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I'm very happy with Stripe and for their success, but I plan on switching all my payments to go through PayPal again. I did some math and PayPal offers a better

I'm very happy with Stripe and for their success, but I plan on switching all my payments to go through PayPal again. I did some math and PayPal offers a better deal for Canadian businesses after Stripe bumps me off of their grandfathered conversion fees in a couple months. I love the slick interface, but it's simply not worth the thousands per year I'll be saving with the switch. For me the main selling point for any payment processor is the minimization of fees. Sure, the API's are nice, but I already use a payment gateway for that. I'm a few clicks away from saving thousands. Am I missing anything?

pm 7y ago
If you're doing enough business they'll usually cut your fees if you ask (according to a friend who did just that).
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  Enough business is a lot of business though, I just emailed them about this and they said to even talk to the department that considers you, you need 3 straight months of $100k+ MRR.
nickjj 7y ago
Are you planning to go through PayPal directly or Braintree? One thing I notice is, I get much less fraudulent payments through PayPal, and when I do get them it's handled automatically (and most of the time they end up being not fraud because PayPal investigated it and released the funds). 100% hands free, $0 in fees. With Stripe, not only do I get more fraudulent payments but you need to pay $15 as a dispute fee through Stripe when you lose the case and pretty much all fraud causes through Stripe will be lost (because it's actual fraud). It also takes like 20 minutes to fill out the forms, create fax-compatible sized screenshots and a lot of other boilerplate information if you plan to contest the dispute. It's a shame Stripe doesn't offer the Radar service (helps detect and prevent fraud) with custom rules as part of their normal service. You can only get it if you pay insurance fees, which are added fees on top of the normal amount. Combine that with the new Stripe SCA compatible APIs and sketchy docs and yeah I'm in the same boat as you. Stripe is no longer an immediate "of course I'm going to use Stripe" decision. Braintree is looking pretty good at this point.
- tbrock 7y ago
  Stripe should be able to add those features, their team is really strong.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    It’s a business decision, not a talent issue.
- csdreamer7 7y ago
  Would you mind sharing your percentage of fraud with the two services? (I assume you are using Braintree.) Honestly, you are the first person to make a good case on using PayPal over Stripe. Especially with the arbitrary horror stories I hear about PayPal all the time. > It's a shame Stripe doesn't offer the Radar service (helps detect and prevent fraud) with custom rules as part of their normal service. You can only get it if you pay insurance fees, which are added fees on top of the normal amount. I agree. This should be standard. > Combine that with the new Stripe SCA compatible APIs and sketchy docs Would you please describe what is sketchy? Their docs seem pretty good... but I am now just hearing about SCA. https://stripe.com/guides/strong-customer-authentication https://stripe.com/guides/strong-customer-authentication
  - nickjj 7y ago
    I use Stripe and PayPal currently but on the next platform I'm currently building I'm strongly (and very seriously) considering Braintree. With PayPal, the fraud experience has been nothing short of amazing. Out of many many thousands of transactions, I've only had about 3 or 4 transactions get flagged as high risk by PayPal. What this means is PayPal will hold the funds, review the transaction and then either give you the funds if it's legit or do something else if it's not legit. I've had 0 cases on PayPal where fraud / disputes actually took place. Of those 3-4 transactions, they were all released. None of this required any intervention by me. I just got notified by email from PayPal when a high risk transaction occurred. 100% of the funds were put back into my account a few days later (short of the normal 2.9% + 30c fees). On Stripe, I've also had many many thousands of transactions. I've had a number of fraud transactions in the process which ended up as disputes. Stripe sends out an email letting you know, but then it's now on you to decide if you want to contest the dispute. This dispute typically happens when someone who got their credit card stolen sees an unknown charge in their records. Now you need to fill out like 8 form fields and supply screenshots and server logs of proof that someone was accessing the material they've stolen (I sell digital courses so there's no physical item). The screenshots need to be sized perfectly to be displayed in portrait mode on a sheet of paper that gets faxed over to the person reviewing it from the bank, otherwise it'll be unreadable from their perspective and you'll auto-lose the case. Stripe doesn't let you see a real preview of these screenshots and they even alter the uploaded image size in your preview which makes it hard to preview what it will look like from the reviewer's POV even though that's the only thing that matters. After doing that, it takes about 2-3 months to get a resolution. You get charged a $15 bank dispute fee (on top of the full amount of the product of course) which is non-refundable