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> For example, what’s their response to Stripe? Acquired Braintree https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/09/26/paypal-braintree-acquisition/2874891/ https:/

> For example, what’s their response to Stripe? Acquired Braintree https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/09/26/paypal-braintree-acquisition/2874891/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/09/26/paypal-braint...

tyingq 9y ago
Sure, but compare Braintree related HN posts to Stripe related HN posts. Something is missing. Edit: Guess my feel that HN posts might be correlated to innovation is off? As far as I can tell, Stripe is kicking Braintree’s ass. PayPal has good market share as a whole, because it is a second form of payment. Ignore that and look at basic CC payments only, and Stripe is clearly beating Braintree in market share. Basically...what did PayPal net from this acquisition?
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  HN posts are no measure of profitability or market share. Loud does not equal better.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    So, how do the two do compare in market share? That is, specifically vs the Braintree product. Is this accurate? https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/payment-processing/braintree-vs-stripe/ https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/payment-processing/bra... Edit: Get the charge volume point, but 15% of top sites versus less than 1% seems to indicate something. Also, websites added/dropped going negative for Braintree. That can’t be a good thing.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      You’d want to measure based on charge volume, not sites using each service. My understanding is Braintree is cheaper when you get big enough. Edit: it doesn’t cost you anything to accept Stripe on your site. Would you figure Optimizely revenue from all of its free plan users they just purged? You would not.
      - jjeaff 9y ago
        Why charge volume? Seems like since the fees are the same, number of integrations would be a better indicator of ease of use.
        toomuchtodo 9y ago
        Ease of use doesn’t mean profit. Volume and margins do. That's all that matters. Reddit is easy to use and makes zero profit.
- wuliwong 9y ago
  I built one small web-app that required payment processing. I tried out both Stripe and Braintree and actually wound up going with Braintree. I was really surprised but their documentation for integration in a Ruby on Rails app at that time was a lot more complete.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  I've used Braintree extensively (and have limited experience with Stripe). Braintree has been an absolute pleasure to develop with. Their support has been excellent, we even had a conference call with their dev team in Australia regarding a new feature that they were rolling out so that we could be an early adopter. HN gets all giddy and excited about Stripe for some reason, but Braintree is just as nice and easy to use. Stripe doesn't have anything inherently better than BT.
neya 9y ago
I know that PayPal is always trashed for various reasons and rightfully so, but one thing the new (or fairly new) players like Stripe haven't gotten right is fraud detection. PayPal still rules when it comes to chargebacks, Merchant protection (if you follow their protocols correctly, eg. don't sell guns, illegal stuff and read their documentation thoroughly which requires you to do some API calls to enable merchant protection) you're pretty much safe. The same isn't the experience with Stripe. I, as a developer myself find it incredibly easy to put together something with Stripe in just a matter of few hours with Stripe vs PayPal. But, have you ever experienced a fraudulent case with Stripe? Stripe will almost always side with the customer even though you have evidence to prove you were the one scammed. I hope you never have to experience what it is like because you can't even get hold of someone over the phone when that happens. But, as much as I hate PayPal like you, I can tell you, there were many many incidents where I got stuck with their sh*tty documentation and I was able to get hold of someone from their developer team. There were many instances where I was able to successfully win chargebacks against fraudsters by getting hold of someone on the phone and explaining the situation. Stripe simply isn't there yet, and this is one of the most important elements in this business, not just the fancy integration and documentation. It's not Stripe's fault though, I opine that they simply don't have enough data as PayPal does to detect/prevent fraud as good as PayPal.
- Lazare 9y ago
  I can confirm that it's very hard to win a dispute if using Stripe as a merchant with a card-not-present transaction. However...my experience has been that's true of all payment processors, including Paypal, and I have heard a lot of horror stories about Paypal in specific. For example, Paypal's seller protection explicitly does not cover you as a seller if the buyer claims the item was not as described; that leads to the famous brick fraud which has been going on for well over a decade. Eg https://ask.metafilter.com/77638/Can-I-trust-PayPals-seller-protection-If-not-what-can-go-wrong#1208841 https://ask.metafilter.com/77638/Can-I-trust-PayPals-seller-... or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13180885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13180885. > Stripe will almost always side with the customer even though you have evidence to prove you were the one scammed. I hope you never have to experience what it is like because you can't even get hold of someone over the phone when that happens. There are hundreds if not thousands of stories of people having this issue with Paypal, so... :)

tyingq 9y ago

Sure, but compare Braintree related HN posts to Stripe related HN posts. Something is missing. Edit: Guess my feel that HN posts might be correlated to innovation is off? As far as I can tell, Stripe is kicking Braintree’s ass. PayPal has good market share as a whole, because it is a second form of payment. Ignore that and look at basic CC payments only, and Stripe is clearly beating Braintree in market share. Basically...what did PayPal net from this acquisition?

