Cue the imitation equals flattery quote, because the Samwer brothers are back with a Stripe clone by the name of Paymill, reports Gruender Szene. For those out of the loop, Stripe is popular payment processing API marketed directly to developers.
As our own Robin Wauters noted, the Samwers’ Rocket Internet company is a controversial German startup incubator (lovingly called ‘cloning factory’ by some). It’s known for its work in ripping off startup ideas and establishing them in markets where the original company has yet to reach. From there the startups are usually sold after starting a local user base.
Stripe is currently US-only, and while there are reasons to wonder why the company has yet to expand beyond its home base, handling payments internationally (let alone supporting foreign languages while fighting local competitors) is no easy feat. This is why Rocket Internet has jumped on the opportunity.
We just launched Paymill, the easiest way to pay by credit card online. So far, smaller online shops couldn’t afford credit card payment. Paymill provides an innovative solution.
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The Paymill launch site is in German, and thus harder to compare word for word, but even the code snippets are almost identical.
Clearly this project is no exception to the incubator’s trend of repackaging existing ideas, and the odds are it will be at least mildly successful. Karma may or may not exist, and being in the business of solely making money sometimes has its payoffs — that is, if you don’t care about pissing an extremely large amount of people off.
➤ Paymill
Featured image by Steve Jurvetson
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