unless you happen to win the dispute, but if someone got their card stolen then you're not going to win the case. You also don't get any information from Stripe about the review, other than you won or lost. Stripe says it's because banks don't give them any info beyond that. Fine, that's ok, but yeah the overall experience is very very bad. Then on top of that, Stripe sells a Radar service that you need to pay extra on top of for each transaction to get better tools to help prevent fraud before it takes place. They choose not to give it to everyone because I guess they profit from dispute fees and fraudulent transactions. The kick in the teeth is that the data Stripe uses to train their Radar / anti-fraud service is data provided by business owners who have trusted Stripe with their business. Now they are selling that data back to us in the form of insurance fees on each transaction (the Radar service you need to pay for). I haven't personally used Braintree yet but from what I read in their docs, you get that type of anti-fraud service baked into the normal 2.9% + 30c (don't quote me on that, but it very much reads that way on their site). Whatever PayPal is doing (and in turn Braintree since it's a PayPal service), they're doing a fantastic job at combating fraud and disputes, especially compared to Stripe. > Would you please describe what is sketchy? Their docs seem pretty good... but I am now just hearing about SCA. Their docs are typically good, but the SCA / Payment Intents docs are not really at the same standards as the rest of their documentation yet. Come back in a few weeks when you've implemented it. What's interesting is I run a podcast about running web apps in production and I've had a bunch of folks come on the show who use Stripe to accept payments. All of them have said the experience with implementing SCA with Stripe was pretty rough. These are seasoned developers running successful platforms too. They've all done it in the last couple of months as well.
tnorthcutt 7y ago
Watch out for PayPal freezing funds at their discretion, for long periods of time. https://www.google.com/search?q=paypal+freeze+funds&oq=paypal+freeze+funds https://www.google.com/search?q=paypal+freeze+funds&oq=paypa...
3pt14159 7y ago
I've worked for FreshBooks and three other invoicing or payment related companies, and I have lots of friends that work at Shopify or run online stores. Billing through PayPal is playing with fire. They can and do freeze accounts and it can take months to get the issue resolved. It will probably be fine, of course, but I've seen it happen and personally, if I were in a high margin business, I'd stick to Stripe. Especially if you run a company where other people make money on your platform like an Etsy or similar.
- moneywoes 7y ago
  What about Braintree?
  - 3pt14159 7y ago
    No experience or knowledge to share there, but they're owned by PayPal, so I'd ask around to see if they're any different.
- classics2 7y ago
  PayPal is fine until it isn’t. They ban hammer people “for life” and tell them it cannot be appealed for cryptic and often inscrutable reasons they won’t elaborate on or even bother to speak to you about.
  - GarrisonPrime 7y ago
    I suspect they don’t talk about it or consider appeals at all, because they feel they have no need to bother with any sort of customer service. They are king of the hill, and always have millions of more users eager to sign up. There seems to be little reason for them to bother resolving any issues. Much easier for them to just ban the user and ignore them.
nailer 7y ago
If you do anything through PayPal do not keep any funds in your PayPal account. The company is well known for seizing funds in their customers account with no recourse.
- carapace 7y ago
  PayPal owes me $200. I got a letter from the state comptroller saying that paypal had been trying to reach me and my money was about to revert to the state and call this number to get it. So I called the number, and they ask me, "Do you want it in a check or in your paypal account?" Well that account has been frozen for years so I say, "Send me the check." That was a few years ago now and I'm still waiting. Fuck PayPal.
  - herman_toothrot 7y ago
    Did you try to recover the money through the state? Most states have a site through comptroller/treasury/etc. where you can start a claim process. (Assuming that paypal reported the uncollected money correctly.)
    - carapace 7y ago
      No. My consulting rate starts at $200 per hour so it's just not worth it. THX-1138, eh? I talk shit about it (and will continue to do so until the Sun grows cold or PayPal goes under, whichever comes first) because it's the only way to get them back for robbing me. The actual $200 mean almost nothing to them either, so I just rub my muddy boots on their couch from time to time. "Fuck yo' couch Eddie Murphy" (head's up the n-word is in there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJkhSUSnek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJkhSUSnek )
huhtenberg 7y ago
Stripe not allowing to withdraw onto USD accounts not located in the US is an absolutely MASSIVE gripe with the service. We operate internally in USD - we sell in USD, we pay in USD, so we end up being shafted with not one, but two pointless FX conversions. And that's without going into minor stuff like the headaches with refunds done at rates, extra accounting overheads, etc.
- adamwathan 7y ago
  Is this country-specific perhaps? I'm in Canada and it's no problem for me to withdraw USD to a Canadian-based USD account.
