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We've been looking at a few other players to do exactly this, i.e. TwoTaps (https://twotap.com/ https://twotap.com/) and Cosmic Cart (https://cosmiccart.com/ ht

by efuquen 11y ago

We've been looking at a few other players to do exactly this, i.e. TwoTaps (https://twotap.com/ https://twotap.com/) and Cosmic Cart (https://cosmiccart.com/ https://cosmiccart.com/). The big problem we've seen is: 1) Having pricing and inventory data keep up to date. 2) Reliability and speed, TwoTaps has robots that fill in an order on retailers sites and checkout is slow as a result. Aside from the ugliness of it, I'm sure a lot of retailers don't like this process or necessarily are approving it. 3) Lack of wide number of retailers. Cosmic Cart does direct integration but the the numbers of partners they have right now is severely limited, Target being the big one. Getting these direct partnerships integrations is hard, but to make this really compelling you really want a wide range of retailers. It will be interesting to see if Stripe, with the relationships it already has, will be able to do a better job of this and getting retailers to buy into losing the control of the full shopping experience.

jodah 11y ago
Agree that the challenge is in obtaining partnerships, but not every retailer needs full control of the shopping experience, especially on mobile. And that's the win - alleviating the need for every retailer to solve the same technical problem.
- jusben1369 11y ago
  The challenge for the developer is twofold; 1) Understanding the real time availability of the inventory at the retail partner and 2) Supporting the payment provider of the retailer. In the desktop world this was solved by a straight up affiliate redirect. You arrived at the retailer page and saw your product in a shopping cart or close to it. Of course if inventory was poorly synced you occasionally got an error. This is still pretty common with things like airline metasearch services where the cheap ticket can be gone. Either way inventory was managed. Then you entered your payment method on the retailer site and it was processed by their backend processor. In the mobile world with mobile optimized apps those redirects don't work. So app developers want to make the payment experience feel like it's happening "within the app" Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and others all then had to solve for the inventory + payments challenge. Defaulting to Stripe can be problematic if the retailer already has a different payment processor relationship in place. By solving for the inventory piece I suspect Stripe is hoping to help drive momentum around overcoming the processor objections. Full disclosure I work at Spreedly where we help solve for the payment dilemma (not inventory) by allowing developers to work with a wide range of payment processors and/or affiliate API's.
  - spolu 11y ago
    re Inventory: we want to provide live product availability information to the developer through our API. We encourage app developers to GET latest product info from our API before even rendering a potential Buy Now button. To make that possible we keep product information extra-fresh from big retailers, and even update it on the fly when we see orders failing because the product is out of stock. re Payments/Processor: So that's where it gets interesting. We have constructed for Pinterest a full payment distribution infrastructure to send payment information securely to large retailers or their processors. This infrastructure will also be used by Relay. Doing so, we believe we bring a ton of value to the ecosystem. But I'm sure you agree with that given your focus!
    - jusben1369 11y ago
      Congrats on the big day btw!
  - Animats 11y ago
    In other words, since the app system doesn't have links like browsers, a whole new system is needed to emulate them.
    - jusben1369 11y ago
      Well they could push out and invoke a browser session which is how it was done initially and is still sometimes done. But yes conversion is poor.
sradu 11y ago
Founder of Two Tap here. It takes an average of three minutes to send the order to the retailer via our platform. On the frontend we use a similar model to Amazon where tell the shopper we're confirming her purchase and handle the process in the background. It's working great for Amazon, and it works great for us for a thousand merchants. Retailers are incredibly happy by the fact that they don't have to do a complicated integration where they have to maintain a new piece of infrastructure for potentially getting less than 1% of their orders. That being said, we're huge fans of Stripe. Always have been. John Collison was our mentor during YC. We're looking forward to seeing how they handle the challenges in the space.
- ianlevesque 11y ago
  Is that a conflict of interest having your mentor launch a direct competitor to your company?
  - sradu 11y ago
    No hard feelings here. We mean it when we say we're big fans of Patrick, John, Stripe. It's unfortunate that we have to compete, we would have loved to work with them. Our approach is completely different than theirs: light integrations vs deep integrations. We believe their approach will do more harm than good for the industry causing retailers/platforms to invest millions of dollars in building infrastructure that's not going to be ROI positive. Retailers will end up paying to build/maintain that infrastructure part, they will pay the merchant fees, and they will have to pay Twitter/any partner promoting them.
    - ianlevesque 11y ago
      That's good. Market will decide!
    - hyperpape 11y ago
      "We mean it when we say we're big fans of Patrick, John, Stripe." "We believe their approach will do more harm than good for the industry" I can see what you're saying, but this was not as well worded as it could have been.
spolu 11y ago
Very thoughtful analysis! (Stripe engineer working on Relay here) Getting retailers on-board is definitely core to the success of Relay. As announced today Saks and the SAP Hybris platform are live on Relay and we're working with numerous other retailers as we speak. For apps, getting retailers to sell on their platform is a huge pain (custom integration to their APIs and payment systems) convincing them to do so. For retailers as well it's a pain. They have to create technical integrations with as many channel out there. That's why we think Relay make sense. We help both side of the equation. Also, the relationship between a retailer and a channel app in Relay is opt-in today. This is literally a Stripe Connect (think OAuth) connection. But once a channel is onboard, it's nothing more than clicking a button for a Relay retailer to start selling there. Also I wouldn't say they are losing control on the full shopping experience, they're merely enabling a better one on mobile. When you think of the shopping experience, a lot happen after the purchase (support, shipping, loyalty) as well and I think there are new experiences to create there, especially once the customer receive the receipt from the retailer.
- prbuckley 11y ago
  Can I request a Shopify platform integration? My company (www.dodocase.com) would love to sell our products in mobile apps. Feel free to reach out to me at patrick at dodocase dot com.
  - monkeymeister 11y ago
    Hey Patrick. We've just finished building a Shopify to Stripe integrator - it's in beta, but we're happy with how it's performing. Check it out: https://www.shoptorelay.com https://www.shoptorelay.com
    - shoobydoo 11y ago
      Hey.. Does Stripe not offer a direct way to integrate with Relay for Shopify shops? Is there a page that describes this process? Thanks.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
razvanr 11y ago
Also founder of Two Tap here. Just to clarify on the above: 1. Pricing and inventory are realtime with Two Tap -- taken live from the merchant site when a shopping session is started. If only a size S is available on the merchant site then that's what we make available for shoppers in our carts. Merchants don't have to do any integration or manage this process. 2. Reliability has been a non problem for a while, we have a guarantee that we don't lose orders. And the process to confirm orders is async like Amazon -- step 1: we've received your order; step 2: your order is confirmed. 3. Two Tap supports over 1000 retailer integrations. Thanks for looking into the space!

