9 ms·

We (Streak yc s11) signed up for Stripe way back in the day and have just been paying their standard payment processing fees for years. We haven't upgraded our

We (Streak yc s11) signed up for Stripe way back in the day and have just been paying their standard payment processing fees for years. We haven't upgraded our API version or used any of their new billing features or anything like that. Basically we get the same value from Stripe we did from the day we integrated. I thought our pricing was going to be grandfathered but this change will cost us tens of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, we're kind of hostage to it. Anyone else at scale and have an old integration? How are you handling the fee increase?

klinskyc 6y ago
If you're doing significant volume, which I assume Streak does, you can negotiate significant volume discounts. You have been leaving a ton of money on the table if you have not done that.
- enahs-sf 6y ago
  Could you define "significant volume" a bit more specifically? Wondering if I too, have been leaving a ton of money on the table. What is the approximate scale that this makes sense at?
  - klinskyc 6y ago
    This link says 80k/month, which matches our experience -> https://www.fool.com/the-blueprint/stripe-payments-review/ https://www.fool.com/the-blueprint/stripe-payments-review/
- danpalmer 6y ago
  Huge +1 to this. Everything about Stripe pricing is negotiable. I'd recommend going in to the discussion with a quote from another provider.
- Alupis 6y ago
  Maybe - they seemed really not interested in negotiating much at all and I got the impression they feel that their customers should be lucky enough to be allowed to use Stripe as a processor. My company went through negotiations with Stripe earlier this year. We were more than 1.5% + $0.10 away from our current processor, and they wouldn't budge to even match our existing rates. They kept saying they are a better value, and offer more things for the price - except most of the "value-adds" we didn't care about (their only interesting things was the Stripe Checkout with Fraud detection - which requires you to use their hosted checkout page... which is a complete non-starter for a serious eCommerce operation). Perhaps not a good fit - but paying a ton more per year in CC processing fees just because Stripe uses "AI!!!!" wasn't something we could swallow.
  - onepointsixC 6y ago
    Did you end up staying with your current processor or swiping to Stripe?
    - Alupis 6y ago
      We stayed put actually. At the end of the day, you need a processor that charges low fees, provides easy tools to handle chargebacks and refunds, provides tools to automate sweeping balances nightly, and doesn't go down often. People don't switch processors often, so building out an integration once every 10 years isn't a big deal if you design your integration correctly. That, and I assure you, your customers don't give a darn about which processor you use.
  - larrik 6y ago
    > Stripe Checkout with Fraud detection - which requires you to use their hosted checkout page Does it? In my experience you can just use their Hosted Fields which are actually really great.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      That's not how they pitched it to us - and I asked for clarification multiple times because of how absurd the proposal was for a well established eCommerce site. Sending customers off-domain for a payment is not something we were willing to do for a normal credit card checkout flow. Even "hosted fields" is absurd (and by that I assume you mean an iFrame you embed), and would require redesigning significant portions of the checkout process. That, coupled with their refusal to even match our existing rates, was really off-putting. The sales people made little effort to understand our business and pain points - they just wanted to talk about how great Stripe is and all the AI stuff they do.
      - __float 6y ago
        You don't have to use "hosted fields", but it does mean you have significantly increased requirements regarding PCI compliance (SAQ D vs the much simpler SAQ A, for example).
lwigo 6y ago
Move to another solution? I have no idea on pricing but maybe NMI, Braintree, etc. Also play hardball with the account manager if you're comfortable with that.
grumple 6y ago
Why are you hostage to it? How much dev time would switching to a different transaction processor take? This seems like it should be a very competitive space.
- lukevdp 6y ago
  It’s not just dev time, that would be easy. It’s getting every customer to re-enter their credit card details which won’t happen without a significant uptick in arrears, and depending on the type of customer, churn.
  - loceng 6y ago
    Indeed, there needs to be laws for data portability to allow a true free market mechanism so then if a company isn't providing reasonable value for their fees, people will be mobile and can shift away without friction; Facebook has survived because lack of adequate data and network portability.
  - sigwinch28 6y ago
    Not anticipating this scenario is a collective failing of everyone in the business who deals with third party integrations.
  - byteofbits 6y ago
    Stripe supports exporting PCI data like credit card details to other PCI Level 1[1] providers such as Recurly and Braintree. Data portability is a solved problem in this space - so there isn't a material risk of churn due to a migration like this. We recently went through the process and it was very easy. [1] - https://stripe.com/docs/security/data-migrations/exports https://stripe.com/docs/security/data-migrations/exports
    - jlokier 6y ago
      > Data portability is a solved problem in this space - so there isn't a material risk of churn due to a migration like this. Here's my anecdote of a different situation but with some similarities, where we couldn't get the data portability we wanted. A few years ago I asked our Direct Debit provider if we could migrate customer subscriptions from our old business entity to our newly incorporated company version of the exact same business. The old business entity was to be wound up as a complete transfer to the new one, the trading name was identical (transferred along with trademarks), and we were happy to keep the same DD provider. The answer we got was no, each customer would have to enter their bank details and agree to the same terms again. From the customer's point of view, they probably wouldn't even notice it was a different business, because in a real sense it wasn't. We decided this would lead to significant churn in customer subscriptions, and we couldn't afford it. It would be cheaper to maintain and administer the old business entity, for no business purpose whatsoever, just the sole purpose of continuing to receive the DD subscriptions, and pay them immediately in full to the new business entity.
epa 6y ago
Email your rep and tell them you want to move to interchange plus pricing.
- globile 6y ago
  Make sure you run the numbers first. If you have a lot of international traffic, you may end up paying more.
TAForObvReasons 6y ago