  - sleepyhead 7y ago
    Stripe only support USD accounts in USA and Canada.
    - debian3 7y ago
      Which is already better than Paypal. They don’t support USD account in Canada. That’s the main reason I’m using Stripe now. But seems like Braintree support USD account in Canada. Anyone can confirm?
  - huhtenberg 7y ago
    It's the other way around. Canada is the only exception here.
- GeneralTspoon 7y ago
  Paypal also have some crappy rules about adding a USD account to a company not registered in the US. And they're currency conversion fees are obscene if you want to withdraw USD to EUR (on the order of like ~4% iirc)
- stripeUSD 7y ago
  This x100. We’re based in the UK but most of our customers are in the US so we bill in USD. The most annoying thing is that US customers pay additional fees because we’re based in the UK, and our UK customers pay extra fees because we’re billing in dollars. Stripe customer support very responsive, but they’ve told us the only way to fix it is to open a bank account in the US - which would mean we pay tax in the UK and US. We tried opening a USD bank account in the UK, but Stripe told us after we’d done it that they couldn’t send money to it. Maddening problem with an otherwise brilliant service.
caleb1666 7y ago
No, you're not. I was very happy with Stripe for a few years. As my business grew and I looked at where I could cut costs, I asked around and Braintree's model was going to save me 1% per transaction. At my volume that was going to add up to thousands of dollars in savings a month over Stripe. I went back to Stripe to see if they'd be willing to match Braintree's pricing, because I was happy with them over the years and it would have made things much easier to not have to switch to a new payment processor. But they only offered about 75% of the savings so I switched anyway. Turns out the APIs are roughly the same anyway for the basic functionality that I need, I'm not an advanced user. I estimate the switch has already saved me about $75k.
- graeme 7y ago
  This is at larger volumes right? Base level of both seems to be 2.9% + 30 cents
  - caleb1666 7y ago
    Yes
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Right up to when your account gets frozen PayPal looks fantastic.
  - caleb1666 7y ago
    I use Braintree, money gets transferred directly to my bank, skips Paypal, but yea I agree with you I would NEVER have my income in a Paypal account for even 1 second.
swat535 7y ago
How are you saving fees on paypal ? Looking at https://www.paypal.com/ca/for-you/fees https://www.paypal.com/ca/for-you/fees It looks like the fees are exactly the same as Stripe, what am I missing ? Can you elaborate ? Are you a charitable organization?
- fbelzile 7y ago
  A majority of my sales are from US customers buying in USD. With PayPal, fees are: 3.7% + $0.30 USD With Stripe, fees are: 2.9% + $0.30 CAD + 0.6% (international card charge) + 2.0% (currency conversion fee)
  - govind-stripe 7y ago
    To add to Ken's comment, you can add a USD bank account (in addition to your CAD account) in your dashboard settings and your USD transactions will settle into USD without any conversion fees. If you click on 'Add bank account' in the payouts tab [0], there's an option to add a USD account. CAD transactions will automatically settle in the CAD account associated with Stripe. USD transactions will automatically settle in your USD account associated with Stripe. [0]https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/payouts https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/payouts Source: I work at Stripe
  - kenpratt 7y ago
    If you're a Canadian merchant, you can add a USD bank account to avoid the 2% currency conversion fee. This bank account can either be with a Canadian bank, or a US bank. Source: I work at Stripe, but in addition to that, previously started a Canadian company using Stripe, and like you did mostly payments to US customers in USD. I had deposits directly into both a USD bank account held at a Canadian bank as well as a USD bank account held at a US bank, and did not pay the 2% conversion fee. I actually never received CAD directly at all. More details: https://stripe.com/docs/payouts https://stripe.com/docs/payouts But yes, other than certain exceptions such as this one, getting payouts in non-local currencies on Stripe is limited, and we're working on improving that. (edit: This assumes you have expenses in USD, or a cheap way to convert USD to CAD, to avoid a ~2% fee from your bank on the conversion. Personally I've used Interactive Brokers which charges 0.002% for USD/CAD conversions.)
kerkeslager 7y ago
From the user's perspective: A few (maybe 5 or 6?) years back I suddenly stopped being able to add or withdraw money through PayPal, with a completely vague description. Multiple hours on support documents and attempting to contact support (which is a problem in itself) and the problem was not resolved. I wasn't that invested in buying what I was trying to buy, so I eventually gave up. I've tried again a few times over the years, with no success. When I see PayPal on a site nowadays and either no other options or I don't trust them to process the card themselves, I just leave. If this is the sort of effect that could harm your business it may be worth it to pay for a payment processor that works for all your users. I also have a $0.49 balance in PayPal which I can't withdraw. I don't care, but if it were a larger amount I probably would.

