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I see a new 0.4% to 0.7% fee, that is enough to make me start shopping competitors on Monday. The stripe processing fee is already high. It seems that all I get

I see a new 0.4% to 0.7% fee, that is enough to make me start shopping competitors on Monday. The stripe processing fee is already high. It seems that all I get is some hosted invoice stuff.. which I could build in a weekend and not have to pay a fee on? Thinking about it, a medium sized SaaS company billing 15 million a year. 14,000,000 *.004 = 56k a year? For the same product they already had? Obviously it is cool if you want metering and the advanced features, but I wonder if there is a way to opt out and use the old simple stripe without the new fee - or if this is to push those users into braintree / etc?

taurath 9y ago
I think they're hoping that the reduced churn rate will make up for the added fees. A "whoops please update your card" email gives people the opportunity to decide whether a sub is valuable, while a quiet background payment tends to be less noticed.
- nhangen 9y ago
  Isn't it my job as a Stripe Customer to build that functionality into my own app so that I can manage it in the way that works best for my customers?
  - jonknee 9y ago
    Or you can continue to improve your actual product while Stripe takes care of the rote billing issues. That's essentially Stripe's whole pitch, you could do everything they do on your own, but it's expensive and not central to your business.
    - nhangen 9y ago
      Easier said than done when your product requires that you integrate with dozens of gateways.
      - jonknee 9y ago
        You could say the same thing about invoicing!
      - lulmerchant 9y ago
        Why not use Spreedly then? Way cheaper, and removes a lot of the headaches from the make-it-yourself approach.
        manuelhuez 9y ago
        Shameless plug here! We also created something we called our Smart Router engine at https://processout.com https://processout.com, which helps you connect to dozens of payment providers and optimize your transactions.
    - foobarbazetc 9y ago
      Why don’t you let people decide what they want to spend their time on?
  - aeharding 9y ago
    I also am confused. I've made sure that Stripe will not send any emails directly to my customers (disabling emails for successful payments, refunds) since I integrated with Stripe's webhooks for my own custom emails. Is there now some other option that I have to turn off for CC update emails?
    - tarstarr 9y ago
      (PM on Stripe Billing here) All emails from Stripe to customers (like credit card update emails to your customer, etc.) are off by default. This behavior is the same as all of our other emails to your customers: if you prefer to listen to webhooks & send your own, that's great!
      - ABS 9y ago
        so all the invoices I now see automatically created for all my pre-existing subscriptions, with their own Stripe-generated Invoice ID are NOT being sent out, are they? How can I make sure of that? They have nothing to do with the actual invoices we already generate, send our customers, pass to our accountants and so forth and should any of these "Stripe-generated invoices" be made visibile to our customers it would create a HUGE accounting issue.
      - ABS 9y ago
        in fact I've just checked and "Email invoice to customer when it is created" was on by default but it appears only for "Invoices sent to customer for manual payment"
- pbarnes_1 9y ago
  But we already built that ourselves...
jacquesm 9y ago
It's all about the fraud control and the reduction in chargebacks. Yes, you can hack up a credit card payment gateway in a long night (been there, done that), but on the modern web you'll get killed by fraud. That's the hard part and if it is your own merchant account you're always going to be a few chargebacks away from losing that merchant account and by extension getting into really hot water with your business.
- pbarnes_1 9y ago
  The point is they already had this yesterday. It's literally a bunch of 'value add' features maybe you'll use for a 0.4% increase in fees you didn't ask for. Let me opt in to the new stuff.
  - mythz 9y ago
    Yeah the development of existing functionality is a sunk cost that should be optimized and depreciate in cost over time with additional volume, not incur additional charges after you're already invested the integration effort to lock yourself in to their gateway. Here they've auto-enrolled us into a new pricing scheme we didn't want or asked for.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > It's literally a bunch of 'value add' features maybe you'll use for a 0.4% increase in fees you didn't ask for. Except that's not how it works.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
nodesocket 9y ago
I could be wrong but the 0.4% fee only seems to kick in after $1M. It's not clear if that is $1M a year or $1M lifetime.
welder 9y ago
Looks like Stripe Payments (the minimum you need to process credit card payments) is still 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction, for existing Stripe recurring billing users. For any new projects I'll be using Braintree for recurring billing. Edit: the fee increase is only after $1M in revenue so still makes sense to use Stripe in a project's early stages.
- aantix 9y ago
  Isn't that the same as BrainTree's pricing? https://www.braintreepayments.com/braintree-pricing https://www.braintreepayments.com/braintree-pricing
- robbiemitchell 9y ago
  I'm curious how it could possibly go much lower than that. The credit card processors impose fees on everyone, including Stripe.
tarstarr 9y ago
(PM for Stripe Billing here) It’s a good question, and one that we thought a lot about before launching the product. At Stripe, we are particularly interested in making startups (especially recurring billing startups, in the case of this product) successful on Stripe. It’s one of our most important goals. For all businesses -- not just startups -- we waive Stripe Billing fees for your first $1M in recurring billing volume so that you’re not worried about fees when you’re in the early days of growing your business. We also hope there’s much more additional value from the full set of Stripe Billing features that are included in this price -- the increase in revenue you get from our recovery product, the savings in manual operations that you get from automatic invoice reconciliation, and the flexibility in building new business models that you get from improvements we made to the core billing engine (better upgrades, prorations, metered billing & more.) And, we’ll continue to invest in building more features and creating the best end-to-end billing system for fast-growing businesses. If you’re an existing Stripe Subscriptions user, there’s no change to your pricing or your integration: you can continue as you were. We’ve sent an email to existing users on how this affects you -- please let me know if you still have questions! (tl;dr there’s no changes to your existing pricing.) If you ever have a question on pricing or the product, I’m happy to talk about it any time. I’m tara@stripe.com.
- foobarbazetc 9y ago
  No one on our team has received this email. Also I don’t know if this is on purpose but you’re not answering the question people are actually asking: what if you’re an existing user and you hit $1M... then what? Yesterday: 0% extra Today: 0.4% extra Right?
  - tarstarr 9y ago
    (PM from Stripe) If you're an existing user, there's no extra fees, even if you are past the $1M threshold. For existing Stripe Subscriptions users, Stripe Billing is included in your current price. (You should have received an email about this earlier today)
    - GordonS 9y ago
softwarefounder 9y ago
"build in a weekend"
- dboreham 9y ago
  I'm working in my spare time on a series of articles about the curious psychology of the software development world. This one is near the top of my list!
  - positivejam 9y ago
    Got an email signup for that?
  - hyperdimension 9y ago
    +1 on the email sign up--I'm very interested. Or at least post it to HN?
  - Sholmesy 9y ago
    Also interested in newsletter/update.
  - farnsworthy 9y ago
    I could write that series in a weekend.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  If your needs are basic, why is that surprising? Anyone who uses multiple payment processing services, for example in different countries or to support different payment methods, is probably already doing their own thing at that level anyway. Big, complicated APIs and invoicing systems and so on are not your friend in that sort of environment.
- dzonga 9y ago
  Yeah, i'm building | built an invoicing app, it's not too much work for the basics.
- brianwawok 9y ago
saryant 9y ago
Speaking as someone who leads a payments team (for recurring subscriptions!), no. No you could not rebuild this in a weekend.

