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Stripe cofounder here. For anyone wondering about pricing, here's our approach. - For new Stripe customers, this is free up to the first (lifetime) $1M of pay

by pc 9y ago

Stripe cofounder here. For anyone wondering about pricing, here's our approach. - For new Stripe customers, this is free up to the first (lifetime) $1M of payments. - For existing customers, there's no pricing change. You just get more functionality than before for free. This is what we generally try to do: we want Stripe to continually become better value for you over time, as you get more functionality for the same price. - What we've seen over Stripe's history is that customers handling large amounts of revenue have been forced to pay substantial amounts for expensive third-party systems. So, we've decided to build something that we think will be better and cheaper -- and that will, over time, increase the net revenue of businesses built on Stripe. I'm sorry about any confusion in our communication around this!

whitepoplar 9y ago
Does "existing customers" mean someone (like me) who has a Stripe account set up, but who hasn't (yet) started accepting payments? Am I grandfathered in?
- tarstarr 9y ago
  We'll make sure you're taken care of here. (If you're just running test subscription charges right now, you're still grandfathered. You can ping me any time if you have questions.)
  - dbenjamin 9y ago
    Any luck if we weren't quite running test charges yet? Just wanted to use the subscription abilities.
- sjs382 9y ago
  The email sent by Stripe says "Since you used Stripe Subscriptions in the past year, the Stripe Billing Starter plan is included in your current pricing." So... based on that, it seems that "existing customers" means "customers that have actually used the product we're replacing". I think we'd all appreciate a confirmation or clarification, though. :)
sjs382 9y ago
This comment needs to be stuck to the top of this thread—the thread has already got out of hand wrt/ the confusion on how this affects current customers. Thanks for clearing up the communication on this! I've been a happy Stripe user for years, now!
- pc 9y ago
  Yeah, we messed up in not having this be clearer. Apologies!
  - sjs382 9y ago
    No, thank you for getting in front of this, clarifying your messaging, and responding to questions as quickly and actively as you have! Stuff like this is part of the reason I love Stripe so much.
Meekro 9y ago
> For existing customers, there's no pricing change. You just get more functionality than before for free. This is what we generally try to do: we want Stripe to continually become better value for you over time, as you get more functionality for the same price. The email that existing customers received was ambiguous on this point. It said this: "Since you used Stripe Subscriptions in the past year, the Stripe Billing Starter plan is included in your current pricing." Many existing customers that rely on basic subscriptions probably think their rates are about to go up. Maybe you guys need a follow-up email to explain that they're not?
- tarstarr 9y ago
  Very sorry about the lack of clarity in the email! You will get all of the functionality that you have now, plus anything additional that we add to Stripe Starter, at the price you currently pay to Stripe. No additional fees here, even beyond $1M lifetime cap.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - cetalingua 9y ago
    We signed up for Stripe account on February 9, but are yet to start processing paymens, will our account be grandfathered in as well? I sent you email yesterday asking about it too. We did not receive Stripe email about changes. Could you please clarify it? Thank you!
- tallytarik 9y ago
  Absolutely this. I got the email this morning and was left confused about the basic point - "do I pay any more for my current usage?" I'm glad that I now know the answer, but I would've been asking Stripe support if I hadn't stumbled across this by chance.
whitepoplar 9y ago
Can you clarify what "Advanced reporting with Sigma" refers to in the Scale tier? Which fraud features are included in the base tier and which are a paid upgrade? Thanks in advance?
- singhrac 9y ago
  I assume Sigma refers to their SQL-based analytics product [1]. I think (and might be wrong) that most fraud-prevention features are included by default in all Stripe products, including Radar? [1]: https://stripe.com/us/sigma https://stripe.com/us/sigma
  - whitepoplar 9y ago
    Oh, my mistake! I mixed up Radar and Sigma.
ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
In the rare cases where an existing customer is forced to migrate accounts (due to incorporation/moving elsewhere) is that considered an existing customer?
- pc 9y ago
  Yes! Just drop us a line.
Silhouette 9y ago
For existing customers, there's no pricing change. You just get more functionality than before for free. Will anything change for those of us who might not need that new functionality? The wording in the email is that Stripe Billing "replaces" Stripe Subscriptions, but historically Stripe has been good at not breaking its API. We're concerned about another situation like GoCardless last year, where existing integrations would get broken. The one thing we'd love to see improved is fixing failed charges. We've never been able to find much documentation on the previous settings for Dunning management, and support emails on the subject went unanswered. However, our stats for churn caused by mysterious Stripe payment failures are consistently quite a bit worse than the ones you mention in your publicity today, and relatively few of our customers resubscribe after their subscription is cancelled like that even if they were previously happy and active users so this does significantly hurt growth. This has been our #1 problem with Stripe for a long time. If this new system leads to better Dunning management and better documentation about how it works, that would be positive.