pm 7y ago

If you're doing enough business they'll usually cut your fees if you ask (according to a friend who did just that).

chipperyman573 7y ago
Enough business is a lot of business though, I just emailed them about this and they said to even talk to the department that considers you, you need 3 straight months of $100k+ MRR.

nickjj 7y ago

Are you planning to go through PayPal directly or Braintree? One thing I notice is, I get much less fraudulent payments through PayPal, and when I do get them it's handled automatically (and most of the time they end up being not fraud because PayPal investigated it and released the funds). 100% hands free, $0 in fees. With Stripe, not only do I get more fraudulent payments but you need to pay $15 as a dispute fee through Stripe when you lose the case and pretty much all fraud causes through Stripe will be lost (because it's actual fraud). It also takes like 20 minutes to fill out the forms, create fax-compatible sized screenshots and a lot of other boilerplate information if you plan to contest the dispute. It's a shame Stripe doesn't offer the Radar service (helps detect and prevent fraud) with custom rules as part of their normal service. You can only get it if you pay insurance fees, which are added fees on top of the normal amount. Combine that with the new Stripe SCA compatible APIs and sketchy docs and yeah I'm in the same boat as you. Stripe is no longer an immediate "of course I'm going to use Stripe" decision. Braintree is looking pretty good at this point.

tbrock 7y ago
Stripe should be able to add those features, their team is really strong.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  It’s a business decision, not a talent issue.
csdreamer7 7y ago
Would you mind sharing your percentage of fraud with the two services? (I assume you are using Braintree.) Honestly, you are the first person to make a good case on using PayPal over Stripe. Especially with the arbitrary horror stories I hear about PayPal all the time. > It's a shame Stripe doesn't offer the Radar service (helps detect and prevent fraud) with custom rules as part of their normal service. You can only get it if you pay insurance fees, which are added fees on top of the normal amount. I agree. This should be standard. > Combine that with the new Stripe SCA compatible APIs and sketchy docs Would you please describe what is sketchy? Their docs seem pretty good... but I am now just hearing about SCA. https://stripe.com/guides/strong-customer-authentication https://stripe.com/guides/strong-customer-authentication
- nickjj 7y ago
  I use Stripe and PayPal currently but on the next platform I'm currently building I'm strongly (and very seriously) considering Braintree. With PayPal, the fraud experience has been nothing short of amazing. Out of many many thousands of transactions, I've only had about 3 or 4 transactions get flagged as high risk by PayPal. What this means is PayPal will hold the funds, review the transaction and then either give you the funds if it's legit or do something else if it's not legit. I've had 0 cases on PayPal where fraud / disputes actually took place. Of those 3-4 transactions, they were all released. None of this required any intervention by me. I just got notified by email from PayPal when a high risk transaction occurred. 100% of the funds were put back into my account a few days later (short of the normal 2.9% + 30c fees). On Stripe, I've also had many many thousands of transactions. I've had a number of fraud transactions in the process which ended up as disputes. Stripe sends out an email letting you know, but then it's now on you to decide if you want to contest the dispute. This dispute typically happens when someone who got their credit card stolen sees an unknown charge in their records. Now you need to fill out like 8 form fields and supply screenshots and server logs of proof that someone was accessing the material they've stolen (I sell digital courses so there's no physical item). The screenshots need to be sized perfectly to be displayed in portrait mode on a sheet of paper that gets faxed over to the person reviewing it from the bank, otherwise it'll be unreadable from their perspective and you'll auto-lose the case. Stripe doesn't let you see a real preview of these screenshots and they even alter the uploaded image size in your preview which makes it hard to preview what it will look like from the reviewer's POV even though that's the only thing that matters. After doing that, it takes about 2-3 months to get a resolution. You get charged a $15 bank dispute fee (on top of the full amount of the product of course) which is non-refundable unless you happen to win the dispute, but if someone got their card stolen then you're not going to win the case. You also don't get any information from Stripe about the review, other than you won or lost. Stripe says it's because banks don't give them any info beyond that. Fine, that's ok, but yeah the overall experience is very very bad. Then on top of that, Stripe sells a Radar service that you need to pay extra on top of for each transaction to get better tools to help prevent fraud before it takes place. They choose not to give it to everyone because I guess they profit from dispute fees and fraudulent transactions. The kick in the teeth is that the data Stripe uses to train their Radar / anti-fraud service is data provided by business owners who have trusted Stripe with their business. Now they are selling that data back to us in the form of insurance fees on each transaction (the Radar service you need to pay for). I haven't personally used Braintree yet but from what I read in their docs, you get that type of anti-fraud service baked into the normal 2.9% + 30c (don't quote me on that, but it very much reads that way on their site). Whatever PayPal is doing (and in turn Braintree since it's a PayPal service), they're doing a fantastic job at combating fraud and disputes, especially compared to Stripe. > Would you please describe what is sketchy? Their docs seem pretty good... but I am now just hearing about SCA. Their docs are typically good, but the SCA / Payment Intents docs are not really at the same standards as the rest of their documentation yet. Come back in a few weeks when you've implemented it. What's interesting is I run a podcast about running web apps in production and I've had a bunch of folks come on the show who use Stripe to accept payments. All of them have said the experience with implementing SCA with Stripe was pretty rough. These are seasoned developers running successful platforms too. They've all done it in the last couple of months as well.

