13 ms·

(Stripe cofounder.) While there are lots of antecedents (this is, after all, just a checkout page with a URL), and even though this was substantially inspired

by pc 5y ago

(Stripe cofounder.) While there are lots of antecedents (this is, after all, just a checkout page with a URL), and even though this was substantially inspired by the growth of the no-code ecosystem[0], the thing that's interesting to me about the payment link "space" is that it's a use case that really took off in other markets first -- Nigeria, India, Philippines, etc. I suspect that staying abreast of important new patterns emerging outside US/Europe will become more important for many businesses in the years ahead... there are a lot of legacy assumptions being questioned. And feedback very welcome on our Payment Links product itself! [0] We were excited to have Ben Tossell, one of the original no-coders, as one of our beta users: https://twitter.com/bentossell/status/1397246339898093568 https://twitter.com/bentossell/status/1397246339898093568

cyral 5y ago
Not related to payment links... but I would love to see Stripe take on handling in app purchases. (basically a webhook and management layer over the terrible native APIs) Companies like RevenueCat are halfway there but have nowhere as nice of an API or dashboard as Stripe. I run a cross platform (web/ios/android) app and would love to do payments all under one platform (Stripe, that is). Apple and Google subscriptions have so many complexities and edge cases that companies like RevenueCat and Qonversion are enormously helpful, but they themselves have many bugs and issues that I've ran into.
- jeiting 5y ago
  Would love to hear how we can improve the API to make you not want Stripe to do it better. :) Obviously, Stripe is the gold standard and I think we have a hard time, but we're hoping to improve the developer experience even more this year.
  - cyral 5y ago
    My main issue is how the webhooks sometimes give incorrect info, which has led to many customer complains when their subscription gets messed up by some edge case that I would expect to be abstracted away by RevenueCat but isn't. For example, when I implemented the PRODUCT_CHANGE event I expected it would notify me of the new product, but that is not the case on Android which led to bugs with some customers. It turns out that only iOS sends the new_product_id, so it is impossible to know from this event what the new product should be to display it in the app. Since upgrades/downgrades are immediate on Android, it turns out that the solution was just to not handle that event on Android since the renewal event would override the product anyways. (but sometimes the events came out of order, which is what led to bugs when PRODUCT_CHANGE was after RENEWAL). There are a lot of cases where events in the dashboard are totally out of order and don't make sense, like showing a customer purchasing the lesser plan, then renewing for the upgraded plan, and then switching from the lesser to the upgraded plan 10 days later. How could that be possible? The switch should have been between the renewals, so it's very confusing to debug. I've been told that now the recommended approach is to ignore all the webhook data, and simply call the RevenueCat API to get the entitlement and subscription status - however I asked how to parse this into something meaningful and didn't get a good answer. I would like to know the users current entitlement, and the current subscription (which can be different than the entitlement). For example, if the user downgrades, their entitlement may still be the upgraded plan for a while, but the app should reflect that they are no longer subscribed, or that they are subscribed to a different plan. For the entitlement it is easy I think, just choose the highest entitlement level to use. For the subscription, maybe choosing the last renewed one would work? But there are so many complexities with downgrades, upgrades, crossgrades I don't know if that is true. The answer from support was basically that they didn't know, yet this is an absolute must for almost any app - there has to be a way to display what the user is currently paying (or not paying) for, linking out to the native UI is not an option as it's not user friendly and cannot be displayed cross platform (I want the website to also reflect what they are paying for). My big concern with this is also, why does the API supposedly return the correct data but the webhook doesn't? If I am calling the API 10ms after receiving the webhook, why can't the webhook just deliver correct data instead? Another current issue I discovered the other day was that grace periods are no longer working. The RevenueCat dashboard shows that they are getting a 7 day grace period (the expiration date in the dashboard is correct), yet in the webhooks I am getting the wrong expiration, one that is only a day away. Apparently this is due to a change by Google and a fix is (maybe?) on the way? But it caused a lot of issues that I didn't expect. Basically RevenueCat's promise is great, it has saved a ton of time but isn't quite there on fully abstracting all these native edge cases away, they crop up in the API occasionally, and the proposed fix to use the API instead of the webhook data is half baked when support has no idea how to actually parse it to get the current subscription that should be displayed to the user (in the case that they upgraded/downgraded and have more than one). I love the idea but I'm hesitant to recommend it to anyone because lately it's been causing a lot of headaches with customers having billing issues due to these inconsistencies.
    - jeiting 5y ago
      Thanks for the great feedback. These are all legit issues. We have on our roadmap a revisiting of our API this year and I think we need to have a lower tolerance for abstraction leakage. Would you mind dropping me an email jacob@revenuecat.com? I think for our long term viability we need to have the trust of people who care about edge cases like this. I’d love to hear more.
- criddell 5y ago
  Can you use Stripe in iOS and Android apps? I thought purchases had to go through Apple and Google?
  - joshstrange 5y ago
    You can but only for physical goods or a small handful of other uses (person to person and 1-2 other special carve-outs I can't remember).
  - cyral 5y ago
