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Stripe has raised $150M more at a $9B valuation
- puranjay 10y agoOT but Stripe has some of the most beautiful front-end design I've seen on a major financial product. All their pages are just so beautiful, yet functional
- fluxic 10y agoFun to see the rivalry between Stripe and Square play out. This line though has me a little puzzled, however: >"On the flip side, Square is more diversified, generating revenue from non-payment products such as its Square Capital lending business and Caviar restaurant-delivery operation." Isn't Caviar widely known for being a massive money-loser for Square? http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/techflash/2016/10/square-caviar-uber-grubhub-yelp.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/techflash/2016/...
- moyta 10y agoI think so, iirc Caviar is losing money as they compete with the dozen other food delivery services. The payment processing industry itself is currently very overcrowded too, with a million ISOs like Stripe, Square, Braintree, etc.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoYes. And if you ever wondered whether or not the right CEO can make or break a company, this is a pretty awesome test case for you.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> Fun to see the rivalry between Stripe and Square play out. One has a part-time CEO tanking Twitter and the other doesn't. This is not a rivalry.
- yellowbeard 10y agoIs there that much rivalry? AFAIK Square is pretty solidly 'brick and mortar' while Stripe is APIs.
- untilHellbanned 10y agoSeems odd so this means the money making isn't going that well.
- blahi 10y agoI don't mean to hate but why would anyone chose Stripe over Braintree? It seems the same to me + Paypal which is HUGE.
- ggregoire 10y agoOne reason could be that Braintree is less known than Stripe? In my case: I've never heard of Braintree before this discussion and I was going to implement Stripe for my SaaS without even looking at the existing competitors.
- spitfire 10y agoIt's funny, IIRC the founder of braintree was quite active on HN as Braintree started to become successful.
- _kyran 10y agoBraintree seem to be advertising aggressively. I've been surprised to see a lot of phone boxes in Melbourne, Australia that are covered with Braintree ads promising better payments integrations.
- rublev 10y agoWhat problems does Braintree solve that Stripe doesn't?
- johneth 10y agoSeamless Paypal integration. Paypal is very popular across Europe (and the world), and many prefer to use it over credit and/or debit cards (these payment methods aren't universally popular).
- brianwawok 10y agoSome people don't WANT PayPal. I had a bad experience with an eBay /PayPal charge back scam 5 years ago. I.e. freezing of my entire account and no human to find to unfreeze it. I will never accept PayPal for the rest of my life.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- scurvy 10y agoI hope the employees got to sell in this round.
- ant6n 10y agoHa!
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoStripe is in the same bucket as Airbnb, Uber et al. Transfers, even if "permitted", are blocked. Because what–are engineers going too sue? /s
- scurvy 10y agoThat's sad. Back in my day, the last round was always C. After that you either went public or folded up. The track record of companies that raised a D was so bad that everyone feared a D out of stigma. Things might have changed a little now, but probably not much. Companies with later than C rounds will prove to be poor investments.
- nodesocket 10y agoI'd like to see Stripe go public instead of raising additional VC capital. They could really spark a series of tech IPOs strengthening tech stocks. I don't have any insider knowledge (besides my research when working on my failed startup Charge Control[1]), but I would be shocked if Stripe is not profitable. [1] https://justink.svbtle.com/stripe-put-my-startup-out-of-business-before-i-launched https://justink.svbtle.com/stripe-put-my-startup-out-of-busi...
- eric-hu 10y agoI don't have any insider knowledge either, but I have this impression that you lose operational efficiency when you go public. For all the heat that VCs get for pressuring their portfolio companies to grow 10x, it seems like answering to the public market is even more wasteful. This is just an impression though, I don't have anything to back it up.
- Cyph0n 10y agoI would like to start a developer-first payment processor in my country, where we do not have access to PayPal or Stripe. What would you guys say is the biggest hurdle to overcome to get off the ground? Finding a bank to back your transactions? Securing customer card details and connections? Dealing with fraud? Insurance in case of data breach? Or none of the above? Also, what kind of upfront costs would I need to factor in? I've been looking at local compliance requirements and regulations, and they seem doable (on the order of $1k USD). I plan on working on this alone, at least initially.