by efuquen 11y ago

jodah 11y ago

Agree that the challenge is in obtaining partnerships, but not every retailer needs full control of the shopping experience, especially on mobile. And that's the win - alleviating the need for every retailer to solve the same technical problem.

jusben1369 11y ago
The challenge for the developer is twofold; 1) Understanding the real time availability of the inventory at the retail partner and 2) Supporting the payment provider of the retailer. In the desktop world this was solved by a straight up affiliate redirect. You arrived at the retailer page and saw your product in a shopping cart or close to it. Of course if inventory was poorly synced you occasionally got an error. This is still pretty common with things like airline metasearch services where the cheap ticket can be gone. Either way inventory was managed. Then you entered your payment method on the retailer site and it was processed by their backend processor. In the mobile world with mobile optimized apps those redirects don't work. So app developers want to make the payment experience feel like it's happening "within the app" Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and others all then had to solve for the inventory + payments challenge. Defaulting to Stripe can be problematic if the retailer already has a different payment processor relationship in place. By solving for the inventory piece I suspect Stripe is hoping to help drive momentum around overcoming the processor objections. Full disclosure I work at Spreedly where we help solve for the payment dilemma (not inventory) by allowing developers to work with a wide range of payment processors and/or affiliate API's.
- spolu 11y ago
  re Inventory: we want to provide live product availability information to the developer through our API. We encourage app developers to GET latest product info from our API before even rendering a potential Buy Now button. To make that possible we keep product information extra-fresh from big retailers, and even update it on the fly when we see orders failing because the product is out of stock. re Payments/Processor: So that's where it gets interesting. We have constructed for Pinterest a full payment distribution infrastructure to send payment information securely to large retailers or their processors. This infrastructure will also be used by Relay. Doing so, we believe we bring a ton of value to the ecosystem. But I'm sure you agree with that given your focus!
  - jusben1369 11y ago
    Congrats on the big day btw!
- Animats 11y ago
  In other words, since the app system doesn't have links like browsers, a whole new system is needed to emulate them.
  - jusben1369 11y ago
    Well they could push out and invoke a browser session which is how it was done initially and is still sometimes done. But yes conversion is poor.