- tarstarr 9y ago
  On your integration -- you won't have to change anything if you're currently using Stripe Subscriptions. You can continue as you are. On high decline rates -- Of course, we're hoping Smart Retries and automatic card updater help you here without any additional work on your side. That said, drop us a line! There's actually quite a few things you can do on your end to minimize declines (pass us the right information at the time of charge, segment your decline reason codes in Sigma, experiment with trials, etc.) that can help reduce passive churn. (Docs on declines here: https://stripe.com/docs/declines https://stripe.com/docs/declines)
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    Thanks for the reassurance on the current subscriptions integration. A first look at the API suggested that updating to the latest Stripe API was now going to involve some breaking changes, e.g., introducing products and requiring one to set up a plan. On the decline rates, we actually have dropped you (Stripe) a line -- many times, in fact, and via multiple channels. In some cases, we never received a reply at all. In the others, the reply was essentially that you didn't know why the failure rates were so high and there was nothing actionable you could suggest to improve them. I appreciate the link to the declines page, but I think that information has been available for quite a while now. What we have really needed is the detail about exactly what would happen if we configured the existing Dunning management to retry things, for example which objects get created in your system and/or get reused on retried payments, and which webhooks get sent at which points in the try/retry/give-up process and which objects they refer to. As far as I'm aware, none of this has ever been included in your usual documentation areas. With today's announcement, it would now also be helpful to know the differences between the previous Dunning controls and the new Billing system, and how to migrate between them if necessary. The controls for the new smart retries feature seem to be in the same area on the dashboard, but as with the older controls, if there's any documentation anywhere about what any of these settings actually do under the hood, or how to simulate the relevant scenarios for integration and testing purposes, I can't find it. It would also help to fix some limitations of the current tools, and again maybe the new Billing system helps with this but we haven't spotted it yet. For example, one problem we've run into a few times now is that address verifications are all-or-nothing. Either we don't use them (presumably worse for fraud detection) or we do (but then if a customer moves house and doesn't tell us, their next charge on a subscription will fail). In terms of risk, it would seem to make sense to check the details that don't appear on the card itself for the first payment(s), but after a while to trust that the card really does belong to the customer claiming it and downgrade/ignore those signals in later fraud checks, but this doesn't currently seem to be possible. I appreciate that you're probably all very busy today with the roll-out of the new system, but I'm sure we're not the only ones who would be grateful if these kinds of documentation gaps and any actual limitations in the functionality could be addressed when time allows.
adzicg 9y ago
Hi, we use stripe subscriptions now quite a lot, and I'm a bit worried about the whole invoice pricing - could you please clarify that a bit? the web site says invoices are free for up to first 2K, then $1 per invoice. our recurring charges to customers now are around $2.99 per month, I hope you're not planning to take $1 more away from that. does the invoice price apply for each recurring payment cycle, or am I reading something wrong here?
- caffeinatedwes 9y ago
  Recurring invoices aren't affected, so no $1 charge. I forget where that was mentioned.
pokemongoaway 9y ago
So as a customer of yours who still has to use PayPal because so many Europeans have "bank cards..." What do you recommend? Using both PayPal & Stripe? PayPal is a work around because, for example, a US Stripe account can't take EU "bank cards" (which account for about 1/3 of payments coming from the EU, as I see in Stripe's error logs) or non-US ACH.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  > a US Stripe account can't take EU "bank cards" Wait, what? What do you mean? I'm not seeing this at all.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    I think he means countries like the Netherlands, where they have some weird system of non-credit/debit cards.
  - pokemongoaway 9y ago
    Yes, like StavrosK said, for anyone who has significant customers outside of the US - there are lots of countries that use various types of "bank cards." Netherlands iDEAL is fairly well-known, but I get lots of customers with Visa & Mastercard "bank cards" in Italy, Germany, etc - all whose payments fail on Stripe (but they try anyway, not realizing theirs is not a typical "credit/debit" card).
    - scrollaway 9y ago
      Right yeah -- that's actually one of my main issues with Stripe right now. Hopefully they add it soon.
Improvotter 9y ago
