8 ms·
To expand, it's these 7 lines. (Actually 12) <form action="/your-server-side-code" method="POST"> <script src="https://checkout.stripe.com/ch
by Kluny 9y ago
To expand, it's these 7 lines. (Actually 12)
<form action="/your-server-side-code" method="POST">
<script
src="https://checkout.stripe.com/checkout.js" class="stripe-button"
data-key="pk_test_6pRNASCoBOKtIshFeQd4XMUh"
data-amount="999"
data-name="Stripe.com"
data-description="Widget"
data-image="https://stripe.com/img/documentation/checkout/marketplace.png"
data-locale="auto"
data-zip-code="true">
</script>
</form>
- more or less. Maybe not precisely that, but it's the bit where you add a payment form to your website.
It's a nice headline, but it really leaves out the tremendous amount of back-end work that went into making that front end easy to use.
- shimon_e 9y agoThe PayPal form is roughly the same number of lines. The real break through for stripe was it was an alternative to PayPal with a modern UI.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- artur_makly 9y agoAnother great reminder to all you founders - don't underestimate the power of great product design.
- omarchowdhury 9y agoAnd don't underestimate the power of new and... different. Many founders pass on markets they think have no room for innovation or new entrants, only to leap into some small marketless crevice.
- ckinnan 9y agoNope. The Stripe advantage over PayPal is that Stripe operates more like a merchant account, where the buyer sees the seller's name on the credit card statement. PayPal injects itself into the checkout process, Stripe is basically a white label. Stripe also has easier underwriting. I suspect Stripe is taking more business from merchant accounts/gateways than PayPal, because they are different markets.
- anonacct37 9y agoAs someone that selected stripe to process orders for a product were were launching somewhere around 2012, it was because of the APIs and developer sandbox. Paypal was ugly to work with, felt crufty, etc. Stripe had pip installable modules, awesome documentation (live code samples in docs and sandbox), and was easy to integrate into our tests.
- jacquesm 9y agoAnd most importantly: Stripe does not randomly decide your funds are suddenly theirs for the next 6 months to a year.
- jameskegel 9y agoThis is how PayPal lost my business initially; now that I'm a part of the payments industry, I use PayPal sparingly for much else.
- hwillis 9y agoThat's the least of it. Paypal automatically puts you on a 21-60 day rolling reserve once you hit a certain level. Small businesses can and have had 30%+ of their revenue unavailable for two months. That's your entire profit margin gone. It makes it impossible to grow a small business. And of course they will not respond to anything for months if ever. And it never gets better! Companies with millions in revenue still get these problems. Paypal has no place being used by anyone trying to start a company. They are awful.
- ErikAugust 9y agoBefore Stripe - I had to take a loan out, and make the switch to Authorize.net so I could get my company off PayPal and its 60 day reserve - otherwise it would have folded. They were perpetually holding tens of thousands of dollars at all times.
- lmm 9y agoThey'll do that sooner or later. Everyone in the money-handling industry has to randomly lock-up funds and not tell you why, because that's what anti-money-laundering laws require.
- jonknee 9y agoThe PayPal form also involved redirecting all your users over to PayPal. Stripe has always integrated into your site/service which is part of what made that form so nifty.
- sumedh 9y ago> The real break through for stripe was it was an alternative to PayPal with a modern UI. Paypal's documentation and the sandbox process is so atrocious that I had to question my own intelligence. Turns out the problem was with paypal and not my IQ.
- foxylad 9y agoWe moved from PayPal to Stripe. Yes, integration was much easier, because of the simple and effective API and great documentation (good examples with your own data included - brilliant!). But we switched because PayPal just did not work. A significant percentage of card transactions failed for absolutely no reason, despite "good" customers (school teachers from first world countries), no chargebacks and no fraud. Cards would routinely magically work the next day, and in the end we came to believe PayPal arbitrarily failed card transactions to force people to set up PayPal accounts. Moving to Stripe resolved this overnight. We'll never go back.
- kennydude 9y agoActually processing the response is significantly easier with Stripe. Before Stripe, PayPal was some clunky API with a endless amount of different accounts with different pricing structures.
- legohead 9y agoActually it's 1 line. <form action="/your-server-side-code" method="POST"> <script src="https://checkout.stripe.com/checkout.js" class="stripe-button" data-key="pk_test_6pRNASCoBOKtIshFeQd4XMUh" data-amount="999" data-name="Stripe.com" data-description="Widget" data-image="https://stripe.com/img/documentation/checkout/marketplace.png" data-locale="auto" data-zip-code="true"></script></form>
- korzun 9y agoActually, it's 371 bytes.
- alunchbox 9y agoand then there's this guy.
- ChristianBundy 9y agoActually it's 348 bytes. <form action=/your-server-side-code method=POST><script class=stripe-button data-amount=999 data-description=Widget data-image=https://stripe.com/img/documentation/checkout/marketplace.png data-key=pk_test_6pRNASCoBOKtIshFeQd4XMUh data-locale=auto data-name=Stripe.com data-zip-code=true src=https://checkout.stripe.com/checkout.js></script></form>
- AlphaWeaver 9y agoAnd then there's that guy from the CodeGolf StackExchange.
- trumpownsyou420 9y agoaka faggot
- DC-3 9y ago"I shaved off 3 bytes with eval() and a regex"
- komali2 9y agoWait, the /your-server-side-code bit seems like the most difficult. Did Stripe not implement this aspect as well? I would have no idea how to securely process credit card transactions server-side.
- ryebit 9y agoIf I remember how they worked (last did stripe integration a ways back), the script instruments your form's submit event to do an (ajax if possible) POST to stripe's server, which processes everything, and returns back a (merchant specific) "token" representing a redeemable charge to the customer. The form is then posted to your server, but all it gets is the "token", which it can then use your private merchant key to redeem behind the scenes with their server. So you get an anonymous "charge" token that you can revoke if a later part of the checkout process fails, and CC data never touches your system. (I think the markup for that was a little bit different than what was posted above though).
- gnaritas 9y agoCorrect, and the big reason for that is it means you don't have to be PCI compliant since the card never touches your server, only stripes. That's why Stripe blew up, Paypal had no such offering for allowing you to use your own checkout form but not have to pass the card through your server.
- kafkaesq 9y agoIt's a "nice" headline for Bloomberg's advertisers (and hence, for Bloomberg) in that it gets people to click on the link. But in terms of information content, it's a horrible headline (for the reasons you so succinctly describe).