    Correct, I mean if Stripe developed a wrapper around the native APIs as other companies have done. Payment is still handled natively but Stripe would provide consistent webhooks without having to deal with Apple’s complex receipt API.
- joshstrange 5y ago
  If it's IAP for digital items then you can't use Stripe for IAP on iOS/Android, it has to go through the respective store's IAP logic.
  - cyral 5y ago
    Yes, which is why I am asking for Stripe to do an IAP wrapper as other companies have tried. Apple and Android’s subscription APIs are terrible, essentially what is needed is an abstraction around them to keep user entitlements in sync without having to deal with the native APIs. The IAP is still handled natively, but the receipts and notifications are used to create a consistent experience.
    - joshstrange 5y ago
      Ahh, that’s an interesting proposition and the more I think about it, the more I like it. Just pass in some param to the “create payment intent” to indicate it’s a IAP-required purchase and they wrap the internal Apple/Google implementation. You’d still need to handle Apple/Google-specific errors but it’s be in one code-flow (the same way you have to handle secure-3D or whatever it’s called in the current Stripe payment flow). Really they’d be smart to create an “External Payments” or “Off-platform payments” concept to support more than just Apple/Google. It could be a little odd to not get payouts on a portion of your invoices (like it could cause weird issues if you suck all the Stripe data into another tool/your platform, you’d have to take that into account) but it might be useful to enough people. It sets Stripe up to step in, with small code changes for the developer, if the walls weaken/come down around current IAP policies. Also, it provides only 1 API for a dev who wants to offer CC as well Apple Pay (not IAP) instead of 2 or just skipping CC (using only Apple Pay). All that said, it will be a hard sell to Stripe execs who will probably see it as a large maintenance burden all to record stuff they don’t make money off of. I do like the idea though!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ithkuil 5y ago
I'd like to help my father's business to go online with stripe but unfortunately his EU country (Croatia) for you to bother with.
- pc 5y ago
  Working on the rest of the EU!
- ithkuil 5y ago
  EDIT: typo, missing; "is too small a market"
tosh 5y ago
I love how this is a great (and "open" / web / link based!) complement to all kinds of digital products. e.g. we're looking into how to pair payment links with Jam (https://jam.systems https://jam.systems | https://jamshelf.com https://jamshelf.com), basically stand-alone Clubhouse-style audio rooms. Unbundling of the payment feature of superapps.
tmamic 5y ago
When are you going to offer services to entrepreneurs in countries such as Nigeria, India and Philippines?
- pc 5y ago
  You can use Paystack (which we acquired last year) in Nigeria today. You can sign up instantly for Stripe in India today and request an invite for access for Philippines over at https://stripe.com/global https://stripe.com/global. Working on full availability of both as quickly as we can.
  - alchermd 5y ago
    Really excited to see your release on the Philippines. Godspeed!
lloydatkinson 5y ago
This looks like a much simpler way to create subscriptions. On the back of that connivence will it also support calling webhooks? It would be great to have our backend systems be able to create a user so we can relate a subscription from Stripe with a user without needing to keep querying Stripe for new subscriptions.
- sudhirj 5y ago
  I think this is just a normal Checkout/Payment in the API, so there seems to be a webhoook for it.
- pc 5y ago
  Yep, all webhooks still sent as normal.
flipnotic 5y ago
Can you think of a most-popular use case you've seen payment links used for outside the US? Like, are people selling goods, or e-content, or services? And thank you for making e-commerce more seamless.
- jackerman 5y ago
  We've been live with Payment Links in beta to around a hundred sellers for the past few weeks, and we've seen businesses selling both digital goods/services, as well as physical goods. Sellers have been sharing Payment Links on social media, via email newsletters, and in support interactions. And we've also seen some sellers generate QR codes that send their customers to a Payment Link. Excited to see what you use Payment Link to sell!
- pc 5y ago
  There's a lot of cool stuff that uses Paystack on Twitter, e.g.: https://twitter.com/spokenword_lag/status/1396773924713730050 https://twitter.com/spokenword_lag/status/139677392471373005.... You can search for paystack.com/pay.
  - filleduchaos 5y ago
    Yep. The thing to understand is that a huge portion of emerging markets like ours is made up of informal vendors - often young people monetising a side hustle or two - not full-blown businesses per se. For example I have an acquaintance who takes banana bread orders during the week which she bakes and delivers each Saturday; Paystack's links have made the process super straightforward for her.
samcgraw 5y ago
Hey there Patrick, congrats on this launch and Stripe's success thus far. As to your reflections, I'm wondering how Stripe ingests these various emerging patterns around the world (especially as you expand to unfamiliar territory) and prioritize bringing them into your products? IOW: if N trends at various stages of the adoption cycle are happening 7K miles away, how do you think about placing different bets on each, especially when the cultural moments may be wildly different than, as yet, Stripe understands? Cheers! SM
- pc 5y ago
  No wonderfully structured answer, I'm afraid. We do now have engineering teams in Japan, Singapore, India, Ireland, Mexico, Nigeria (via Paystack), and elsewhere, and it helps a lot to have people "on the ground" who really get what's going on. Ultimately, we want to identify the patterns that should be globally popular but aren't yet. To do that, though, there's ultimately a lot of subjective judgment required.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    It'd be nice to know that a feature/product is widely used in Japan, say, so if you're in the US and considering implementing Stripe's version you can be more assured that it won't disappear suddenly.
siruva07 5y ago