Any information on support for Europe? And if support for Europe were to be in the pipeline, would it be for the whole of Europe or only specific countries? We'd love to use Stripe for billing as well, but because Stripe is an American company, we feel like as Europeans we're constantly an afterthought and would therefore prefer a European provider. What's your opinion on this? Btw, I was at the Stripe offices 2 years ago and it was an amazing experience. I really like what Stripe has done over the years. Keep it going and thanks!
- lima 9y ago
  +1 for Europe Is there anything like it in Germany?
  - vongomben 9y ago
    +1 for italy
  - Roritharr 9y ago
    Relevant Self-Promotion: https://www.monsum.com https://www.monsum.com is our solution which offers besides stripe other PSPs aswell.
    - mkarnicki 9y ago
      You're losing customers by not having your website available in English as well.
      - Roritharr 8y ago
        It's available, but not properly linked, fixing it shortly: https://monsum.com/en/ https://monsum.com/en/
    - Improvotter 9y ago
      Could you tell your web developer not to mess with scrolling on the website? It's always a thing that bugs many people, including me.
tschellenbach 9y ago
Thanks for the hard work, this is awesome
fillskills 9y ago
We have been using Stripe for 3 years. Every time we need a new feature, Stripe comes up with it when we need it. We were literally looking for a Billing solution that works with Stripe YESTERDAY. T This is phenomenal timing for us. Thanks Stripe!
tiffanyh 9y ago
@pc Any thoughts on either acquiring https://baremetrics.com/ https://baremetrics.com/ or creating similar functionality within Stripe? Seems like a natural extension to Billing to also have Revenue Analytics.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  I've been using Profitwell, switched away from Baremetrics. Its a lot better, cleaner, more featureful and it's free.
  - dictum 9y ago
    > it's free For non-basic usage, that's a con, not a pro.
    - scrollaway 9y ago
      But it's better than Baremetrics, so I don't get your point. It being free just makes it both better and less expensive. ChartMoguls is excellent if you want to be on a paid plan. It's also super expensive.
      - pccampbell 9y ago
        Thanks so much for the love here. :)
      - nickfzx 9y ago
        We don't want to be perceived as cheap, but super expensive isn't our plan either. We're free for companies below $10K MRR, then charge on subscriber volumes. We can offer custom pricing to high-volume/low-margin businesses, feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss nick [at] chartmogul.com
    - pccampbell 9y ago
      Hey Dictum - we're free for non-basic usage, basic usage, and everything in-between. I explained a lot of why this is the case in the blog post link below (when we went all in for free), but it really comes down to the following: PHILOSOPHICAL 1. In software (and the subscription economy) we're moving away from function based pricing to outcome based pricing. Putting this simply in the context of analytics/reporting means that if I just take your data and put it into a bunch of graphs, it's helpful, but not valuable, even if they are the right graphs (and most of the time they aren't the right graphs, at least in most BI/analytics products). 2. Based on this, we believe in outcome based pricing. We make money by selling products like Retain, Price Intelligently, etc. that all have a specific number we can point to (in your free ProfitWell account :)) that we helped move in the right direction. For some of these products we then only perfectly charge based on our performance. Others where we can't measure this precisely, we still price on a value metric axis. ANALYTICAL 1. Metrics/analytics are a terrible business from a willingness to pay and unit economics perspective. People don't really appreciate how much work goes into 100% accuracy (that's our thing compared to our competitors fwiw). It took years to be perfect and even now we're still finding edge cases of edge cases. Multiply this by the number of billing systems and it takes a lot of work to support this free product. Here's the thing though - back to that lack of appreciation - when measuring the willingness to pay for analytics/metrics, people just aren't willing to pay that much. We measured this well ahead of going all in on free and found that our unit economics, especially in a market that's weak in number of logos (subscription market is much smaller than people think). As a result, most BI/analytics companies go up market. We're upmarket and do have an enterprise plan for all the fun enterprise fixings people need, but we don't want to waste massive amounts of CAC fighting for $50/month or even $150/month. Creating a phenomenal user experience (we're not there yet) is so much valuable. Plus, we're able to show our customers they have a problem that we can then sell an add-on for. Long story short, this business and space requires a scalpel, not a sledgehammer for growth. Hope that's helpful. Always up for answering questions. Here's the blog post we wrote up with some of the data, too: https://www.profitwell.com/blog/why-we-released-a-better-product-for-free-and-maybe-you-should-too https://www.profitwell.com/blog/why-we-released-a-better-pro...
cmcmcm 9y ago
Please add a way to set the invoice's email address and cc address vi API. Also the invoice might need to go to multiple email addresses. Most of our clients have an accounts payable department that's different from the main contact email.
- nodesocket 9y ago
  Also wondering how the new invoice and receipt emails are sent out? > Under invoices there are two new documents "Invoice PDF" and "Receipt PDF" which are different from the standard e-mail receipts. Are these documents emailed to the customer automatically? Is there a way to control this?
