Transferwise and ecommerce

For webshops 2021 I see types like Transferwise and Vivawallet as the best choice. There is absolutely no need for middle men, delays in payout and high charges on credit/debit cards.

Viva Wallet offers effectively 0% fee for card processing, when you use the accounts cards for purchases. Payout delay is also only 1-day, or instant (0,5% cost). There will be others soon, when the German Wirecard episode has played out, digital currencies will be revealed and corona related 'recession' is over. What an interesting time for ecommerce indeed!

For Transferwise, currently, as far as I know, a customer needs to do a manual transfer to make the payment. There is no plugin for easy payment on checkout.

But since Transferwise has a very good API, there is high possibility for someone making a plugin with QR code for easy customer payment, and API calls for webshop to mark the payment completed, when credits arrive at the account (API/Webhooks to confirm).

API: Transfer Money Online | Send Money Abroad with TransferWise

 

For a service where there are no mentionable variable costs per order, Stripe/Paypal etc. is just fine.

For a thin margin industry, where every % counts, you need payment provider with the least fee %.

It's also notable, that if your payment provider is delaying the payout, each day costs you extra, as you will need capital to cover this period and that has a price (margin you pay). Eliminating the delays in payouts greatly reduces the need for extra capital, and will cut profits for useless middle men. This is called the capital turnover ratio.

Wirecard AG is a German company, which offered card and account services for other companies as SAAS. So in practice you could start a 'bank' without the license needed for a bank and give your customers a Mastercard debit. Many new European payment providers used Wirecard as their platform to offer these services for merchants.

Wirecard committed a fraud, and "filed for insolvency after revelations that €1.9 billion was "missing",[1][2] the termination and arrest of its CEO Markus Braun". Wirecard scandal - Wikipedia

Currently we are witnessing void greated by this scandal, at least in EU.

So in future you will have payment services such as Klarna (which probably is the biggest player in EU, Adyen etc. could also be) and challengers such as Viva Wallet with their own banking license. Banking license in practice means that until certain point all assets in your account are covered incase of bank's insolvency.

The difference is Klarna charges ~3% for each transaction (to be fair, they offer you tools to increase your sales as well) and their delay in payouts is weeks(!).

Transferwise charges nothing (or a rather meaningless sum, unless USD) for receiving 'wire' payments, and Viva Wallet and likes will be close to interchange rate (this means that the card payment processor is not cutting in the middle) for card payments.

I deal only in EU markets, so the above probably only matters for people who has business in EU as well

For USD and outside EU I really recommend Transferwise+Stripe. Away with Paypal

 

Transferwise and Woocommerce integration should be soon available: Woocommerce - Transferwise Integration - Jarryd Long

 

Good questions. Also I am not big fan of Direct Debit system (the way this developer is approaching the issue), I was looking for something like this: Add a SEPA QR payment code in the standard Direct Bank Transfer · Issue #27661 · woocommerce/woocommerce

And then webhook from Transferwise API to confirm the payment.