Take a look at FastSpring. Global coverage for developer clients, their end users, payment methods/currencies located all around the world, and an embedded store SDK used to power such app stores as Adobe's new Exchange. Pricing includes international payment costs, int'l tax management, pci compliance, chargeback fees, file hosting, unlimited support, and all the merchandising functionality. Developers save months to years of work because it's an all-in-one service, the features are already there for the developer selling one time or recurring based payment products and services globally.
Anytime you collect less info, it makes your fraud screen less intelligent. But it is all a balancing act and much more an art than science to keep consumer inconvenience to a minimum while not having more chargebacks than you or your merchant account provider can live with.
Gotcha. In case it's helpful, FastSpring order pages are localized into these languages:
Arabic, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish
FastSpring and SaaSy handle global tax collection, payment, etc. for desktop software, SaaS, and downloadable gaming companies. We are the merchant of record, so the vendor is not responsible for collecting and remitting taxes, we are. There is a large number of other functionality we enable software firms to outsource as well, with the intention of leaving developers to focus on building their companies, not dealing with e-commerce infrastructure, features, taxes, etc.
See FastSpring if you're looking to sell SaaS or downloadable software or games. No upfront or monthly costs, limitless, rapid-response support, free setup, and it's uniquely full service.
You might check out SaaSy.com. It's the all-in-one option for recurring global transactions which enables developers to avoid having to develop subscription management or e-commerce functionality separately.
Perhaps FastSpring would be a good fit for you. Any country the US isn't banned from doing business with is applicable. Users pay in various global currencies and the order pages are translated. I'm the CEO. Funny that you mention Venezuela, my wife just got a grant to do art history research there so I may be visiting soon.
When you use a full-service e-commerce service that serves as a reseller and is the merchant of record, taxes become their responsibility, not yours. At FastSpring, we handle VAT and have dealt with all the different issues that come with it: real-time VAT ID validation, exemption for B2B customers, being able to display prices using VAT net pricing mode or VAT gross pricing mode, and so on...
When you look at the service and functionality you get in exchange for paying more, you realize that in reality FastSpring actually means paying less, earning more (profit). Take a look at the FastSpring or SaaSy features pages, and as you go through the functionality and services listed, think through how much time it would take you to develop the same functionality on your own (years), how much more revenue you'd earn from day one by using this already existing global online selling functionality, how many distracting obstacles you get to avoid (try setting up on your own to accept foreign currencies and have your order page language-localized, not to mention to be able to manage global taxes and be in compliance on all global sales), the expenses you avoid taking on (you dont pay chargeback fees, you don't need the support or dev staff members you would otherwise need, you dont need to pay for file hosting), the risks you avoid (we are the merchant of record, not you, we deal with fraud and PCI compliance, you outsource to us potential company-killing risks like how credit card numbers are stored (btw we store none), the list goes on and on...
Re: tax and data protection rules in Europe, over 1/2 of our clients are located outside the US, the majority of those in the EU, and so we have been handling the key EU issues (VAT, euro payment methods & currencies, EU language support, etc.) for some time now.
In terms of cost, there's a major distinction in that FastSpring's pricing of 5.9%+$.95/txn or a flat 8.9% is inclusive of the cost to process credit card and other transaction types globally (typically costs 3-4%+ of every transaction including chargeback fees when you get your own merchant account, assuming getting one is an option for you) because FastSpring is the reseller, the merchant of record. The other reason is the vast functionality FastSpring provides as part of its full-service, all-in-one solution, enabling developers to skip the months or even years of dev work and instead focus on product dev and marketing. You can view the difference here: http://bit.ly/uuklQu
SaaSy from FastSpring is an all-inclusive, full service offering that requires far less development work to obtain the key functionality needed for a serious SaaS business. SaaSy has no monthly charges, handles global tax management (VAT included), the order pages are translated into 20+ languages, has paypal integration, order & billing support for clients' customers, reseller management, avoids having to deal with anything related to PCI compliance, has a built-in shopping cart, integration with Google Analytics, Adwords, and countless other 3rd party services, has a future bill testing GUI, supports on-demand subscriptions, pre-bill (annual) notifications, and the list goes on.
Dan, FastSpring’s CEO, here. That’s a good question. With FastSpring, you don’t lose track of your site visitors because we support cross-domain tracking. When a purchase doesn’t complete, you can see the order issues and resolve them as appropriate. You can experiment with various designs and flows because FastSpring order pages are highly flexible and customizable in terms of how the order flow can look, placement of various elements on the order page, etc. and A/B testing is supported. FastSpring all-inclusive, turnkey functionality is mainly UI based. Little coding is needed, it’s all there – functionality you need to launch and functionality you need to grow and maximize the business and its revenue. FastSpring pricing of its all-inclusive service includes the higher processing costs inherent in international transactions, Amex transactions, and certain alternative payment methods.
Here are some advantages to FastSpring:
FastSpring works with developers and companies located anywhere US companies are authorized to do business, handles global tax compliance and tax payment management including for VAT, enables end users to pay using their localized currency to avoid bank/exchange fees and a poor US/USD-centric user experience, provides an order page localized in 20+ languages, has PayPal integrated, lets you skip the PCI Assessment Questionnaire, offers fraud prevention, a built-in shopping cart, Google Analytics and marketing ad campaign tracking integration, an unlimited number of easy to setup post-order notifications, designs an order page to match the look and feel of the other pages of the developer’s website, offers merchandising features for cross and upselling to maximize the average order size and optimizer order conversion, built-in notifications, a future bill testing GUI, pre-bill notifications for annual subscriptions, reseller and affiliate management, user role mgmt. & change tracking, consulting for SEO/PPC/Affiliate marketing/Online marketing/order page optimization, one-time purchases in addition to recurring billing, among other advantages. Hope that's helpful with your comparison.
Wise to test different trial expiration scenarios against each other, some based on usage time, some based on product feature usage, some a combination of the two. You'll often be surprised which scenario is optimal and by how much.