  - tarstarr 9y ago
    (Pm on Stripe billing) There's a param in the API that indicates whether you want an invoice to be sent out or charged automatically -- you want `billing` to be `send_invoice`: https://stripe.com/docs/api#invoice_object-billing https://stripe.com/docs/api#invoice_object-billing For receipts, you can turn them on in your account settings: dashboard.stripe.com/account
- tarstarr 9y ago
  (I work at stripe) Hey! Great feature request -- we plan to add it in the next couple weeks.
  - johns 9y ago
    Great. We had to roll our own receipt emails using the old subscriptions to get this feature (along with card expiring/expired call outs).
gobluebackstage 9y ago
we are a current enterprise subscription customer with more then 200k subscription transactions per year - we also have more then 40k a la carte transactions (non subscription w/no invoice) per year. If we move the a la carte transactions to the new invoice model will we be charged per invoice?
gtirloni 9y ago
Sorry to hijack this thread but I wanted to ask if there's any news about supporting payments in Brazil. I've requested an invite 2 years ago and never heard a word.
woogiewonka 9y ago
I wish Stripe interface was more friendly. Looking at Freshbooks and Stripe, Freshbooks makes it look so simple and nice. Any plans to make your user interface more friendly to casual users who are not devs? Thanks.
ronreiter 9y ago
Hi, Can you share some details on when Stripe will be available for Israeli start-ups? There's quite a big ecosystem here dying to use Stripe but we just can't.
- edwinwee 9y ago
  Working on it, but no real news yet. Have you signed up at https://stripe.com/global#IL https://stripe.com/global#IL yet?
  - ronreiter 9y ago
    A long long time ago :)
chrishynes 9y ago
Its not just a communication problem, it's a pattern. You guys did the same thing last year when you stopped returning fees on refunds. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that you weren't returning fees anymore. I get not returning the flat 0.30 transaction fee, but not returning the % fees smacks of being more worried about the corporate bottom line than customers. Many processors refund the % fees, and there's no way you couldn't negotiate special dispensation with "the various payment partners we work with" to at least be able to return the % fee. I used to unabashedly recommend Stripe as the best payment processor -- a little expensive on the rate, but easy to set up and no monthly or hidden fees to worry about. That changed as soon as I had my first new customer screaming about getting whacked with fees on a refund. Didn't affect my account, and your messaging was horrible on that change as well, so I blissfully recommended unaware of the change until a new customer to whom I'd sung the praises of Stripe got hit and had to yank all of the Stripe code and go to a direct processor. Just because you grandfather existing customers doesn't mean you get off scot-free on unfavorable policies. My recommendation immediately changed to only use Stripe if access to special niche features like Stripe Connect or non card payments were required, and otherwise use a direct card processor with defined fees (and much lower rates, like 0.5% lower at least). Clearly your focus has changed from doing right by the little guy to "customers handling large amounts of revenue" and policies tilted toward the bottom line vs "rightness". That's fine, and a natural part of many corporations during growth... Just telling you how it's affected my perceptions of Stripe and my recommendations to customers. Negatively.
- folli 9y ago
  Which payment processor would you recommend now? Edit: See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16772655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16772655
  - chrishynes 9y ago
    Depends on volume and risk profile. There are many very sharp Authorize.Net resellers out there that will work with you to get a great rate for your situation. I've seen 2.2% rates on 50k/mo of processing for low risk customers. Of course, with that you get some additional fees to factor in -- monthly statement fee, international, Amex, etc... but it pencils out to way lower than 3% at a decent volume. For example, these guys: https://www.netcompaysystem.com https://www.netcompaysystem.com And many of these processors will give you gross deposit which is the only way to make things easy for an accountant. The net fees model Stripe uses is a nightmare for reconciliation at any sort of scale. This isn't to say I've abandoned Stripe entirely -- there are some cases where it makes sense, when you're actually using some of the advanced features and API, not just a straightforward card charge. I just completed a Stripe Connect integration that handles millions a month for several clients... but even there you run into half baked/stapled on feelings when you try to produce a full featured process that works at scale. For example, there's no straightforward way to provide a batch report for a Stripe Connect client -- the charge ID's don't match up with the platform account, and the only way to fully map which charges/refunds/chargebacks are in a given deposit for the client account is to link them up by amount and date/time....
yxhuvud 9y ago
This looks great, but I also see a lot of functionality being restricted to USA. That would be quite limiting for us as we are based in Europe and have the vast majority of our customers there. :(
mxpxrocks10 9y ago
I'm looking very forward to using it. Thanks!!

