4 ms·

I don't see anything PayPal offers that Stripe can't do better. Why put yourself at risk of arbitrary catastrophe at the hands of a company like PayPal that wan

I don't see anything PayPal offers that Stripe can't do better. Why put yourself at risk of arbitrary catastrophe at the hands of a company like PayPal that wants to act like a bank while weaseling around the legal protections against bank malfeasance?

foepys 10y ago
Outside of the US and Canada credit cards are not as widespread as they need to be to base your business solely on Stripe.
- henrikschroder 10y ago
  It would be interesting to see where in the world PayPal is big. In most parts of Europe, PayPal is pretty much unheard of, because our banks don't suck, so PayPal never offered any improvements over just regular bank transfers.
  - thesimon 10y ago
    >In most parts of Europe, PayPal is pretty much unheard of Thats depends a lot on the country though. Not accepting PayPal in Germany would probably be the same as not accepting credit card in the US. In the UK however only offering credit cards might work.
    - nkkollaw 10y ago
      Really..? I thought PayPal was extremely popular everywhere in Europe
      - henrikschroder 10y ago
        In Scandinavia, the only people who know what PayPal is are the ones who maybe bought something over eBay, or the ones wanting to send money to a friend in the US, and being completely surprised by how hard that turns out to be. There's 0 domestic use cases for PayPal there. Other parts of Europe I'm not so sure about.
        nkkollaw 10y ago
        Really? Odd. Good to know, though.
k3liutZu 10y ago
Stripe doesn't support (most) parts of the world.
trstowell 10y ago
It's not always about features. Plenty of international vendors only accept PayPal transfers. It's then our discretion to not do business with those vendors but there's the rub.
tedmiston 10y ago
A major difference is that customers can pay through PayPal from a PayPal balance whether they have a credit card or not. People use PayPal from person to person for B/S/T forums. The PayPal user base is bigger in this community because anyone can accept payments without being a merchant, yet unlike dealing over Venmo there are still protections for the buyer. Also, accepting payments worldwide is much more feasible. Stripe is in 25 countries [1]; PayPal is in 200 [2]. [1]: https://stripe.com/global https://stripe.com/global [2]: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/country-worldwide https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/country-worldwide
- Sir_Substance 10y ago
  >A major difference is that customers can pay through PayPal from a PayPal balance whether they have a credit card or not. Customers can pay through Visa whether they have a credit card or not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Electron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Electron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Debit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Debit As far as I can tell it might be only USA banks that don't issue these kinds of cards as standard, in place of a bank card.
  - AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
    Those cards are pretty standard in America too. If you open a checking account, you'll almost certainly get a Visa or Mastercard credit/debit card.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    You're right — to clarify, I was trying to make the point that one can pay via PayPal with their PayPal account balance, as opposed to via any type of card (credit, debit, ATM, prepaid Visa gift card, etc). So, one can use PayPal without a credit or debit card. Stripe does not offer anything analogous to that. I'm not sure about other countries but in the US, it is possible to open a bank account without a debit card attached to it.
    - cowsandmilk 10y ago
analog31 10y ago
For me, the advantage of PayPal is that I don't need to host my own web server (at home or in the cloud) and maintain code in order to take credit card payments. I realize it's just programming, but it's programming that I don't trust myself to do in a way that's reliable and secure. Also, PP makes my accounting extremely easy. I use my PP debit card for all of my business purchases, so I just download a CSV of the entire year's transactions, and compute my results in a spreadsheet, for my taxes. Given the horror stories, I realize it's a risk, and I periodically go out and look for alternatives. Best case would be to have two options for customers, so my business could at least take orders even if one of the two goes down.
- galvin 10y ago
  You could use a business bank account with an associated debit card. Continue accepting PayPal but only use it as a processor and transfer funds to your business account regularly. This also makes it easier to have multiple payment methods, like if you want to test Stripe. It's a little bit more work but it's probably worth it. Oh, and most banks let you download some sort of spreadsheet for accounting.
sabslaurent 10y ago
Shopify doesn't allow Stripe, they force you to use Shopify Payments which I have no interest in using, they set their own rules and guidelines that I do not approve of.
- kejaed 10y ago
  Shopify Payments is Stripe on the back end though, what rules do they put on top?
  - sabslaurent 10y ago
    For one, Payouts are 7-days in arrear where as with Paypal it's instant. Second, Shopify just started with this processing thing and they are amateurs at it, support has been horrible and they also keep changing their rules and requirements since this is all new to them. The shopify payments team also does not get on the phone, just email, i try and stay away from companies that do that. The irony is paypal just did it to me...