- amelius 10y agoShouldn't you have "bank-status" for this?
- Cyph0n 10y agoNot necessarily, no. From what I understand, you would typically use a bank to get onto the payment network. Of course, this means that both the bank and Visa/MC get a cut of each transaction.
- yazinsai 10y agoFirst off, congrats on taking the initiative. It's one thing to complain about how much a situation sucks, and another entirely to take it upon yourself to actually do something about it. You're partially right. The biggest issue medium to long-term would be getting a bank to back you. That doesn't have to be a show stopper from day 1 though (assuming you're willing to assume some personal liability, as you will be in violation of the ToS of any service provider you use). It all comes down to your risk appetite. Essentially, you could run your own API that would wrap Stripe/Braintree's API and kickstart your business that way. This would require a US entity, but with Stripe's Atlas this is a non-issue. This is fine if you're processing $10k or even $100k/mo. It gets icky when you try to get past that. As volume grows, there's increasing pressure to make sure that your setup is air-tight, something you can only get by setting up locally (Visa/Mastercard regulations prohibit cross-border processing so it's the only 100% legit way forward). Herein lies the challenge. Banks in the Middle East (which I presume is where you are targeting) vary greatly in terms of what volume actually deserves their attention. For some that's $10M/mo. For others it might be less. Once you've got $100k, and have a strong upward trend, you can start having these discussions. In short, you want to start it like you would any other business: by focus on making something people want. The bank issues can be delayed until after you've got a decent customer base. Historically, there's a 95% chance that your company would not survive (startup stats still apply). If you get past that, hit me up and I can provide more specific advice.
- valueprop 10y agoStripe, please, please, invest in a better PayPal alternative. That is: * let people hold money into their Stripe account instead of transferring to a bank immediately * let people transfer money from their Stripe balance to any other account's Stripe balance for free (PayPal charges a fee for "cross-border" transactions) * make it possible for marketplaces to pay their workers through Stripe (PayPal and sometimes Payoneer are the only choices now). Workers can then withdraw to their bank accounts from Stripe balance, or use it to pay directly for other stuff on the web * have a low commission for merchants, if not free, for payments of goods using Stripe balance
- gkop 10y agoThis sounds like Square Cash?
- stephenhuey 10y agoWhich didn't work well for me, so it would be nice to see Stripe get into that space. When I linked my Square Cash account to a Chase debit card about a year ago, one or two friends were able to pay me but the next ones only saw weird errors on their end and when I contacted support, it took them forever to get back to me and eventually they emailed to say my account was being closed due to suspicious activity. No answers, no help, nada. Who would trust their financial transactions to a service like that? So yeah, go get 'em Stripe!
- winter_blue 10y agoWhy is transferring to a bank immediately beneficial? I've read of stories of people getting burnt by getting significant amounts of money frozen that they had left in their merchant PayPal accounts (without transferring it to a bank) for inane reasons. Not holding on to the money eliminates that worry and builds trust, doesn't it?
- deadlycrayon 10y agoI'm assuming by "cross-border" that you mean across currencies. You really expect a company to do foreign exchange for free?
- desmondrd 10y agoAnyone guess what they will spend the cash on? Couple plausible options - they aren't profitable but have huge transaction volume - international growth - new product development Thoughts?
- kimshibal 10y agoPaddle has CC, Paypal, and available in my country. Win Win Win.
- csdreamer7 10y agoDoes Paddle have a Ruby gem for Rails?
- gkafkg8y8 10y agoJust learned that Alphabet is reusing names. CapitalG was used before: http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20140422/NEWS/140429952 http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20140422/NEWS/140429952
- Steeeve 10y agoI have trouble understanding this valuation considering that it just doesn't seem like a terribly difficult market to jump into. They aren't first to the table. Is there something that's protecting their market position/ensuring that it will get better?
- exolymph 10y agoWhether the market is easy to jump into doesn't matter. Ecommerce is easy to jump into, but you don't see anyone threatening Amazon's position, right? It's all about your ability to execute competitively. Also, payments in particular is a regulation-heavy industry and PCI compliance is a headache all on its own.
- PerfectElement 10y agoPerhaps now they will build an Android app?