Earlier this year, they made other changes for long-term customers: - increased fees for non-US payments (3.9% + 30 cents) - did not refund fees when you refund customers If there was a compelling alternative that isn't PayPal we'd jump in a heartbeat
- loceng 6y ago
  I have to believe this is Stripe leadership pumping up the revenues/profits to look peachy for their IPO, so they can all get a considerable exit while raising a war chest - meanwhile competitors will come along and try to take market share while Stripe can spend more on acquisitions and feature development for the same price. I think this play as part of the VC industrial complex leaves them more vulnerable than is obvious - but leadership won't ultimately care because they're set for generations.
  - jm20 6y ago
    If the Stripe leadership wanted to exit and be set for generations they could’ve done it years ago. I agree it could be a revenue boost to prepare for IPO but this isn’t some personal greed thing
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Agree, it's collective greed
    - marcinzm 6y ago
      Personal greed doesn't magically end just because you want $5 billion instead of $1 billion. Greed is greed even if the only point of it is having a larger number in your bank account or higher social standing from it.
globile 6y ago
Same thing has happened for Radar for example. We set up our whole infrastructure with their beta 3DS and Radar products, and then one day (a few months back), it is $ 0.07 per txn in Radar as well as no returned fees on refunds. Stuck with nowhere to go. Not against improving margins, but customers that have walked hand in hand with Stripe for so long and seen them thru their early growing pains should definitely be grandfathered. Grandfathering would be the cool thing to do.
- sigwinch28 6y ago
  Why should they be grandfathered?
  - markdown 6y ago
    Because it > would be the cool thing to do.
  - NeutronStar 6y ago
    Did you even read the comment?
  - globile 6y ago
    Oh yes! To Grandfather or not to Grandfather! That dilemma! I understand they are still using the same functionality they had at signup time, and are still on the same API version, so not taking advantage of new direct functionality. Yes, of course there is a bunch of indirect functionality or magic behind the scenes, but from a company lifetime perspective, when you enter into an agreement with a service provider, you would expect a relatively constant delivery of services, at the agreed prices, especially if your needs have not changed. There are many companies that upon adding new functionality or services, decide to grandfather. New direct functionality comes at new prices, even if you are inherently benefitting from the new stuff. Three I can think of, Zendesk, Customer.io and Geckoboard grandfathered our plans. When it is easy to switch providers, grandfathering is not that important, but if you're tightly integrated, which pretty much everyone doing volume on stripe is, then you're screwed. You can't leave. Even if you negotiate custom pricing, there is a knock on the door one day saying, "new pricing in place. Take it or leave"
l8rpeace 6y ago
https://www.swipesum.com/ https://www.swipesum.com/ these folks can negotiate you a better deal on that
sigwinch28 6y ago
An extra 0.5% is going to cost you "tens of thousands of dollars"? You're literally moving millions of dollars a year through your billing platform. That's not a little bit of money. That's a lot. Own it. You're not a hostage. You're deeply integrated through nobody's fault but your own.
- kempbellt 6y ago
  Without knowing their business model, it really doesn't matter how much money is moving through their system. It could very well be that they have a lot of buyers because of a very low profit margin and this actually has a notable impact on the company's finances. Saying you are "held hostage" might be a bit of a dramatic way to phrase it, but for some companies a change like this actually makes a difference. Such is the life of relying on any third-party services though. Also, pointing out "faults" is not helpful. It's unproductive conversation. Many companies are built upon third-party services that they are (probably falsely) under the impression will not change. It's not your "fault" if you decide to use AWS services and become deeply integrated and they increase their prices by 10% and you can no longer afford their services... It's no one's fault. It's just unfortunate and all you can do is try to work around it, or close the company.
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    > It could very well be that they have a lot of buyers because of a very low profit margin and this actually has a notable impact on the company's finances. This is the real problem. From the sidelines, it's easy to dismiss an additional 0.5% overhead as trivial. After all, that's less than 1%, right? But it's not so simple. That 0.5% comes out of the profit margin. If a company has 50% profit margins, losing that extra 0.5% isn't a big deal. However, if a company is operating on 10% margins, that 0.5% suddenly becomes an extra 5% overhead.
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    > It's not your "fault" if you decide to use AWS services and become deeply integrated and they increase their prices by 10% and you can no longer afford their services... It's no one's fault. It's just unfortunate and all you can do is try to work around it, or close the company. It's your fault if you chose lockin. If you don't want to talk about fault, fine, but then don't go on to talk about fault :)
polote 6y ago
> Unfortunately, we're kind of hostage to it. The day you decided to go with Stripe you started being hostage of them, but this is not a bad thing, this is business, you choose a partner, they are allowed to change the terms if the contract permit it. People on HN always think they deserve to be treated better than others
- troughway 6y ago
  >People on HN always think they deserve to be treated better than others Y..you mean we won't all be millionaires when we grow up?
  - arghwhat 6y ago
    No no, we will all be millionaires. Just not you specifically. Sorry.
- Loughla 6y ago
  >People on HN always think they deserve to be treated better than others I have noticed a significant attitude of, "I originally signed up for this product with 'x' cost and 'x' features, and you have zero right to change anything about that." It seems like a basic contract negotiation process would ferret that out - I thought that was a business thing to do. I work in higher ed, and we absolutely have to have contracts for all third-party vendors; any changes are negotiated with the start of new contracts. If we can figure it out, surely startups can - we're not really all that good at efficiency.
  - ericd 6y ago
    I think trust in your providers treating you well is required for low-touch SaaS sales for key infrastructure to work well. If you don't trust your counterparties, then you get long contract negotiations and minimum viable contract sizes balloon, as many potential buyers just won't be willing to be dependent on your company without assurances.
    - 6y ago
merlinbeard 6y ago
we’re exactly in the same situation.