foepys 10y ago

Outside of the US and Canada credit cards are not as widespread as they need to be to base your business solely on Stripe.

henrikschroder 10y ago
It would be interesting to see where in the world PayPal is big. In most parts of Europe, PayPal is pretty much unheard of, because our banks don't suck, so PayPal never offered any improvements over just regular bank transfers.
- thesimon 10y ago
  >In most parts of Europe, PayPal is pretty much unheard of Thats depends a lot on the country though. Not accepting PayPal in Germany would probably be the same as not accepting credit card in the US. In the UK however only offering credit cards might work.
  - nkkollaw 10y ago
    Really..? I thought PayPal was extremely popular everywhere in Europe
    - henrikschroder 10y ago
      In Scandinavia, the only people who know what PayPal is are the ones who maybe bought something over eBay, or the ones wanting to send money to a friend in the US, and being completely surprised by how hard that turns out to be. There's 0 domestic use cases for PayPal there. Other parts of Europe I'm not so sure about.
      - nkkollaw 10y ago
        Really? Odd. Good to know, though.

k3liutZu 10y ago

Stripe doesn't support (most) parts of the world.

trstowell 10y ago

It's not always about features. Plenty of international vendors only accept PayPal transfers. It's then our discretion to not do business with those vendors but there's the rub.

tedmiston 10y ago

A major difference is that customers can pay through PayPal from a PayPal balance whether they have a credit card or not. People use PayPal from person to person for B/S/T forums. The PayPal user base is bigger in this community because anyone can accept payments without being a merchant, yet unlike dealing over Venmo there are still protections for the buyer. Also, accepting payments worldwide is much more feasible. Stripe is in 25 countries [1]; PayPal is in 200 [2]. [1]: https://stripe.com/global https://stripe.com/global [2]: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/country-worldwide https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/country-worldwide

Sir_Substance 10y ago
>A major difference is that customers can pay through PayPal from a PayPal balance whether they have a credit card or not. Customers can pay through Visa whether they have a credit card or not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Electron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Electron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Debit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Debit As far as I can tell it might be only USA banks that don't issue these kinds of cards as standard, in place of a bank card.
- AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
  Those cards are pretty standard in America too. If you open a checking account, you'll almost certainly get a Visa or Mastercard credit/debit card.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  You're right — to clarify, I was trying to make the point that one can pay via PayPal with their PayPal account balance, as opposed to via any type of card (credit, debit, ATM, prepaid Visa gift card, etc). So, one can use PayPal without a credit or debit card. Stripe does not offer anything analogous to that. I'm not sure about other countries but in the US, it is possible to open a bank account without a debit card attached to it.
  - cowsandmilk 10y ago

analog31 10y ago

For me, the advantage of PayPal is that I don't need to host my own web server (at home or in the cloud) and maintain code in order to take credit card payments. I realize it's just programming, but it's programming that I don't trust myself to do in a way that's reliable and secure. Also, PP makes my accounting extremely easy. I use my PP debit card for all of my business purchases, so I just download a CSV of the entire year's transactions, and compute my results in a spreadsheet, for my taxes. Given the horror stories, I realize it's a risk, and I periodically go out and look for alternatives. Best case would be to have two options for customers, so my business could at least take orders even if one of the two goes down.

galvin 10y ago
You could use a business bank account with an associated debit card. Continue accepting PayPal but only use it as a processor and transfer funds to your business account regularly. This also makes it easier to have multiple payment methods, like if you want to test Stripe. It's a little bit more work but it's probably worth it. Oh, and most banks let you download some sort of spreadsheet for accounting.

sabslaurent 10y ago

Shopify doesn't allow Stripe, they force you to use Shopify Payments which I have no interest in using, they set their own rules and guidelines that I do not approve of.

kejaed 10y ago
Shopify Payments is Stripe on the back end though, what rules do they put on top?
- sabslaurent 10y ago
  For one, Payouts are 7-days in arrear where as with Paypal it's instant. Second, Shopify just started with this processing thing and they are amateurs at it, support has been horrible and they also keep changing their rules and requirements since this is all new to them. The shopify payments team also does not get on the phone, just email, i try and stay away from companies that do that. The irony is paypal just did it to me...