Super sleek! A minor feedback for the marketing page. I’m an English speaker currently in Mexico City. The webpage first opened in Spanish based on my location. It only took a few seconds to figure that I could change the language just above the footer, but my UI recommendation would be to put the location/language switcher next to the upper right sandwich (I’m on mobile) in a circle with the flag of my default country/language. That would be much faster to find and have the added benefit of displaying how many countries and languages Stripe works in.
- pc 5y ago
  Good feedback -- thanks. We've long struggled to find the right balance between "convenient/automatically correct" and "non-confusing" in site localization.
  - truth_ 5y ago
    Slightly tangential, but when you localize a product for India, do not automatically translate it to Hindi. Only 38% people of India has Hindi as their mother-tongue. There is strong anti-Hindi-imposition sentiment in many places of India. Just because someone's geolocation is set to India, don't automatically translate it to Hindi. It irks many.
    - amenghra 5y ago
      If only there were a header browsers could send. Perhaps something we could call Accept-Language?
    - philjackson 5y ago
      What would the compromise be?
      - ceilingcorner 5y ago
        English is actually the neutral compromise language in India.
simonsarris 5y ago
> And feedback very welcome on our Payment Links product itself! The most useful addition would be another text box (or full form) in the payment link setup to specify sending some custom text to the payer upon payment (by email or on-page or both). For example a "Thank You", but also a "here's the private link to the thing you bought, here are the details, here is the password, here is the timeframe for shipping, here's what to do next", etc.
- pc 5y ago
  That's a good idea.
- jackerman 5y ago
  Excellent idea, and one we're very excited to build soon. We have an initial prototype of what this may look like; would love your feedback. Drop me a note at jackerman@stripe.com if you'd be up for a quick chat!
- extr 5y ago
  Funny to recognize your account name. Love your twitter content Simon.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vmception 5y ago
Hey there, I'm an American in the US I've done business over chat apps for several years. Mostly being around Chinese, Nigerian, Indian, Phillipine and Malaysian crowds on those apps. You just have to listen, the trend has been clear but in the US people derive clout from pretty irrelevant things, such as a domain name, domain name information, and people with ideas think they need SEO and other marketing gimmicks. The biggest trick is the banks. When using fiat and opening a bank account for an incorporated business, the bankers often ask for information on the company like website presence of marketing materials. For the past few years I've been able to point to articles about commerce in Asia being chat app based, to get past that. Bankers don't actually care, but you do need to know how to make them not begin to care.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  Isn't it simpler to just have a single static web page, to show that presence? Even if it's just for western contacts such as banks.
  - vmception 5y ago
    Simpler? It's just "you can if you want". The incorporated entity is just for limiting liability, having properties in its name instead of yours, and more easily convincing tax authorities that the universe of tax deductible expenses is so great. You can be paid for goods and services immediately, these days.
- athenot 5y ago
  > the bankers often ask for information on the company like website presence of marketing materials. It's not too long ago they would ask for information faxed using company letterhead, as a form of legitimization. The signals they use to vet customers are, again, a decade or two behind what's technologically relevant.
  - wftglf 5y ago
    > It's not too long ago they would ask for information faxed using company letterhead, as a form of legitimization. I had PayPal ask me for exactly this (emailed rather than faxed) recently for my PayPal business account!
munk-a 5y ago
I suppose the danger to this is minimized but will stripe always require an affirmative action confirming the transaction on the destination link? I can see some issues related to link unfurling and pre-fetching activating the link before the user intends to interact with it along with malicious sites that inject JS to automatically follow the link. I'm curious if you have analytics collection on the first use case since it seems like a pretty risky privacy violation in terms of user tracking but honestly not far beyond shenanigans that bigger players pull (Facebook/Amazon). But I'm really curious about the second use case - the no code approach is really nice and flexible for sending payment requests over alternative media (i.e. discord) but it feels like this might open the door a bit more to phishing users via redirection - do you happen to have any security ruminations on that topic that you've made public or be willing to share?
- sudhirj 5y ago
  The link itself is global, not local to a transaction. So I can have the same link posted on my Github repo to support development or in my HN bio to buy me a coffee. That link then generates a checkout session when you visit it, and if the payment is actually made, then I see a payment entry in my dashboard. But the link is just a common global initiator.
- edwinwee 5y ago
  In short, yes—confirmation is requried. Here's an example of a payment link: https://buy.stripe.com/dR6cOd9RJ8KS8nufYZ https://buy.stripe.com/dR6cOd9RJ8KS8nufYZ. It's a single link that can be shared with anybody (not unique to one customer). On the Stripe side, nothing is collected from the customer til they click. We've thought a lot about the security side of things—one of the reasons why Payment Links has its own subdomain and the payment page is hosted by Stripe.
  - abc11283 5y ago
    Very cool. One quick thought: tapping the company name doesn’t seem to do anything at the moment. It would be very cool if it would either (1) redirect to the company website or (2) a “store” or directory showing other available Payment Links. Excellent work!
sebmellen 5y ago
A bit of a non sequitur, but have you further pursued the investment/initial funding you made in Stellar some time ago? The cryptocurrency markets are of course highly inflated at the moment, but long-term, do you still see promise in the concept of "email for payments?" (This is how Stellar brands their technology.) I would be super interested to know if there are any blockchain projects or related corollaries that Stripe is working on.
