Unfortunately for Elliot, myself and the countless other non-Americans in the software development world, Stripe is not available (yet) outside of the USA. Stripe have stated that they're working very hard on breaking out into other countries, but I suspect it must be an immense job, what with all of the various existing bureaucracies and regulations present in each country. Hopefully we'll get some good news in the not-too-distant future...

Even when it becomes available to merchants in other countries, it still won't let you accept payments from the dozens of countries where people use PayPal but don't have major brand credit cards. There's really no equivalent service.

I think Skrill Moneybookers http://www.moneybookers.com is as close as you'll get to PayPal. They accept pretty much all credit cards, banks etc.

http://www.braintreepayments.com/ just expanded into the EU and Canada! (Disclosure, I work for Braintree.)

Could you please clarify this? We made contact with Braintree just last week, resulting in an invitation to join the EU beta programme. We read over the provided docs and sent back a few follow-up questions, but haven't heard anything since. Now the whole site seems to have changed around, suggesting that the service is out of beta.

Can I safely assume at this point that our reply was "lost" and we should start over? Not exactly a promising start on the customer service front, but perhaps we can call it teething trouble. :-)

My apologies. I can say that's highly unusual and there's no excuse for it. Can you email me directly at rob@braintreepayments.com so I can straighten this out for you ASAP?

We're in Canada using Stripe, we actually managed to get in before they even started their Canadian beta. You dont need to be in the US, you just need a US bank account and postage address.

Stripe currently has a Canadian beta going, if you happen to be based there. Send them an email and ask!