The JeeLabs Shop has gained a new payment option, as provided by the DIRECTebanking service:
This is a German site which supports direct bank-to-bank transfers. Looks like it’s working in 5 countries:
- Austria
- Belgium
- Germany
- Netherlands
- Switzerland
I can’t find a trace of UK or Italy in the setup, even though it’s mentioned on their web site. My impression is that this service is still very young – the “Payment Network AG” company behind this was registered last October. But the good news is that their support is responsive and effective, by email as well as by phone.
One benefit for customers is speed: I get immediate notification, avoiding the usual 1..3 day delay normally involved with bank transfers. The other benefit is convenience, since you can complete the payment as part of the order, instead of having to switch to your online bank account and manually copy all the relevant info.
The benefit for me is lower cost: a third of what PayPal charges (it does add up: VAT, payment/bank/shop fees).
The thing with this sort of service, is that it’s very hard for me to get an impression of how well it works in practice. I did a “test payment” while setting things up, but that’s a weak approximation of the whole process when using it for real, and I can only do a more realistic test with my own country and my own bank account.
So if you ever feel an uncontrollable urge to order something from the JeeLabs web shop (yeah, I know, it’s unlikely) and live in one of the above-mentioned countries, then please feel free to give this a go:
The name is in German (Sofort Überweisung), but the page will be in English by default (all pages are available in multiple languages by clicking on the flag – top right).
Please feel free to email me with anything odd (or neat) which comes up, especially if it doesn’t work as expected of course. I can easily cancel an entire transaction if things get really out of hand.
But with a little luck, life will simply have become one notch simpler with this new option – for everyone!
You might want to know that sofortueberweisung.de works by asking you for your banking PIN and webscraping the bank transfer.
Handing your PIN to a third party is usually explicitly forbidden in your bank’s general terms & conditions.
Thanks – I’ve sent them an email about this.
And their reply is a pointer to this: https://www.payment-network.com/deb_com_en/customerarea/security
With the recent changes within the European Banking System that transfers have to be fulfilled within one workday the need for things like sofortüberweisung should diminish in the future. At least that’s what I am hoping… But that’s just my two cents…
take a look at http://www.moneybookers.com Available in the UK as well internationally. I have used it many time, never had any issues.
Unfortunately, that’s not (yet?) supported here by the Shopify web shop system I use.
And there are a couple of other reasons not to support Paypal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#Criticism_and_limitations
Since 2012 all money transfers in the SEP-Area only may take one single day. For me it’s worth waiting one day, and avoiding services like Paypal or Sofortüberweisung!
Yes, I’m aware of some of PayPal’s downsides. But right now 90% of all orders are paid that way, even though the JeeLabs shop has supported bank transfers from day one.
There’s more to it than speed (the convenience of doing everything in one step, and the fact that the order “drops” right into the shop system), but that’s definitely good to know. FWIW, I’m absolutely in favor of doing more via bank transfers and cutting out the middleman.