jamesvnz 5y ago
Pleased to see this feature. The one feedback I'd give is that it's hard for a user to know they can adjust the quantity on mobile. You have to click the "Details" link in the top right, and it's not really obvious to a user this is where they should go do this. (i.e. they may well think that they can't update the quantity).
- jackerman 5y ago
  Thank you for this feedback, James. Totally agreed. We'll be making significant improvements to this flow on mobile coming soon. Drop me a note at jackerman@stripe.com if you'd like to give us feedback on an early prototype!
d0100 5y ago
Please add the possibility to programmatically create links with payment splits so I don't have to waste time re-re-re-re-re-inventing the wheel
- jackerman 5y ago
  Working on it right now! Drop me a note at jackerman@stripe.com if you'd like to try it out.
rexreed 5y ago
Hey pc! Is there a way to tie a digital delivery to the payment? Let's say you're selling an e-Book or an audio file or the latest collectable nonfungible (jk). Is there a way to have Stripe send a digital file or product upon successful payment completion without requiring a website backend to do that?
- leesalminen 5y ago
  You can use Stripe Webhooks + a "no-code" solution like Zapier to make that happen in ~15 minutes.
  - rexreed 5y ago
    But if you have a few hundred products then this doesn't become so easy. And where exactly does Zapier deliver that file from in a secure way? If I'm going to go through all that trouble, I might as well just use a Wordpress electronic delivery solution or Woocommerce, in which case, what's the point of this website-less payment solution? If I'm gonna go website-less, then it needs to do what the website would otherwise do.
    - igorzx31 5y ago
      pretty sure you can easily use shopify for that
- edwinwee 5y ago
  We don't have plans for Stripe to help with digital delivery today out-of-the-box (you may want to check out some of the many Stripe plug-ins that assist with that: https://stripe.com/partners/apps-and-extensions?q=digital https://stripe.com/partners/apps-and-extensions?q=digital). If you want to roll your own email solution, you can listen for webhooks to trigger an email after a payment: https://stripe.com/docs/webhooks https://stripe.com/docs/webhooks.
- rorygibson 5y ago
  Hi! Late to the party, but this is exactly the kind of problem that my startup, Trolley, solves. Warning: shameless plug. It's a no-code shopping cart that works with Stripe. We offer digital downloads that work as you describe. You could check it out - https://trolley.link https://trolley.link (you can email me direct at rg@trolley.link if you want to know anything more)
danielskogly 5y ago
Congratulations on the launch! This looks super nice, and if I understand it correctly, it's _kinda_ like creating a Checkout Session and redirecting the user, but more direct. About a year ago I was toying with the idea of creating a SaaS/product that worked completely without JS, and the only hurdle was that there currently is no way to simply answer redirect a client directly to the Checkout page after creating a Checkout Session in the backend. Currently, you have to create the Checkout Session, send this to the client, load StripeJS, and _then_ you can redirect to the Checkout page. Seeing that the Payment Link is basically the same thing, only that instead of a backend, the seller can create the Payment Link ("Checkout Session") in a dashboard, it doesn't really seem like the StripeJS-step I mentioned above is strictly necessary. I hope you'll add a way to get the URL when creating a Checkout Session in the backend, so that the dream of a fully-functioning noscript SaaS might one day come true :)
- jackerman 5y ago
  Thanks for the great feedback, Daniel! We'll be launching an API for Payment Links soon; drop me a note at jackerman@stripe.com and you'll be one of the first to try it out.
vincentmarle 5y ago
> no code required While I love this, is there a way to also programmatically create these links?
- edwinwee 5y ago
  Working on it! A Payment Links API is coming very soon.
rorykoehler 5y ago
I thought about building this on top of Stripe (and after seeing this I am glad I didn't). My use case was to replace cashapp etc for all the musicians doing live stuff on the web. They all need logins which is unnecessary friction if you just want to give someone money.
zanethomas 5y ago
Stripe sucks because it 'deplatforms' those it disagrees with.
benhurmarcel 5y ago
Sorry, I'm not familiar with using Stripe yet. Is it possible to set a shipping fee depending on the customer's location?
- jackerman 5y ago
  Stripe Checkout does support shipping rates. Further details here: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout/shipping https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout/shipping Happy to chat more via email if helpful as you get started with Stripe — I'm jackerman@stripe.com
algo_trader 5y ago
Can this be (or will be) integrated with Stripe Connect? So that a StripeLink buyer who is being charges can also later receive revenue ?
- jackerman 5y ago
  Indeed it can! Drop us a note at jackerman@stripe.com and tolu@stripe.com and we'll be happy to help you get started
rayrag 5y ago
Payments aside, will you release/open source your colour accessibility tool? Any chance? https://stripe.com/blog/accessible-color-systems https://stripe.com/blog/accessible-color-systems https://videos.ctfassets.net/fzn2n1nzq965/7GDaCnGLsYrdVIwXIqURwA/630fea9f6c464c7b6ac518cd97e91ba8/colortool-loop.mp4?w=1620&fm=webm https://videos.ctfassets.net/fzn2n1nzq965/7GDaCnGLsYrdVIwXIq...
IncRnd 5y ago
This is a great idea! It's best to let buyers simply buy and move on with their lives. This seems to do that. Don't make them do anything when they already want to say yes.
- jackerman 5y ago
  Totally! We couldn't agree with you more.
eloff 5y ago
I'm reluctant to hijack this thread, but please support payments in Panama. These payment links would be a big deal there. Panama uses the USD and has the best developed banking and financial services in all Central America. I've been hoping stripe would get here ever since you launched as a company. When you launched Atlas I've considered it, but the accounting and taxes are complicated and expensive. I believe one even needs to charge state sales taxes in some states.