klinskyc 6y ago

If you're doing significant volume, which I assume Streak does, you can negotiate significant volume discounts. You have been leaving a ton of money on the table if you have not done that.

enahs-sf 6y ago
Could you define "significant volume" a bit more specifically? Wondering if I too, have been leaving a ton of money on the table. What is the approximate scale that this makes sense at?
- klinskyc 6y ago
  This link says 80k/month, which matches our experience -> https://www.fool.com/the-blueprint/stripe-payments-review/ https://www.fool.com/the-blueprint/stripe-payments-review/
danpalmer 6y ago
Huge +1 to this. Everything about Stripe pricing is negotiable. I'd recommend going in to the discussion with a quote from another provider.
Alupis 6y ago
Maybe - they seemed really not interested in negotiating much at all and I got the impression they feel that their customers should be lucky enough to be allowed to use Stripe as a processor. My company went through negotiations with Stripe earlier this year. We were more than 1.5% + $0.10 away from our current processor, and they wouldn't budge to even match our existing rates. They kept saying they are a better value, and offer more things for the price - except most of the "value-adds" we didn't care about (their only interesting things was the Stripe Checkout with Fraud detection - which requires you to use their hosted checkout page... which is a complete non-starter for a serious eCommerce operation). Perhaps not a good fit - but paying a ton more per year in CC processing fees just because Stripe uses "AI!!!!" wasn't something we could swallow.
- onepointsixC 6y ago
  Did you end up staying with your current processor or swiping to Stripe?
  - Alupis 6y ago
    We stayed put actually. At the end of the day, you need a processor that charges low fees, provides easy tools to handle chargebacks and refunds, provides tools to automate sweeping balances nightly, and doesn't go down often. People don't switch processors often, so building out an integration once every 10 years isn't a big deal if you design your integration correctly. That, and I assure you, your customers don't give a darn about which processor you use.
- larrik 6y ago
  > Stripe Checkout with Fraud detection - which requires you to use their hosted checkout page Does it? In my experience you can just use their Hosted Fields which are actually really great.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    That's not how they pitched it to us - and I asked for clarification multiple times because of how absurd the proposal was for a well established eCommerce site. Sending customers off-domain for a payment is not something we were willing to do for a normal credit card checkout flow. Even "hosted fields" is absurd (and by that I assume you mean an iFrame you embed), and would require redesigning significant portions of the checkout process. That, coupled with their refusal to even match our existing rates, was really off-putting. The sales people made little effort to understand our business and pain points - they just wanted to talk about how great Stripe is and all the AI stuff they do.
    - __float 6y ago
      You don't have to use "hosted fields", but it does mean you have significantly increased requirements regarding PCI compliance (SAQ D vs the much simpler SAQ A, for example).