toomuchtodo 9y ago
HN posts are no measure of profitability or market share. Loud does not equal better.
- tyingq 9y ago
  So, how do the two do compare in market share? That is, specifically vs the Braintree product. Is this accurate? https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/payment-processing/braintree-vs-stripe/ https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/payment-processing/bra... Edit: Get the charge volume point, but 15% of top sites versus less than 1% seems to indicate something. Also, websites added/dropped going negative for Braintree. That can’t be a good thing.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    You’d want to measure based on charge volume, not sites using each service. My understanding is Braintree is cheaper when you get big enough. Edit: it doesn’t cost you anything to accept Stripe on your site. Would you figure Optimizely revenue from all of its free plan users they just purged? You would not.
    - jjeaff 9y ago
      Why charge volume? Seems like since the fees are the same, number of integrations would be a better indicator of ease of use.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        Ease of use doesn’t mean profit. Volume and margins do. That's all that matters. Reddit is easy to use and makes zero profit.
wuliwong 9y ago
I built one small web-app that required payment processing. I tried out both Stripe and Braintree and actually wound up going with Braintree. I was really surprised but their documentation for integration in a Ruby on Rails app at that time was a lot more complete.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
I've used Braintree extensively (and have limited experience with Stripe). Braintree has been an absolute pleasure to develop with. Their support has been excellent, we even had a conference call with their dev team in Australia regarding a new feature that they were rolling out so that we could be an early adopter. HN gets all giddy and excited about Stripe for some reason, but Braintree is just as nice and easy to use. Stripe doesn't have anything inherently better than BT.

neya 9y ago

I know that PayPal is always trashed for various reasons and rightfully so, but one thing the new (or fairly new) players like Stripe haven't gotten right is fraud detection. PayPal still rules when it comes to chargebacks, Merchant protection (if you follow their protocols correctly, eg. don't sell guns, illegal stuff and read their documentation thoroughly which requires you to do some API calls to enable merchant protection) you're pretty much safe. The same isn't the experience with Stripe. I, as a developer myself find it incredibly easy to put together something with Stripe in just a matter of few hours with Stripe vs PayPal. But, have you ever experienced a fraudulent case with Stripe? Stripe will almost always side with the customer even though you have evidence to prove you were the one scammed. I hope you never have to experience what it is like because you can't even get hold of someone over the phone when that happens. But, as much as I hate PayPal like you, I can tell you, there were many many incidents where I got stuck with their sh*tty documentation and I was able to get hold of someone from their developer team. There were many instances where I was able to successfully win chargebacks against fraudsters by getting hold of someone on the phone and explaining the situation. Stripe simply isn't there yet, and this is one of the most important elements in this business, not just the fancy integration and documentation. It's not Stripe's fault though, I opine that they simply don't have enough data as PayPal does to detect/prevent fraud as good as PayPal.

Lazare 9y ago
I can confirm that it's very hard to win a dispute if using Stripe as a merchant with a card-not-present transaction. However...my experience has been that's true of all payment processors, including Paypal, and I have heard a lot of horror stories about Paypal in specific. For example, Paypal's seller protection explicitly does not cover you as a seller if the buyer claims the item was not as described; that leads to the famous brick fraud which has been going on for well over a decade. Eg https://ask.metafilter.com/77638/Can-I-trust-PayPals-seller-protection-If-not-what-can-go-wrong#1208841 https://ask.metafilter.com/77638/Can-I-trust-PayPals-seller-... or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13180885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13180885. > Stripe will almost always side with the customer even though you have evidence to prove you were the one scammed. I hope you never have to experience what it is like because you can't even get hold of someone over the phone when that happens. There are hundreds if not thousands of stories of people having this issue with Paypal, so... :)