taurath 9y ago

I think they're hoping that the reduced churn rate will make up for the added fees. A "whoops please update your card" email gives people the opportunity to decide whether a sub is valuable, while a quiet background payment tends to be less noticed.

nhangen 9y ago
Isn't it my job as a Stripe Customer to build that functionality into my own app so that I can manage it in the way that works best for my customers?
- jonknee 9y ago
  Or you can continue to improve your actual product while Stripe takes care of the rote billing issues. That's essentially Stripe's whole pitch, you could do everything they do on your own, but it's expensive and not central to your business.
  - nhangen 9y ago
    Easier said than done when your product requires that you integrate with dozens of gateways.
    - jonknee 9y ago
      You could say the same thing about invoicing!
    - lulmerchant 9y ago
      Why not use Spreedly then? Way cheaper, and removes a lot of the headaches from the make-it-yourself approach.
      - manuelhuez 9y ago
        Shameless plug here! We also created something we called our Smart Router engine at https://processout.com https://processout.com, which helps you connect to dozens of payment providers and optimize your transactions.
  - foobarbazetc 9y ago
    Why don’t you let people decide what they want to spend their time on?
- aeharding 9y ago
  I also am confused. I've made sure that Stripe will not send any emails directly to my customers (disabling emails for successful payments, refunds) since I integrated with Stripe's webhooks for my own custom emails. Is there now some other option that I have to turn off for CC update emails?
  - tarstarr 9y ago
    (PM on Stripe Billing here) All emails from Stripe to customers (like credit card update emails to your customer, etc.) are off by default. This behavior is the same as all of our other emails to your customers: if you prefer to listen to webhooks & send your own, that's great!
    - ABS 9y ago
      so all the invoices I now see automatically created for all my pre-existing subscriptions, with their own Stripe-generated Invoice ID are NOT being sent out, are they? How can I make sure of that? They have nothing to do with the actual invoices we already generate, send our customers, pass to our accountants and so forth and should any of these "Stripe-generated invoices" be made visibile to our customers it would create a HUGE accounting issue.
    - ABS 9y ago
      in fact I've just checked and "Email invoice to customer when it is created" was on by default but it appears only for "Invoices sent to customer for manual payment"
pbarnes_1 9y ago
But we already built that ourselves...