tnorthcutt 7y ago

Watch out for PayPal freezing funds at their discretion, for long periods of time. https://www.google.com/search?q=paypal+freeze+funds&oq=paypal+freeze+funds https://www.google.com/search?q=paypal+freeze+funds&oq=paypa...

3pt14159 7y ago

I've worked for FreshBooks and three other invoicing or payment related companies, and I have lots of friends that work at Shopify or run online stores. Billing through PayPal is playing with fire. They can and do freeze accounts and it can take months to get the issue resolved. It will probably be fine, of course, but I've seen it happen and personally, if I were in a high margin business, I'd stick to Stripe. Especially if you run a company where other people make money on your platform like an Etsy or similar.

moneywoes 7y ago
What about Braintree?
- 3pt14159 7y ago
  No experience or knowledge to share there, but they're owned by PayPal, so I'd ask around to see if they're any different.
classics2 7y ago
PayPal is fine until it isn’t. They ban hammer people “for life” and tell them it cannot be appealed for cryptic and often inscrutable reasons they won’t elaborate on or even bother to speak to you about.
- GarrisonPrime 7y ago
  I suspect they don’t talk about it or consider appeals at all, because they feel they have no need to bother with any sort of customer service. They are king of the hill, and always have millions of more users eager to sign up. There seems to be little reason for them to bother resolving any issues. Much easier for them to just ban the user and ignore them.

nailer 7y ago

If you do anything through PayPal do not keep any funds in your PayPal account. The company is well known for seizing funds in their customers account with no recourse.

carapace 7y ago
PayPal owes me $200. I got a letter from the state comptroller saying that paypal had been trying to reach me and my money was about to revert to the state and call this number to get it. So I called the number, and they ask me, "Do you want it in a check or in your paypal account?" Well that account has been frozen for years so I say, "Send me the check." That was a few years ago now and I'm still waiting. Fuck PayPal.
- herman_toothrot 7y ago
  Did you try to recover the money through the state? Most states have a site through comptroller/treasury/etc. where you can start a claim process. (Assuming that paypal reported the uncollected money correctly.)
  - carapace 7y ago
    No. My consulting rate starts at $200 per hour so it's just not worth it. THX-1138, eh? I talk shit about it (and will continue to do so until the Sun grows cold or PayPal goes under, whichever comes first) because it's the only way to get them back for robbing me. The actual $200 mean almost nothing to them either, so I just rub my muddy boots on their couch from time to time. "Fuck yo' couch Eddie Murphy" (head's up the n-word is in there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJkhSUSnek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJkhSUSnek )

huhtenberg 7y ago

Stripe not allowing to withdraw onto USD accounts not located in the US is an absolutely MASSIVE gripe with the service. We operate internally in USD - we sell in USD, we pay in USD, so we end up being shafted with not one, but two pointless FX conversions. And that's without going into minor stuff like the headaches with refunds done at rates, extra accounting overheads, etc.

