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>Stripe is not widely known because it doesn't sell anything that consumers can buy. Instead its software systems enable companies around the world to more easi
by Firebrand 9y ago
>Stripe is not widely known because it doesn't sell anything that consumers can buy. Instead its software systems enable companies around the world to more easily accept online payments and run their websites.
What does Stripe do that makes it a better choice for companies than PayPal?
- jonny_eh 9y agoBetter API, documentation, and support. It's pretty much that simple.
- rising-sky 9y agoIsn't this why PayPal purchased Braintree?
- jonny_eh 9y agoMaybe? Hard to buy your way out of this kind of problem though.
- coldacid 9y agoWell, they don't steal their clients' money through abuse of their own terms of service, so that's one thing. Mainly, though, it's because they have a fairly simple API, compared to PayPal, which makes their service easier to integrate into others.
- jondubois 9y agoYes the PayPal API and its documentation has always been terrible. It really wasn't hard to beat. That said, I think that Y Combinator was crucial for Stripe's success. So many developers read HN and pracyically all of them needed a better alternative to PayPal.
- throwaway2016a 9y agoThey were one of the first to allow accepting of credit card without leaving the site or requiring heavy PCI compliance work. They did it using client-side tokenization so the server never needed to see the credit card data. Paypal either required you to leave the site or put you in territory where you need to meet fairly expensive PCI compliance rules. So the UX was simply better for the buyer. And the API is drop-dead simple to implement. Now a days PCI caught up and requires some compliance for users of Stripe like platforms but still nowhere near as much as the ones who see the card. Also, being able to be up and accepting payments in less than 15 minutes is pretty great. And as other's pointed out, Paypal has (had?) a nasty habit of taking people's money. To be fair I know some stripe merchants where Stripe held back payments as protection against chargebacks. But that is just a delay, not flat out taking the money like Paypal used to do.
- appleflaxen 9y agopaypal has an incredible track record of utterly shafting people. most users don't know about it, but the depth of the stinky pile of their history is breathtaking in its depth.