- edwinwee 5y ago
  Panama's on our list! (Assume you've already done so but you can sign up to get notified at https://stripe.com/global#PA https://stripe.com/global#PA.)
  - eloff 5y ago
    I did, but it's been 7 years? More? I lost faith that it might happen. I can't wait to be wrong about that!
- humaniania 5y ago
  Has Panama fixed their money laundering problems yet?
  - eloff 5y ago
    Mostly, yes. The large banks are strict about know your customer rules and willing to divulge information to foreign states depending on tax treaties. Keep in mind the Panama papers you probably are thinking of had little to do with Panama. The law firm was located in Panama, but the corporations and shady financial things were happening in the usual handful of island nations. If the law firm was located in New York it would have been the Manhattan papers - it didn't have much to do with Panama at all.
bgilly 5y ago
This is great. I've just implemented it to replace the clunky mess I had in place while waiting for this type of product from Stripe. Thank you!
- jackerman 5y ago
  Thrilled to hear it, and can't wait to hear your feedback!
  - bgilly 5y ago
    So far I have no feedback other than how smooth it was to use. I had a subscription plan already in place. Chose option to create link. Put the link on my website where I used to have a 3rd party’s stripe front-end. Now it’s direct and clean and supports faster payment mechanisms. Awesome!
sbaildon 5y ago
Congratulations on another cool product! I happened to build something to scratch the same itch a couple of weeks back, using Stripe Checkout, iOS Shortcuts, and serverless functions: https://baildon.co/writings/contactless-pos https://baildon.co/writings/contactless-pos
- jackerman 5y ago
  Thank you so much! Can't wait to hear your feedback about Payment Links.
MrsPeaches 5y ago
Very interesting! Is this all based on credit/debit cards? Are there any plans to incorporate mobile money payments?
- edwinwee 5y ago
  Already works with Apple Pay and Google Pay automatically!
judge2020 5y ago
Would be nice if it accepted a customizable dollar amount input so that it could be used for donations, like Paypal's donate button.
- jackerman 5y ago
  We're excited to build donations support via Stripe Payment Links. Drop me a note at jackerman@stripe.com and I'll let you know as soon as it is live.
  - mattrad 5y ago
    Could you please consider adding support for custom fields as part of this? For example, to be really useful in the in the UK, donation links would need to ask if the donor is eligible for Gift Aid (which increases donations by 25%). This then needs at least house/flat number and postcode to make a valid Gift Aid application (and some organisations may ask for more address details than that). With those additional fields it would mean we could post donation links all over the place, and then get donor details out of Stripe for the donations team. Thanks :)
vineyardmike 5y ago
Thank you for taking the time to come on here and discuss and answer questions! Its great to see someone like you taking the time to answer questions from random people on HN. It really does make me want to consider working with stripe for my next project (or, consider working for stripe for my next job)
ec109685 5y ago
Apple Pay worked great (one sticker purchased). Will you be integrating Chrome's equivalent? Also, there's no good way to share the original link. The one after you click (and page you end up on after purchase) is crufty: https://checkout.stripe.com/pay/cs_live_n1WDYJkCi1wp32H4Zlh8XygztV8lMuVA8wRz1vJNr8RSc1qrBcB5x29N#fidkdWxOYHwnPyd1blppbHNgWlxScjNLcX1mPDBkNXw0Q3RsfVVicDNPSycpJ3VpbGtuQH11anZgYUxhJz8nYVczZkphPFdPPU5WPWtwY1xfJyknd2BjYHd3YHcnPydtcXF1dj8qKmtgcnYrfGZqaGdsa2RxancrZmpoKid4JSUl https://checkout.stripe.com/pay/cs_live_n1WDYJkCi1wp32H4Zlh8... Versus: https://buy.stripe.com/dR6cOd9RJ8KS8nufYZ https://buy.stripe.com/dR6cOd9RJ8KS8nufYZ
Ayesh 5y ago
I couldn't be happier with Stripe, specially when collaborating with European projects, that made local payment integration a breeze. I formerly lived in Sri Lanka, and the country lacks a payment provider worth their salt, let alone an innovative one like Stripe. Perhaps extending the countries that Stripe supports can have the biggest impact.
edwinyzh 5y ago
I guess like other services of stripe, it does NOT support developers from China mainland, right?
juliendorra 5y ago
On the page you mention selling worldwide. But the simplicity of the paylink break down when you sell worldwide, as you have to both collect and remit taxes for each country (as in find a way to to fill the paperwork and pay taxes in separate countries). That’s an additional service to find and connect if you use stripe, sadly. That’s why when we launched Lab Surprise [0], with 19 apps from developers in several different countries, selling worldwide our bundles, we ended up using Paddle: they are the merchant of record, collect and remit the correct taxes in each country. Yes, it’s 5%+0.5cts but for us it was worth it. I’m pretty sure many sellers using Stripe paylinks will just never do the proper remittances in countries that are not their country of origin, but that might end up bitting them hard. Making tax remittance invisible is what can unleash instant worldwide micro-stores without hidden task risk [0] https://uploadvr.com/app-lab-quest-marketing/ https://uploadvr.com/app-lab-quest-marketing/
timmattison 5y ago
I tried this out today and a few things went wrong for me. First, the link that I was given to send to the other party was a tinyurl.com link. This concerns me because I don't think that Stripe or PayNowLink has control of tinyurl.com. If tinyurl.com is exploited then someone can reroute people to a totally different site. Second, Privacy.com debit cards didn't work for me. I've reached out to support to see if that's something they can fix. Is that a known issue?
lorendsr 5y ago
I'd like to be able to enable PPP so that the page shows lower prices for those located in countries with less purchasing power.
lorendsr 5y ago
I'd like to be able to enable email notifications for just payment link payments. Currently only option is all successful payments. Link page: "Get an email after every successful payment by managing your settings." Settings page: "Successful payments. Receive a notification for every successful payment."