by pc 9y ago

whitepoplar 9y ago

Does "existing customers" mean someone (like me) who has a Stripe account set up, but who hasn't (yet) started accepting payments? Am I grandfathered in?

tarstarr 9y ago
We'll make sure you're taken care of here. (If you're just running test subscription charges right now, you're still grandfathered. You can ping me any time if you have questions.)
- dbenjamin 9y ago
  Any luck if we weren't quite running test charges yet? Just wanted to use the subscription abilities.
sjs382 9y ago
The email sent by Stripe says "Since you used Stripe Subscriptions in the past year, the Stripe Billing Starter plan is included in your current pricing." So... based on that, it seems that "existing customers" means "customers that have actually used the product we're replacing". I think we'd all appreciate a confirmation or clarification, though. :)

sjs382 9y ago

This comment needs to be stuck to the top of this thread—the thread has already got out of hand wrt/ the confusion on how this affects current customers. Thanks for clearing up the communication on this! I've been a happy Stripe user for years, now!

pc 9y ago
Yeah, we messed up in not having this be clearer. Apologies!
- sjs382 9y ago
  No, thank you for getting in front of this, clarifying your messaging, and responding to questions as quickly and actively as you have! Stuff like this is part of the reason I love Stripe so much.

Meekro 9y ago

> For existing customers, there's no pricing change. You just get more functionality than before for free. This is what we generally try to do: we want Stripe to continually become better value for you over time, as you get more functionality for the same price. The email that existing customers received was ambiguous on this point. It said this: "Since you used Stripe Subscriptions in the past year, the Stripe Billing Starter plan is included in your current pricing." Many existing customers that rely on basic subscriptions probably think their rates are about to go up. Maybe you guys need a follow-up email to explain that they're not?

tarstarr 9y ago
Very sorry about the lack of clarity in the email! You will get all of the functionality that you have now, plus anything additional that we add to Stripe Starter, at the price you currently pay to Stripe. No additional fees here, even beyond $1M lifetime cap.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- cetalingua 9y ago
  We signed up for Stripe account on February 9, but are yet to start processing paymens, will our account be grandfathered in as well? I sent you email yesterday asking about it too. We did not receive Stripe email about changes. Could you please clarify it? Thank you!
tallytarik 9y ago
Absolutely this. I got the email this morning and was left confused about the basic point - "do I pay any more for my current usage?" I'm glad that I now know the answer, but I would've been asking Stripe support if I hadn't stumbled across this by chance.

whitepoplar 9y ago

Can you clarify what "Advanced reporting with Sigma" refers to in the Scale tier? Which fraud features are included in the base tier and which are a paid upgrade? Thanks in advance?

singhrac 9y ago
I assume Sigma refers to their SQL-based analytics product [1]. I think (and might be wrong) that most fraud-prevention features are included by default in all Stripe products, including Radar? [1]: https://stripe.com/us/sigma https://stripe.com/us/sigma
- whitepoplar 9y ago
  Oh, my mistake! I mixed up Radar and Sigma.

ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago

In the rare cases where an existing customer is forced to migrate accounts (due to incorporation/moving elsewhere) is that considered an existing customer?

pc 9y ago
Yes! Just drop us a line.

Silhouette 9y ago

For existing customers, there's no pricing change. You just get more functionality than before for free. Will anything change for those of us who might not need that new functionality? The wording in the email is that Stripe Billing "replaces" Stripe Subscriptions, but historically Stripe has been good at not breaking its API. We're concerned about another situation like GoCardless last year, where existing integrations would get broken. The one thing we'd love to see improved is fixing failed charges. We've never been able to find much documentation on the previous settings for Dunning management, and support emails on the subject went unanswered. However, our stats for churn caused by mysterious Stripe payment failures are consistently quite a bit worse than the ones you mention in your publicity today, and relatively few of our customers resubscribe after their subscription is cancelled like that even if they were previously happy and active users so this does significantly hurt growth. This has been our #1 problem with Stripe for a long time. If this new system leads to better Dunning management and better documentation about how it works, that would be positive.