lwigo 6y ago

Move to another solution? I have no idea on pricing but maybe NMI, Braintree, etc. Also play hardball with the account manager if you're comfortable with that.

grumple 6y ago

Why are you hostage to it? How much dev time would switching to a different transaction processor take? This seems like it should be a very competitive space.

lukevdp 6y ago
It’s not just dev time, that would be easy. It’s getting every customer to re-enter their credit card details which won’t happen without a significant uptick in arrears, and depending on the type of customer, churn.
- loceng 6y ago
  Indeed, there needs to be laws for data portability to allow a true free market mechanism so then if a company isn't providing reasonable value for their fees, people will be mobile and can shift away without friction; Facebook has survived because lack of adequate data and network portability.
- sigwinch28 6y ago
  Not anticipating this scenario is a collective failing of everyone in the business who deals with third party integrations.
- byteofbits 6y ago
  Stripe supports exporting PCI data like credit card details to other PCI Level 1[1] providers such as Recurly and Braintree. Data portability is a solved problem in this space - so there isn't a material risk of churn due to a migration like this. We recently went through the process and it was very easy. [1] - https://stripe.com/docs/security/data-migrations/exports https://stripe.com/docs/security/data-migrations/exports
  - jlokier 6y ago
    > Data portability is a solved problem in this space - so there isn't a material risk of churn due to a migration like this. Here's my anecdote of a different situation but with some similarities, where we couldn't get the data portability we wanted. A few years ago I asked our Direct Debit provider if we could migrate customer subscriptions from our old business entity to our newly incorporated company version of the exact same business. The old business entity was to be wound up as a complete transfer to the new one, the trading name was identical (transferred along with trademarks), and we were happy to keep the same DD provider. The answer we got was no, each customer would have to enter their bank details and agree to the same terms again. From the customer's point of view, they probably wouldn't even notice it was a different business, because in a real sense it wasn't. We decided this would lead to significant churn in customer subscriptions, and we couldn't afford it. It would be cheaper to maintain and administer the old business entity, for no business purpose whatsoever, just the sole purpose of continuing to receive the DD subscriptions, and pay them immediately in full to the new business entity.

epa 6y ago

Email your rep and tell them you want to move to interchange plus pricing.

globile 6y ago
Make sure you run the numbers first. If you have a lot of international traffic, you may end up paying more.

TAForObvReasons 6y ago

Earlier this year, they made other changes for long-term customers: - increased fees for non-US payments (3.9% + 30 cents) - did not refund fees when you refund customers If there was a compelling alternative that isn't PayPal we'd jump in a heartbeat

loceng 6y ago
I have to believe this is Stripe leadership pumping up the revenues/profits to look peachy for their IPO, so they can all get a considerable exit while raising a war chest - meanwhile competitors will come along and try to take market share while Stripe can spend more on acquisitions and feature development for the same price. I think this play as part of the VC industrial complex leaves them more vulnerable than is obvious - but leadership won't ultimately care because they're set for generations.
- jm20 6y ago
  If the Stripe leadership wanted to exit and be set for generations they could’ve done it years ago. I agree it could be a revenue boost to prepare for IPO but this isn’t some personal greed thing
  - cambalache 6y ago
    Agree, it's collective greed
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    Personal greed doesn't magically end just because you want $5 billion instead of $1 billion. Greed is greed even if the only point of it is having a larger number in your bank account or higher social standing from it.

globile 6y ago

Same thing has happened for Radar for example. We set up our whole infrastructure with their beta 3DS and Radar products, and then one day (a few months back), it is $ 0.07 per txn in Radar as well as no returned fees on refunds. Stuck with nowhere to go. Not against improving margins, but customers that have walked hand in hand with Stripe for so long and seen them thru their early growing pains should definitely be grandfathered. Grandfathering would be the cool thing to do.