by pc 5y ago

cyral 5y ago

Not related to payment links... but I would love to see Stripe take on handling in app purchases. (basically a webhook and management layer over the terrible native APIs) Companies like RevenueCat are halfway there but have nowhere as nice of an API or dashboard as Stripe. I run a cross platform (web/ios/android) app and would love to do payments all under one platform (Stripe, that is). Apple and Google subscriptions have so many complexities and edge cases that companies like RevenueCat and Qonversion are enormously helpful, but they themselves have many bugs and issues that I've ran into.

jeiting 5y ago
Would love to hear how we can improve the API to make you not want Stripe to do it better. :) Obviously, Stripe is the gold standard and I think we have a hard time, but we're hoping to improve the developer experience even more this year.
- cyral 5y ago
  My main issue is how the webhooks sometimes give incorrect info, which has led to many customer complains when their subscription gets messed up by some edge case that I would expect to be abstracted away by RevenueCat but isn't. For example, when I implemented the PRODUCT_CHANGE event I expected it would notify me of the new product, but that is not the case on Android which led to bugs with some customers. It turns out that only iOS sends the new_product_id, so it is impossible to know from this event what the new product should be to display it in the app. Since upgrades/downgrades are immediate on Android, it turns out that the solution was just to not handle that event on Android since the renewal event would override the product anyways. (but sometimes the events came out of order, which is what led to bugs when PRODUCT_CHANGE was after RENEWAL). There are a lot of cases where events in the dashboard are totally out of order and don't make sense, like showing a customer purchasing the lesser plan, then renewing for the upgraded plan, and then switching from the lesser to the upgraded plan 10 days later. How could that be possible? The switch should have been between the renewals, so it's very confusing to debug. I've been told that now the recommended approach is to ignore all the webhook data, and simply call the RevenueCat API to get the entitlement and subscription status - however I asked how to parse this into something meaningful and didn't get a good answer. I would like to know the users current entitlement, and the current subscription (which can be different than the entitlement). For example, if the user downgrades, their entitlement may still be the upgraded plan for a while, but the app should reflect that they are no longer subscribed, or that they are subscribed to a different plan. For the entitlement it is easy I think, just choose the highest entitlement level to use. For the subscription, maybe choosing the last renewed one would work? But there are so many complexities with downgrades, upgrades, crossgrades I don't know if that is true. The answer from support was basically that they didn't know, yet this is an absolute must for almost any app - there has to be a way to display what the user is currently paying (or not paying) for, linking out to the native UI is not an option as it's not user friendly and cannot be displayed cross platform (I want the website to also reflect what they are paying for). My big concern with this is also, why does the API supposedly return the correct data but the webhook doesn't? If I am calling the API 10ms after receiving the webhook, why can't the webhook just deliver correct data instead? Another current issue I discovered the other day was that grace periods are no longer working. The RevenueCat dashboard shows that they are getting a 7 day grace period (the expiration date in the dashboard is correct), yet in the webhooks I am getting the wrong expiration, one that is only a day away. Apparently this is due to a change by Google and a fix is (maybe?) on the way? But it caused a lot of issues that I didn't expect. Basically RevenueCat's promise is great, it has saved a ton of time but isn't quite there on fully abstracting all these native edge cases away, they crop up in the API occasionally, and the proposed fix to use the API instead of the webhook data is half baked when support has no idea how to actually parse it to get the current subscription that should be displayed to the user (in the case that they upgraded/downgraded and have more than one). I love the idea but I'm hesitant to recommend it to anyone because lately it's been causing a lot of headaches with customers having billing issues due to these inconsistencies.
  - jeiting 5y ago
    Thanks for the great feedback. These are all legit issues. We have on our roadmap a revisiting of our API this year and I think we need to have a lower tolerance for abstraction leakage. Would you mind dropping me an email jacob@revenuecat.com? I think for our long term viability we need to have the trust of people who care about edge cases like this. I’d love to hear more.
criddell 5y ago
Can you use Stripe in iOS and Android apps? I thought purchases had to go through Apple and Google?
- joshstrange 5y ago
  You can but only for physical goods or a small handful of other uses (person to person and 1-2 other special carve-outs I can't remember).
- cyral 5y ago
  Correct, I mean if Stripe developed a wrapper around the native APIs as other companies have done. Payment is still handled natively but Stripe would provide consistent webhooks without having to deal with Apple’s complex receipt API.
joshstrange 5y ago
If it's IAP for digital items then you can't use Stripe for IAP on iOS/Android, it has to go through the respective store's IAP logic.
- cyral 5y ago
  Yes, which is why I am asking for Stripe to do an IAP wrapper as other companies have tried. Apple and Android’s subscription APIs are terrible, essentially what is needed is an abstraction around them to keep user entitlements in sync without having to deal with the native APIs. The IAP is still handled natively, but the receipts and notifications are used to create a consistent experience.
  - joshstrange 5y ago
    Ahh, that’s an interesting proposition and the more I think about it, the more I like it. Just pass in some param to the “create payment intent” to indicate it’s a IAP-required purchase and they wrap the internal Apple/Google implementation. You’d still need to handle Apple/Google-specific errors but it’s be in one code-flow (the same way you have to handle secure-3D or whatever it’s called in the current Stripe payment flow). Really they’d be smart to create an “External Payments” or “Off-platform payments” concept to support more than just Apple/Google. It could be a little odd to not get payouts on a portion of your invoices (like it could cause weird issues if you suck all the Stripe data into another tool/your platform, you’d have to take that into account) but it might be useful to enough people. It sets Stripe up to step in, with small code changes for the developer, if the walls weaken/come down around current IAP policies. Also, it provides only 1 API for a dev who wants to offer CC as well Apple Pay (not IAP) instead of 2 or just skipping CC (using only Apple Pay). All that said, it will be a hard sell to Stripe execs who will probably see it as a large maintenance burden all to record stuff they don’t make money off of. I do like the idea though!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ithkuil 5y ago

I'd like to help my father's business to go online with stripe but unfortunately his EU country (Croatia) for you to bother with.

pc 5y ago
Working on the rest of the EU!
ithkuil 5y ago
EDIT: typo, missing; "is too small a market"

tosh 5y ago

I love how this is a great (and "open" / web / link based!) complement to all kinds of digital products. e.g. we're looking into how to pair payment links with Jam (https://jam.systems https://jam.systems | https://jamshelf.com https://jamshelf.com), basically stand-alone Clubhouse-style audio rooms. Unbundling of the payment feature of superapps.

tmamic 5y ago

When are you going to offer services to entrepreneurs in countries such as Nigeria, India and Philippines?