tarstarr 9y ago
On your integration -- you won't have to change anything if you're currently using Stripe Subscriptions. You can continue as you are. On high decline rates -- Of course, we're hoping Smart Retries and automatic card updater help you here without any additional work on your side. That said, drop us a line! There's actually quite a few things you can do on your end to minimize declines (pass us the right information at the time of charge, segment your decline reason codes in Sigma, experiment with trials, etc.) that can help reduce passive churn. (Docs on declines here: https://stripe.com/docs/declines https://stripe.com/docs/declines)
- Silhouette 9y ago
  Thanks for the reassurance on the current subscriptions integration. A first look at the API suggested that updating to the latest Stripe API was now going to involve some breaking changes, e.g., introducing products and requiring one to set up a plan. On the decline rates, we actually have dropped you (Stripe) a line -- many times, in fact, and via multiple channels. In some cases, we never received a reply at all. In the others, the reply was essentially that you didn't know why the failure rates were so high and there was nothing actionable you could suggest to improve them. I appreciate the link to the declines page, but I think that information has been available for quite a while now. What we have really needed is the detail about exactly what would happen if we configured the existing Dunning management to retry things, for example which objects get created in your system and/or get reused on retried payments, and which webhooks get sent at which points in the try/retry/give-up process and which objects they refer to. As far as I'm aware, none of this has ever been included in your usual documentation areas. With today's announcement, it would now also be helpful to know the differences between the previous Dunning controls and the new Billing system, and how to migrate between them if necessary. The controls for the new smart retries feature seem to be in the same area on the dashboard, but as with the older controls, if there's any documentation anywhere about what any of these settings actually do under the hood, or how to simulate the relevant scenarios for integration and testing purposes, I can't find it. It would also help to fix some limitations of the current tools, and again maybe the new Billing system helps with this but we haven't spotted it yet. For example, one problem we've run into a few times now is that address verifications are all-or-nothing. Either we don't use them (presumably worse for fraud detection) or we do (but then if a customer moves house and doesn't tell us, their next charge on a subscription will fail). In terms of risk, it would seem to make sense to check the details that don't appear on the card itself for the first payment(s), but after a while to trust that the card really does belong to the customer claiming it and downgrade/ignore those signals in later fraud checks, but this doesn't currently seem to be possible. I appreciate that you're probably all very busy today with the roll-out of the new system, but I'm sure we're not the only ones who would be grateful if these kinds of documentation gaps and any actual limitations in the functionality could be addressed when time allows.

adzicg 9y ago

Hi, we use stripe subscriptions now quite a lot, and I'm a bit worried about the whole invoice pricing - could you please clarify that a bit? the web site says invoices are free for up to first 2K, then $1 per invoice. our recurring charges to customers now are around $2.99 per month, I hope you're not planning to take $1 more away from that. does the invoice price apply for each recurring payment cycle, or am I reading something wrong here?

caffeinatedwes 9y ago
Recurring invoices aren't affected, so no $1 charge. I forget where that was mentioned.

pokemongoaway 9y ago

So as a customer of yours who still has to use PayPal because so many Europeans have "bank cards..." What do you recommend? Using both PayPal & Stripe? PayPal is a work around because, for example, a US Stripe account can't take EU "bank cards" (which account for about 1/3 of payments coming from the EU, as I see in Stripe's error logs) or non-US ACH.

scrollaway 9y ago
> a US Stripe account can't take EU "bank cards" Wait, what? What do you mean? I'm not seeing this at all.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  I think he means countries like the Netherlands, where they have some weird system of non-credit/debit cards.
- pokemongoaway 9y ago
  Yes, like StavrosK said, for anyone who has significant customers outside of the US - there are lots of countries that use various types of "bank cards." Netherlands iDEAL is fairly well-known, but I get lots of customers with Visa & Mastercard "bank cards" in Italy, Germany, etc - all whose payments fail on Stripe (but they try anyway, not realizing theirs is not a typical "credit/debit" card).
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    Right yeah -- that's actually one of my main issues with Stripe right now. Hopefully they add it soon.