jacquesm 9y ago

It's all about the fraud control and the reduction in chargebacks. Yes, you can hack up a credit card payment gateway in a long night (been there, done that), but on the modern web you'll get killed by fraud. That's the hard part and if it is your own merchant account you're always going to be a few chargebacks away from losing that merchant account and by extension getting into really hot water with your business.

pbarnes_1 9y ago
The point is they already had this yesterday. It's literally a bunch of 'value add' features maybe you'll use for a 0.4% increase in fees you didn't ask for. Let me opt in to the new stuff.
- mythz 9y ago
  Yeah the development of existing functionality is a sunk cost that should be optimized and depreciate in cost over time with additional volume, not incur additional charges after you're already invested the integration effort to lock yourself in to their gateway. Here they've auto-enrolled us into a new pricing scheme we didn't want or asked for.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > It's literally a bunch of 'value add' features maybe you'll use for a 0.4% increase in fees you didn't ask for. Except that's not how it works.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

nodesocket 9y ago

I could be wrong but the 0.4% fee only seems to kick in after $1M. It's not clear if that is $1M a year or $1M lifetime.

welder 9y ago

Looks like Stripe Payments (the minimum you need to process credit card payments) is still 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction, for existing Stripe recurring billing users. For any new projects I'll be using Braintree for recurring billing. Edit: the fee increase is only after $1M in revenue so still makes sense to use Stripe in a project's early stages.

aantix 9y ago
Isn't that the same as BrainTree's pricing? https://www.braintreepayments.com/braintree-pricing https://www.braintreepayments.com/braintree-pricing
robbiemitchell 9y ago
I'm curious how it could possibly go much lower than that. The credit card processors impose fees on everyone, including Stripe.

tarstarr 9y ago

(PM for Stripe Billing here) It’s a good question, and one that we thought a lot about before launching the product. At Stripe, we are particularly interested in making startups (especially recurring billing startups, in the case of this product) successful on Stripe. It’s one of our most important goals. For all businesses -- not just startups -- we waive Stripe Billing fees for your first $1M in recurring billing volume so that you’re not worried about fees when you’re in the early days of growing your business. We also hope there’s much more additional value from the full set of Stripe Billing features that are included in this price -- the increase in revenue you get from our recovery product, the savings in manual operations that you get from automatic invoice reconciliation, and the flexibility in building new business models that you get from improvements we made to the core billing engine (better upgrades, prorations, metered billing & more.) And, we’ll continue to invest in building more features and creating the best end-to-end billing system for fast-growing businesses. If you’re an existing Stripe Subscriptions user, there’s no change to your pricing or your integration: you can continue as you were. We’ve sent an email to existing users on how this affects you -- please let me know if you still have questions! (tl;dr there’s no changes to your existing pricing.) If you ever have a question on pricing or the product, I’m happy to talk about it any time. I’m tara@stripe.com.

foobarbazetc 9y ago
No one on our team has received this email. Also I don’t know if this is on purpose but you’re not answering the question people are actually asking: what if you’re an existing user and you hit $1M... then what? Yesterday: 0% extra Today: 0.4% extra Right?
- tarstarr 9y ago
  (PM from Stripe) If you're an existing user, there's no extra fees, even if you are past the $1M threshold. For existing Stripe Subscriptions users, Stripe Billing is included in your current price. (You should have received an email about this earlier today)
  - GordonS 9y ago

softwarefounder 9y ago

"build in a weekend"

dboreham 9y ago
I'm working in my spare time on a series of articles about the curious psychology of the software development world. This one is near the top of my list!
- positivejam 9y ago
  Got an email signup for that?
- hyperdimension 9y ago
  +1 on the email sign up--I'm very interested. Or at least post it to HN?
- Sholmesy 9y ago
  Also interested in newsletter/update.
- farnsworthy 9y ago
  I could write that series in a weekend.
Silhouette 9y ago
If your needs are basic, why is that surprising? Anyone who uses multiple payment processing services, for example in different countries or to support different payment methods, is probably already doing their own thing at that level anyway. Big, complicated APIs and invoicing systems and so on are not your friend in that sort of environment.
dzonga 9y ago
Yeah, i'm building | built an invoicing app, it's not too much work for the basics.
brianwawok 9y ago

saryant 9y ago

Speaking as someone who leads a payments team (for recurring subscriptions!), no. No you could not rebuild this in a weekend.