pc 5y ago
You can use Paystack (which we acquired last year) in Nigeria today. You can sign up instantly for Stripe in India today and request an invite for access for Philippines over at https://stripe.com/global https://stripe.com/global. Working on full availability of both as quickly as we can.
- alchermd 5y ago
  Really excited to see your release on the Philippines. Godspeed!

lloydatkinson 5y ago

This looks like a much simpler way to create subscriptions. On the back of that connivence will it also support calling webhooks? It would be great to have our backend systems be able to create a user so we can relate a subscription from Stripe with a user without needing to keep querying Stripe for new subscriptions.

sudhirj 5y ago
I think this is just a normal Checkout/Payment in the API, so there seems to be a webhoook for it.
pc 5y ago
Yep, all webhooks still sent as normal.

flipnotic 5y ago

Can you think of a most-popular use case you've seen payment links used for outside the US? Like, are people selling goods, or e-content, or services? And thank you for making e-commerce more seamless.

jackerman 5y ago
We've been live with Payment Links in beta to around a hundred sellers for the past few weeks, and we've seen businesses selling both digital goods/services, as well as physical goods. Sellers have been sharing Payment Links on social media, via email newsletters, and in support interactions. And we've also seen some sellers generate QR codes that send their customers to a Payment Link. Excited to see what you use Payment Link to sell!
pc 5y ago
There's a lot of cool stuff that uses Paystack on Twitter, e.g.: https://twitter.com/spokenword_lag/status/1396773924713730050 https://twitter.com/spokenword_lag/status/139677392471373005.... You can search for paystack.com/pay.
- filleduchaos 5y ago
  Yep. The thing to understand is that a huge portion of emerging markets like ours is made up of informal vendors - often young people monetising a side hustle or two - not full-blown businesses per se. For example I have an acquaintance who takes banana bread orders during the week which she bakes and delivers each Saturday; Paystack's links have made the process super straightforward for her.

samcgraw 5y ago

Hey there Patrick, congrats on this launch and Stripe's success thus far. As to your reflections, I'm wondering how Stripe ingests these various emerging patterns around the world (especially as you expand to unfamiliar territory) and prioritize bringing them into your products? IOW: if N trends at various stages of the adoption cycle are happening 7K miles away, how do you think about placing different bets on each, especially when the cultural moments may be wildly different than, as yet, Stripe understands? Cheers! SM

pc 5y ago
No wonderfully structured answer, I'm afraid. We do now have engineering teams in Japan, Singapore, India, Ireland, Mexico, Nigeria (via Paystack), and elsewhere, and it helps a lot to have people "on the ground" who really get what's going on. Ultimately, we want to identify the patterns that should be globally popular but aren't yet. To do that, though, there's ultimately a lot of subjective judgment required.
- bombcar 5y ago
  It'd be nice to know that a feature/product is widely used in Japan, say, so if you're in the US and considering implementing Stripe's version you can be more assured that it won't disappear suddenly.

siruva07 5y ago

Super sleek! A minor feedback for the marketing page. I’m an English speaker currently in Mexico City. The webpage first opened in Spanish based on my location. It only took a few seconds to figure that I could change the language just above the footer, but my UI recommendation would be to put the location/language switcher next to the upper right sandwich (I’m on mobile) in a circle with the flag of my default country/language. That would be much faster to find and have the added benefit of displaying how many countries and languages Stripe works in.

pc 5y ago
Good feedback -- thanks. We've long struggled to find the right balance between "convenient/automatically correct" and "non-confusing" in site localization.
- truth_ 5y ago
  Slightly tangential, but when you localize a product for India, do not automatically translate it to Hindi. Only 38% people of India has Hindi as their mother-tongue. There is strong anti-Hindi-imposition sentiment in many places of India. Just because someone's geolocation is set to India, don't automatically translate it to Hindi. It irks many.
  - amenghra 5y ago
    If only there were a header browsers could send. Perhaps something we could call Accept-Language?
  - philjackson 5y ago
    What would the compromise be?
    - ceilingcorner 5y ago
      English is actually the neutral compromise language in India.

simonsarris 5y ago

> And feedback very welcome on our Payment Links product itself! The most useful addition would be another text box (or full form) in the payment link setup to specify sending some custom text to the payer upon payment (by email or on-page or both). For example a "Thank You", but also a "here's the private link to the thing you bought, here are the details, here is the password, here is the timeframe for shipping, here's what to do next", etc.

pc 5y ago
That's a good idea.
jackerman 5y ago
Excellent idea, and one we're very excited to build soon. We have an initial prototype of what this may look like; would love your feedback. Drop me a note at jackerman@stripe.com if you'd be up for a quick chat!
extr 5y ago
Funny to recognize your account name. Love your twitter content Simon.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

vmception 5y ago

Hey there, I'm an American in the US I've done business over chat apps for several years. Mostly being around Chinese, Nigerian, Indian, Phillipine and Malaysian crowds on those apps. You just have to listen, the trend has been clear but in the US people derive clout from pretty irrelevant things, such as a domain name, domain name information, and people with ideas think they need SEO and other marketing gimmicks. The biggest trick is the banks. When using fiat and opening a bank account for an incorporated business, the bankers often ask for information on the company like website presence of marketing materials. For the past few years I've been able to point to articles about commerce in Asia being chat app based, to get past that. Bankers don't actually care, but you do need to know how to make them not begin to care.

benhurmarcel 5y ago
Isn't it simpler to just have a single static web page, to show that presence? Even if it's just for western contacts such as banks.
- vmception 5y ago
  Simpler? It's just "you can if you want". The incorporated entity is just for limiting liability, having properties in its name instead of yours, and more easily convincing tax authorities that the universe of tax deductible expenses is so great. You can be paid for goods and services immediately, these days.
athenot 5y ago
> the bankers often ask for information on the company like website presence of marketing materials. It's not too long ago they would ask for information faxed using company letterhead, as a form of legitimization. The signals they use to vet customers are, again, a decade or two behind what's technologically relevant.
- wftglf 5y ago
  > It's not too long ago they would ask for information faxed using company letterhead, as a form of legitimization. I had PayPal ask me for exactly this (emailed rather than faxed) recently for my PayPal business account!

