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Anytime someone uses the term 'democratizes such and such' in the context of Valley startup I have to chuckle. But honestly - isn't Stripe just a really clean

Anytime someone uses the term 'democratizes such and such' in the context of Valley startup I have to chuckle. But honestly - isn't Stripe just a really clean and useful set of API's for transactions? I mean, a 'developer first' mentality towards payment systems? All the power to them, I've used them and like them ... But can anyone tell me why this is revolutionary/democratizing?

dasil003 8y ago
Because you used to have to get a merchant account from a bank, and that was a nightmare for inexperienced individuals with no business credentials.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  A 'merchant account' can be had by anyone relatively quickly at almost any bank. It would only be a hurdle for the tiniest of 1-2 person operations and a minor one at that. I think Stripe did a good job, but I don't think it's anything but a better-mousetrap here, and not one that's going to change anything fundamentally, architecturally etc. AirBnB, Uber, Facebook, Twitter - for better or worse they really changed things. Even Dropbox lead a new kind of 'persona cloud storage' movement, which is a change. Stripe ... not so much.
  - wolco 8y ago
    Going to a bank? That mean't you had to be all in (business registered) and pay high fees. Stripe did change the way smaller companies did business. But Paypal allowed anyone to accept payments.
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      "That mean't you had to be all in" if your business is not registered, you're not a business. Seriously, that's a small hurdle. I'll bet the long tail of unregistered business revenue from Stripe is very small, and likely overshadowed by just a few large enterprise accounts.
- GordonS 8y ago
  Stripe were not the first to do away with merchant accounts. Before Stripe existed, I was with FastSpring - no merchant account required. And FastSpring wasn't the only option either. What Stripe did do was offer lower fees and a great API, and I did switch to them and have never regretted it - but, democritising digital payments? Pfft!
gmu3 8y ago
In my experience it's the opposite of democratizing. The company has been around for 8 years, and it was only 3 months ago they added phone support.
hakfoo 8y ago
I will say that Stripe Connect was a game-changing product for some types of applications. A firm I worked with did booking for sports camps. The tech was positive-- give the coaches neat rosters and record keeping, and let parents easily pay the camp fees with a credit card. The original architecture was to let the individual programs plug in their preferred merchant processing account; assuming Authorize.net or the like by default, and they'd just add their API key during the onboarding process. We'd bill them our fees once a month and it would slot into their business accounting neatly. Wrong. These guys weren't running grown-up businesses with documentation and full-scale merchant accounts. They were basically half a step above collecting Mrs. Crampknicker collecting $10 bills for field trip deposits from fourth graders. So it ended up that the booking site acted as the merchant, and treated the coaches as fulfillment providers. We'd end up having to cut them checks once a week for the net after our fees. With Stripe Connect, we had them click a link in their user control panel, walk through a three-screen enrollment form on the Stripe side, and then they were getting a direct deposit as soon as payment cleared, without paper or manual intervention. Yeah, you could pull together a bunch of seperate services before to get the same results, but Stripe Connect put it within the reach of a team with 1 1/2 developers.

dasil003 8y ago

Because you used to have to get a merchant account from a bank, and that was a nightmare for inexperienced individuals with no business credentials.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
A 'merchant account' can be had by anyone relatively quickly at almost any bank. It would only be a hurdle for the tiniest of 1-2 person operations and a minor one at that. I think Stripe did a good job, but I don't think it's anything but a better-mousetrap here, and not one that's going to change anything fundamentally, architecturally etc. AirBnB, Uber, Facebook, Twitter - for better or worse they really changed things. Even Dropbox lead a new kind of 'persona cloud storage' movement, which is a change. Stripe ... not so much.
- wolco 8y ago
  Going to a bank? That mean't you had to be all in (business registered) and pay high fees. Stripe did change the way smaller companies did business. But Paypal allowed anyone to accept payments.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    "That mean't you had to be all in" if your business is not registered, you're not a business. Seriously, that's a small hurdle. I'll bet the long tail of unregistered business revenue from Stripe is very small, and likely overshadowed by just a few large enterprise accounts.
GordonS 8y ago
Stripe were not the first to do away with merchant accounts. Before Stripe existed, I was with FastSpring - no merchant account required. And FastSpring wasn't the only option either. What Stripe did do was offer lower fees and a great API, and I did switch to them and have never regretted it - but, democritising digital payments? Pfft!

gmu3 8y ago

In my experience it's the opposite of democratizing. The company has been around for 8 years, and it was only 3 months ago they added phone support.

hakfoo 8y ago

I will say that Stripe Connect was a game-changing product for some types of applications. A firm I worked with did booking for sports camps. The tech was positive-- give the coaches neat rosters and record keeping, and let parents easily pay the camp fees with a credit card. The original architecture was to let the individual programs plug in their preferred merchant processing account; assuming Authorize.net or the like by default, and they'd just add their API key during the onboarding process. We'd bill them our fees once a month and it would slot into their business accounting neatly. Wrong. These guys weren't running grown-up businesses with documentation and full-scale merchant accounts. They were basically half a step above collecting Mrs. Crampknicker collecting $10 bills for field trip deposits from fourth graders. So it ended up that the booking site acted as the merchant, and treated the coaches as fulfillment providers. We'd end up having to cut them checks once a week for the net after our fees. With Stripe Connect, we had them click a link in their user control panel, walk through a three-screen enrollment form on the Stripe side, and then they were getting a direct deposit as soon as payment cleared, without paper or manual intervention. Yeah, you could pull together a bunch of seperate services before to get the same results, but Stripe Connect put it within the reach of a team with 1 1/2 developers.