Improvotter 9y ago

Any information on support for Europe? And if support for Europe were to be in the pipeline, would it be for the whole of Europe or only specific countries? We'd love to use Stripe for billing as well, but because Stripe is an American company, we feel like as Europeans we're constantly an afterthought and would therefore prefer a European provider. What's your opinion on this? Btw, I was at the Stripe offices 2 years ago and it was an amazing experience. I really like what Stripe has done over the years. Keep it going and thanks!

lima 9y ago
+1 for Europe Is there anything like it in Germany?
- vongomben 9y ago
  +1 for italy
- Roritharr 9y ago
  Relevant Self-Promotion: https://www.monsum.com https://www.monsum.com is our solution which offers besides stripe other PSPs aswell.
  - mkarnicki 9y ago
    You're losing customers by not having your website available in English as well.
    - Roritharr 8y ago
      It's available, but not properly linked, fixing it shortly: https://monsum.com/en/ https://monsum.com/en/
  - Improvotter 9y ago
    Could you tell your web developer not to mess with scrolling on the website? It's always a thing that bugs many people, including me.

tschellenbach 9y ago

Thanks for the hard work, this is awesome

fillskills 9y ago

We have been using Stripe for 3 years. Every time we need a new feature, Stripe comes up with it when we need it. We were literally looking for a Billing solution that works with Stripe YESTERDAY. T This is phenomenal timing for us. Thanks Stripe!

tiffanyh 9y ago

@pc Any thoughts on either acquiring https://baremetrics.com/ https://baremetrics.com/ or creating similar functionality within Stripe? Seems like a natural extension to Billing to also have Revenue Analytics.

scrollaway 9y ago
I've been using Profitwell, switched away from Baremetrics. Its a lot better, cleaner, more featureful and it's free.
- dictum 9y ago
  > it's free For non-basic usage, that's a con, not a pro.
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    But it's better than Baremetrics, so I don't get your point. It being free just makes it both better and less expensive. ChartMoguls is excellent if you want to be on a paid plan. It's also super expensive.
    - pccampbell 9y ago
      Thanks so much for the love here. :)
    - nickfzx 9y ago
      We don't want to be perceived as cheap, but super expensive isn't our plan either. We're free for companies below $10K MRR, then charge on subscriber volumes. We can offer custom pricing to high-volume/low-margin businesses, feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss nick [at] chartmogul.com
  - pccampbell 9y ago
    Hey Dictum - we're free for non-basic usage, basic usage, and everything in-between. I explained a lot of why this is the case in the blog post link below (when we went all in for free), but it really comes down to the following: PHILOSOPHICAL 1. In software (and the subscription economy) we're moving away from function based pricing to outcome based pricing. Putting this simply in the context of analytics/reporting means that if I just take your data and put it into a bunch of graphs, it's helpful, but not valuable, even if they are the right graphs (and most of the time they aren't the right graphs, at least in most BI/analytics products). 2. Based on this, we believe in outcome based pricing. We make money by selling products like Retain, Price Intelligently, etc. that all have a specific number we can point to (in your free ProfitWell account :)) that we helped move in the right direction. For some of these products we then only perfectly charge based on our performance. Others where we can't measure this precisely, we still price on a value metric axis. ANALYTICAL 1. Metrics/analytics are a terrible business from a willingness to pay and unit economics perspective. People don't really appreciate how much work goes into 100% accuracy (that's our thing compared to our competitors fwiw). It took years to be perfect and even now we're still finding edge cases of edge cases. Multiply this by the number of billing systems and it takes a lot of work to support this free product. Here's the thing though - back to that lack of appreciation - when measuring the willingness to pay for analytics/metrics, people just aren't willing to pay that much. We measured this well ahead of going all in on free and found that our unit economics, especially in a market that's weak in number of logos (subscription market is much smaller than people think). As a result, most BI/analytics companies go up market. We're upmarket and do have an enterprise plan for all the fun enterprise fixings people need, but we don't want to waste massive amounts of CAC fighting for $50/month or even $150/month. Creating a phenomenal user experience (we're not there yet) is so much valuable. Plus, we're able to show our customers they have a problem that we can then sell an add-on for. Long story short, this business and space requires a scalpel, not a sledgehammer for growth. Hope that's helpful. Always up for answering questions. Here's the blog post we wrote up with some of the data, too: https://www.profitwell.com/blog/why-we-released-a-better-product-for-free-and-maybe-you-should-too https://www.profitwell.com/blog/why-we-released-a-better-pro...

cmcmcm 9y ago

Please add a way to set the invoice's email address and cc address vi API. Also the invoice might need to go to multiple email addresses. Most of our clients have an accounts payable department that's different from the main contact email.