sradu 11y ago

Founder of Two Tap here. It takes an average of three minutes to send the order to the retailer via our platform. On the frontend we use a similar model to Amazon where tell the shopper we're confirming her purchase and handle the process in the background. It's working great for Amazon, and it works great for us for a thousand merchants. Retailers are incredibly happy by the fact that they don't have to do a complicated integration where they have to maintain a new piece of infrastructure for potentially getting less than 1% of their orders. That being said, we're huge fans of Stripe. Always have been. John Collison was our mentor during YC. We're looking forward to seeing how they handle the challenges in the space.

ianlevesque 11y ago
Is that a conflict of interest having your mentor launch a direct competitor to your company?
- sradu 11y ago
  No hard feelings here. We mean it when we say we're big fans of Patrick, John, Stripe. It's unfortunate that we have to compete, we would have loved to work with them. Our approach is completely different than theirs: light integrations vs deep integrations. We believe their approach will do more harm than good for the industry causing retailers/platforms to invest millions of dollars in building infrastructure that's not going to be ROI positive. Retailers will end up paying to build/maintain that infrastructure part, they will pay the merchant fees, and they will have to pay Twitter/any partner promoting them.
  - ianlevesque 11y ago
    That's good. Market will decide!
  - hyperpape 11y ago
    "We mean it when we say we're big fans of Patrick, John, Stripe." "We believe their approach will do more harm than good for the industry" I can see what you're saying, but this was not as well worded as it could have been.

spolu 11y ago

Very thoughtful analysis! (Stripe engineer working on Relay here) Getting retailers on-board is definitely core to the success of Relay. As announced today Saks and the SAP Hybris platform are live on Relay and we're working with numerous other retailers as we speak. For apps, getting retailers to sell on their platform is a huge pain (custom integration to their APIs and payment systems) convincing them to do so. For retailers as well it's a pain. They have to create technical integrations with as many channel out there. That's why we think Relay make sense. We help both side of the equation. Also, the relationship between a retailer and a channel app in Relay is opt-in today. This is literally a Stripe Connect (think OAuth) connection. But once a channel is onboard, it's nothing more than clicking a button for a Relay retailer to start selling there. Also I wouldn't say they are losing control on the full shopping experience, they're merely enabling a better one on mobile. When you think of the shopping experience, a lot happen after the purchase (support, shipping, loyalty) as well and I think there are new experiences to create there, especially once the customer receive the receipt from the retailer.

prbuckley 11y ago
Can I request a Shopify platform integration? My company (www.dodocase.com) would love to sell our products in mobile apps. Feel free to reach out to me at patrick at dodocase dot com.
- monkeymeister 11y ago
  Hey Patrick. We've just finished building a Shopify to Stripe integrator - it's in beta, but we're happy with how it's performing. Check it out: https://www.shoptorelay.com https://www.shoptorelay.com
  - shoobydoo 11y ago
    Hey.. Does Stripe not offer a direct way to integrate with Relay for Shopify shops? Is there a page that describes this process? Thanks.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

razvanr 11y ago

Also founder of Two Tap here. Just to clarify on the above: 1. Pricing and inventory are realtime with Two Tap -- taken live from the merchant site when a shopping session is started. If only a size S is available on the merchant site then that's what we make available for shoppers in our carts. Merchants don't have to do any integration or manage this process. 2. Reliability has been a non problem for a while, we have a guarantee that we don't lose orders. And the process to confirm orders is async like Amazon -- step 1: we've received your order; step 2: your order is confirmed. 3. Two Tap supports over 1000 retailer integrations. Thanks for looking into the space!