts and probably is the reason why many switch banks.

Dont worry – Barclays staff it appears hate all there clients.

By: Daniel Tenner

Daniel Tenner — Fri, 08 May 2009 12:28:31 +0000

I’ll second that. SecureTrading have excellent customer service.

By: Does Barclays Bank hate tech startups? Or just small businesses in general?

Does Barclays Bank hate tech startups? Or just small businesses in general? — Fri, 08 May 2009 11:16:35 +0000

[...] some excerpts from his detailed blog post on the matter: …I have a long history with the bank and its group companies. When I contacted [...]

By: David M

David M — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:54:27 +0000

Yeh, we’ve just signed up with Streamline as well. They were able to provide the best rates.

By: David M

David M — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:53:17 +0000

Regardless of whether you have a 30 day trial (we don’t), 45 days is still a long time.

You shouldn’t be spending the money before you’re sure there won’t be a chargeback anyway

This is not appropriate for SaaS providers, or (I would suggest), any business. If you tell a customer they must wait 45 days before they can start using the product they have paid for (remember the money has already been taken from them) then they’re not going to be happy. As far as they are concerned they’ve paid.

As soon as the customer signs up then it starts costing money, even if it is just a tiny amount. Bandwidth costs, as does the computing power they might be using.

Finally, if your business is has such tight margins that you can’t survive no cashflow for 45 days, you’re screwed anyway.

True, but what happens if you have 10k signups in a month and have to fund the accounts for 45 days without the revenue they’re supposed to be generating? This is obviously an extreme example but it depends on the business – if you have large downloads or do video streaming then the costs begin to mount.

By: Bill Roberts

Bill Roberts — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:56:56 +0000

And meant to say – we use Secure Trading for credit card processing. They have also been very good: reasonable fees, rapid settlement, good customer service.

By: Bill Roberts

Bill Roberts — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:52:46 +0000

We use RBS for our business bank account and RBS Streamline for our merchant account. They were very helpful when we set it up. Not sure how the fees compare with other banks but the settlement terms are good – we get paid within a day or two of each transaction.

By: blather

blather — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:54:21 +0000

I think you’re taking an extreme view. Your 30 day trial doesn’t mean anything to the bank and you should not assume it’s going to translate into a sale. Waiting 45 days for payment might be annoying but it’s not ridiculous.

You shouldn’t be spending the money before you’re sure there won’t be a chargeback anyway, so this policy is actually protecting _you_ from spending money you don’t necessarily have.

Finally, if your business is has such tight margins that you can’t survive no cashflow for 45 days, you’re screwed anyway.

By: David M

David M — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:50:11 +0000

We are with Barclays for our business banking but went with Streamline for the merchant account. They will pay us right away and had the best rates. I’m going to do a write-up about the different rates each of the banks offered soon.