adamwathan 7y ago
Is this country-specific perhaps? I'm in Canada and it's no problem for me to withdraw USD to a Canadian-based USD account.
- sleepyhead 7y ago
  Stripe only support USD accounts in USA and Canada.
  - debian3 7y ago
    Which is already better than Paypal. They don’t support USD account in Canada. That’s the main reason I’m using Stripe now. But seems like Braintree support USD account in Canada. Anyone can confirm?
- huhtenberg 7y ago
  It's the other way around. Canada is the only exception here.
GeneralTspoon 7y ago
Paypal also have some crappy rules about adding a USD account to a company not registered in the US. And they're currency conversion fees are obscene if you want to withdraw USD to EUR (on the order of like ~4% iirc)
stripeUSD 7y ago
This x100. We’re based in the UK but most of our customers are in the US so we bill in USD. The most annoying thing is that US customers pay additional fees because we’re based in the UK, and our UK customers pay extra fees because we’re billing in dollars. Stripe customer support very responsive, but they’ve told us the only way to fix it is to open a bank account in the US - which would mean we pay tax in the UK and US. We tried opening a USD bank account in the UK, but Stripe told us after we’d done it that they couldn’t send money to it. Maddening problem with an otherwise brilliant service.

caleb1666 7y ago

No, you're not. I was very happy with Stripe for a few years. As my business grew and I looked at where I could cut costs, I asked around and Braintree's model was going to save me 1% per transaction. At my volume that was going to add up to thousands of dollars in savings a month over Stripe. I went back to Stripe to see if they'd be willing to match Braintree's pricing, because I was happy with them over the years and it would have made things much easier to not have to switch to a new payment processor. But they only offered about 75% of the savings so I switched anyway. Turns out the APIs are roughly the same anyway for the basic functionality that I need, I'm not an advanced user. I estimate the switch has already saved me about $75k.

graeme 7y ago
This is at larger volumes right? Base level of both seems to be 2.9% + 30 cents
- caleb1666 7y ago
  Yes
jacquesm 7y ago
Right up to when your account gets frozen PayPal looks fantastic.
- caleb1666 7y ago
  I use Braintree, money gets transferred directly to my bank, skips Paypal, but yea I agree with you I would NEVER have my income in a Paypal account for even 1 second.

swat535 7y ago

How are you saving fees on paypal ? Looking at https://www.paypal.com/ca/for-you/fees https://www.paypal.com/ca/for-you/fees It looks like the fees are exactly the same as Stripe, what am I missing ? Can you elaborate ? Are you a charitable organization?

fbelzile 7y ago
A majority of my sales are from US customers buying in USD. With PayPal, fees are: 3.7% + $0.30 USD With Stripe, fees are: 2.9% + $0.30 CAD + 0.6% (international card charge) + 2.0% (currency conversion fee)
- govind-stripe 7y ago
  To add to Ken's comment, you can add a USD bank account (in addition to your CAD account) in your dashboard settings and your USD transactions will settle into USD without any conversion fees. If you click on 'Add bank account' in the payouts tab [0], there's an option to add a USD account. CAD transactions will automatically settle in the CAD account associated with Stripe. USD transactions will automatically settle in your USD account associated with Stripe. [0]https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/payouts https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/payouts Source: I work at Stripe
- kenpratt 7y ago
  If you're a Canadian merchant, you can add a USD bank account to avoid the 2% currency conversion fee. This bank account can either be with a Canadian bank, or a US bank. Source: I work at Stripe, but in addition to that, previously started a Canadian company using Stripe, and like you did mostly payments to US customers in USD. I had deposits directly into both a USD bank account held at a Canadian bank as well as a USD bank account held at a US bank, and did not pay the 2% conversion fee. I actually never received CAD directly at all. More details: https://stripe.com/docs/payouts https://stripe.com/docs/payouts But yes, other than certain exceptions such as this one, getting payouts in non-local currencies on Stripe is limited, and we're working on improving that. (edit: This assumes you have expenses in USD, or a cheap way to convert USD to CAD, to avoid a ~2% fee from your bank on the conversion. Personally I've used Interactive Brokers which charges 0.002% for USD/CAD conversions.)

kerkeslager 7y ago

From the user's perspective: A few (maybe 5 or 6?) years back I suddenly stopped being able to add or withdraw money through PayPal, with a completely vague description. Multiple hours on support documents and attempting to contact support (which is a problem in itself) and the problem was not resolved. I wasn't that invested in buying what I was trying to buy, so I eventually gave up. I've tried again a few times over the years, with no success. When I see PayPal on a site nowadays and either no other options or I don't trust them to process the card themselves, I just leave. If this is the sort of effect that could harm your business it may be worth it to pay for a payment processor that works for all your users. I also have a $0.49 balance in PayPal which I can't withdraw. I don't care, but if it were a larger amount I probably would.