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Do you guys think a ecommerce Saas product would "fly" if the service didn't actually process the credit cards itself? Rather it redirects to services like paypal, google checkout etc?

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Absolutely. We do that. Now, you need to think carefully about how you brand and control that experience - but there are several outsource providers that can be integrated to the point that either users absolutely have no idea it's someone else or just match your look. We went with the latter because frankly I'd rather not ask someone to trust me with their credit card information, I want them to trust someone who's whole business is around getting that right.

I'd worry about having a good looking process and having the best pipeline into it, and play up the credibility of how that's handled (and your flexibility). By outsourcing for example we were able to totally delegate handling currency conversion and taxation issues.

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the idea is I want to keep liability to a minimum, and focus features around categories/products/design. – UnStartup Jul 19 '10 at 20:50
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That's exactly why you want to outsource, and why we did. There's a lot to know to do this right, and we didn't even know what we didn't know... So we went with a third party and it's been a good call. – Kendall Miller Jul 19 '10 at 21:28
so are you using paypal or google checkout? – UnStartup Jul 20 '10 at 18:29
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No, we're using FastSpring. But there are a number of providers depending on exactly what you need. – Kendall Miller Jul 21 '10 at 3:55
Regarding fastspring, are you working with subscription model? – mojsilo Aug 4 '10 at 11:23
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Of course. This is how a many companies operate.

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