sigwinch28 6y ago
Why should they be grandfathered?
- markdown 6y ago
  Because it > would be the cool thing to do.
- NeutronStar 6y ago
  Did you even read the comment?
- globile 6y ago
  Oh yes! To Grandfather or not to Grandfather! That dilemma! I understand they are still using the same functionality they had at signup time, and are still on the same API version, so not taking advantage of new direct functionality. Yes, of course there is a bunch of indirect functionality or magic behind the scenes, but from a company lifetime perspective, when you enter into an agreement with a service provider, you would expect a relatively constant delivery of services, at the agreed prices, especially if your needs have not changed. There are many companies that upon adding new functionality or services, decide to grandfather. New direct functionality comes at new prices, even if you are inherently benefitting from the new stuff. Three I can think of, Zendesk, Customer.io and Geckoboard grandfathered our plans. When it is easy to switch providers, grandfathering is not that important, but if you're tightly integrated, which pretty much everyone doing volume on stripe is, then you're screwed. You can't leave. Even if you negotiate custom pricing, there is a knock on the door one day saying, "new pricing in place. Take it or leave"

l8rpeace 6y ago

https://www.swipesum.com/ https://www.swipesum.com/ these folks can negotiate you a better deal on that

sigwinch28 6y ago

An extra 0.5% is going to cost you "tens of thousands of dollars"? You're literally moving millions of dollars a year through your billing platform. That's not a little bit of money. That's a lot. Own it. You're not a hostage. You're deeply integrated through nobody's fault but your own.

kempbellt 6y ago
Without knowing their business model, it really doesn't matter how much money is moving through their system. It could very well be that they have a lot of buyers because of a very low profit margin and this actually has a notable impact on the company's finances. Saying you are "held hostage" might be a bit of a dramatic way to phrase it, but for some companies a change like this actually makes a difference. Such is the life of relying on any third-party services though. Also, pointing out "faults" is not helpful. It's unproductive conversation. Many companies are built upon third-party services that they are (probably falsely) under the impression will not change. It's not your "fault" if you decide to use AWS services and become deeply integrated and they increase their prices by 10% and you can no longer afford their services... It's no one's fault. It's just unfortunate and all you can do is try to work around it, or close the company.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > It could very well be that they have a lot of buyers because of a very low profit margin and this actually has a notable impact on the company's finances. This is the real problem. From the sidelines, it's easy to dismiss an additional 0.5% overhead as trivial. After all, that's less than 1%, right? But it's not so simple. That 0.5% comes out of the profit margin. If a company has 50% profit margins, losing that extra 0.5% isn't a big deal. However, if a company is operating on 10% margins, that 0.5% suddenly becomes an extra 5% overhead.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  > It's not your "fault" if you decide to use AWS services and become deeply integrated and they increase their prices by 10% and you can no longer afford their services... It's no one's fault. It's just unfortunate and all you can do is try to work around it, or close the company. It's your fault if you chose lockin. If you don't want to talk about fault, fine, but then don't go on to talk about fault :)

polote 6y ago

> Unfortunately, we're kind of hostage to it. The day you decided to go with Stripe you started being hostage of them, but this is not a bad thing, this is business, you choose a partner, they are allowed to change the terms if the contract permit it. People on HN always think they deserve to be treated better than others

troughway 6y ago
>People on HN always think they deserve to be treated better than others Y..you mean we won't all be millionaires when we grow up?
- arghwhat 6y ago
  No no, we will all be millionaires. Just not you specifically. Sorry.
Loughla 6y ago
>People on HN always think they deserve to be treated better than others I have noticed a significant attitude of, "I originally signed up for this product with 'x' cost and 'x' features, and you have zero right to change anything about that." It seems like a basic contract negotiation process would ferret that out - I thought that was a business thing to do. I work in higher ed, and we absolutely have to have contracts for all third-party vendors; any changes are negotiated with the start of new contracts. If we can figure it out, surely startups can - we're not really all that good at efficiency.
- ericd 6y ago
  I think trust in your providers treating you well is required for low-touch SaaS sales for key infrastructure to work well. If you don't trust your counterparties, then you get long contract negotiations and minimum viable contract sizes balloon, as many potential buyers just won't be willing to be dependent on your company without assurances.
  - 6y ago

merlinbeard 6y ago

we’re exactly in the same situation.