nodesocket 9y ago
Also wondering how the new invoice and receipt emails are sent out? > Under invoices there are two new documents "Invoice PDF" and "Receipt PDF" which are different from the standard e-mail receipts. Are these documents emailed to the customer automatically? Is there a way to control this?
- tarstarr 9y ago
  (Pm on Stripe billing) There's a param in the API that indicates whether you want an invoice to be sent out or charged automatically -- you want `billing` to be `send_invoice`: https://stripe.com/docs/api#invoice_object-billing https://stripe.com/docs/api#invoice_object-billing For receipts, you can turn them on in your account settings: dashboard.stripe.com/account
tarstarr 9y ago
(I work at stripe) Hey! Great feature request -- we plan to add it in the next couple weeks.
- johns 9y ago
  Great. We had to roll our own receipt emails using the old subscriptions to get this feature (along with card expiring/expired call outs).

gobluebackstage 9y ago

we are a current enterprise subscription customer with more then 200k subscription transactions per year - we also have more then 40k a la carte transactions (non subscription w/no invoice) per year. If we move the a la carte transactions to the new invoice model will we be charged per invoice?

gtirloni 9y ago

Sorry to hijack this thread but I wanted to ask if there's any news about supporting payments in Brazil. I've requested an invite 2 years ago and never heard a word.

woogiewonka 9y ago

I wish Stripe interface was more friendly. Looking at Freshbooks and Stripe, Freshbooks makes it look so simple and nice. Any plans to make your user interface more friendly to casual users who are not devs? Thanks.

ronreiter 9y ago

Hi, Can you share some details on when Stripe will be available for Israeli start-ups? There's quite a big ecosystem here dying to use Stripe but we just can't.

edwinwee 9y ago
Working on it, but no real news yet. Have you signed up at https://stripe.com/global#IL https://stripe.com/global#IL yet?
- ronreiter 9y ago
  A long long time ago :)

chrishynes 9y ago

Its not just a communication problem, it's a pattern. You guys did the same thing last year when you stopped returning fees on refunds. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that you weren't returning fees anymore. I get not returning the flat 0.30 transaction fee, but not returning the % fees smacks of being more worried about the corporate bottom line than customers. Many processors refund the % fees, and there's no way you couldn't negotiate special dispensation with "the various payment partners we work with" to at least be able to return the % fee. I used to unabashedly recommend Stripe as the best payment processor -- a little expensive on the rate, but easy to set up and no monthly or hidden fees to worry about. That changed as soon as I had my first new customer screaming about getting whacked with fees on a refund. Didn't affect my account, and your messaging was horrible on that change as well, so I blissfully recommended unaware of the change until a new customer to whom I'd sung the praises of Stripe got hit and had to yank all of the Stripe code and go to a direct processor. Just because you grandfather existing customers doesn't mean you get off scot-free on unfavorable policies. My recommendation immediately changed to only use Stripe if access to special niche features like Stripe Connect or non card payments were required, and otherwise use a direct card processor with defined fees (and much lower rates, like 0.5% lower at least). Clearly your focus has changed from doing right by the little guy to "customers handling large amounts of revenue" and policies tilted toward the bottom line vs "rightness". That's fine, and a natural part of many corporations during growth... Just telling you how it's affected my perceptions of Stripe and my recommendations to customers. Negatively.

folli 9y ago
Which payment processor would you recommend now? Edit: See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16772655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16772655
- chrishynes 9y ago
  Depends on volume and risk profile. There are many very sharp Authorize.Net resellers out there that will work with you to get a great rate for your situation. I've seen 2.2% rates on 50k/mo of processing for low risk customers. Of course, with that you get some additional fees to factor in -- monthly statement fee, international, Amex, etc... but it pencils out to way lower than 3% at a decent volume. For example, these guys: https://www.netcompaysystem.com https://www.netcompaysystem.com And many of these processors will give you gross deposit which is the only way to make things easy for an accountant. The net fees model Stripe uses is a nightmare for reconciliation at any sort of scale. This isn't to say I've abandoned Stripe entirely -- there are some cases where it makes sense, when you're actually using some of the advanced features and API, not just a straightforward card charge. I just completed a Stripe Connect integration that handles millions a month for several clients... but even there you run into half baked/stapled on feelings when you try to produce a full featured process that works at scale. For example, there's no straightforward way to provide a batch report for a Stripe Connect client -- the charge ID's don't match up with the platform account, and the only way to fully map which charges/refunds/chargebacks are in a given deposit for the client account is to link them up by amount and date/time....

yxhuvud 9y ago

This looks great, but I also see a lot of functionality being restricted to USA. That would be quite limiting for us as we are based in Europe and have the vast majority of our customers there. :(

mxpxrocks10 9y ago

I'm looking very forward to using it. Thanks!!