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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.
by 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 agoA '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 agoGoing 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 agoStripe 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!