munk-a 5y ago

I suppose the danger to this is minimized but will stripe always require an affirmative action confirming the transaction on the destination link? I can see some issues related to link unfurling and pre-fetching activating the link before the user intends to interact with it along with malicious sites that inject JS to automatically follow the link. I'm curious if you have analytics collection on the first use case since it seems like a pretty risky privacy violation in terms of user tracking but honestly not far beyond shenanigans that bigger players pull (Facebook/Amazon). But I'm really curious about the second use case - the no code approach is really nice and flexible for sending payment requests over alternative media (i.e. discord) but it feels like this might open the door a bit more to phishing users via redirection - do you happen to have any security ruminations on that topic that you've made public or be willing to share?

sudhirj 5y ago
The link itself is global, not local to a transaction. So I can have the same link posted on my Github repo to support development or in my HN bio to buy me a coffee. That link then generates a checkout session when you visit it, and if the payment is actually made, then I see a payment entry in my dashboard. But the link is just a common global initiator.
edwinwee 5y ago
In short, yes—confirmation is requried. Here's an example of a payment link: https://buy.stripe.com/dR6cOd9RJ8KS8nufYZ https://buy.stripe.com/dR6cOd9RJ8KS8nufYZ. It's a single link that can be shared with anybody (not unique to one customer). On the Stripe side, nothing is collected from the customer til they click. We've thought a lot about the security side of things—one of the reasons why Payment Links has its own subdomain and the payment page is hosted by Stripe.
- abc11283 5y ago
  Very cool. One quick thought: tapping the company name doesn’t seem to do anything at the moment. It would be very cool if it would either (1) redirect to the company website or (2) a “store” or directory showing other available Payment Links. Excellent work!

sebmellen 5y ago

A bit of a non sequitur, but have you further pursued the investment/initial funding you made in Stellar some time ago? The cryptocurrency markets are of course highly inflated at the moment, but long-term, do you still see promise in the concept of "email for payments?" (This is how Stellar brands their technology.) I would be super interested to know if there are any blockchain projects or related corollaries that Stripe is working on.

jamesvnz 5y ago

Pleased to see this feature. The one feedback I'd give is that it's hard for a user to know they can adjust the quantity on mobile. You have to click the "Details" link in the top right, and it's not really obvious to a user this is where they should go do this. (i.e. they may well think that they can't update the quantity).

jackerman 5y ago
Thank you for this feedback, James. Totally agreed. We'll be making significant improvements to this flow on mobile coming soon. Drop me a note at jackerman@stripe.com if you'd like to give us feedback on an early prototype!

d0100 5y ago

Please add the possibility to programmatically create links with payment splits so I don't have to waste time re-re-re-re-re-inventing the wheel

jackerman 5y ago
Working on it right now! Drop me a note at jackerman@stripe.com if you'd like to try it out.

rexreed 5y ago

Hey pc! Is there a way to tie a digital delivery to the payment? Let's say you're selling an e-Book or an audio file or the latest collectable nonfungible (jk). Is there a way to have Stripe send a digital file or product upon successful payment completion without requiring a website backend to do that?

leesalminen 5y ago
You can use Stripe Webhooks + a "no-code" solution like Zapier to make that happen in ~15 minutes.
- rexreed 5y ago
  But if you have a few hundred products then this doesn't become so easy. And where exactly does Zapier deliver that file from in a secure way? If I'm going to go through all that trouble, I might as well just use a Wordpress electronic delivery solution or Woocommerce, in which case, what's the point of this website-less payment solution? If I'm gonna go website-less, then it needs to do what the website would otherwise do.
  - igorzx31 5y ago
    pretty sure you can easily use shopify for that
edwinwee 5y ago
We don't have plans for Stripe to help with digital delivery today out-of-the-box (you may want to check out some of the many Stripe plug-ins that assist with that: https://stripe.com/partners/apps-and-extensions?q=digital https://stripe.com/partners/apps-and-extensions?q=digital). If you want to roll your own email solution, you can listen for webhooks to trigger an email after a payment: https://stripe.com/docs/webhooks https://stripe.com/docs/webhooks.
rorygibson 5y ago
Hi! Late to the party, but this is exactly the kind of problem that my startup, Trolley, solves. Warning: shameless plug. It's a no-code shopping cart that works with Stripe. We offer digital downloads that work as you describe. You could check it out - https://trolley.link https://trolley.link (you can email me direct at rg@trolley.link if you want to know anything more)

danielskogly 5y ago

Congratulations on the launch! This looks super nice, and if I understand it correctly, it's _kinda_ like creating a Checkout Session and redirecting the user, but more direct. About a year ago I was toying with the idea of creating a SaaS/product that worked completely without JS, and the only hurdle was that there currently is no way to simply answer redirect a client directly to the Checkout page after creating a Checkout Session in the backend. Currently, you have to create the Checkout Session, send this to the client, load StripeJS, and _then_ you can redirect to the Checkout page. Seeing that the Payment Link is basically the same thing, only that instead of a backend, the seller can create the Payment Link ("Checkout Session") in a dashboard, it doesn't really seem like the StripeJS-step I mentioned above is strictly necessary. I hope you'll add a way to get the URL when creating a Checkout Session in the backend, so that the dream of a fully-functioning noscript SaaS might one day come true :)

jackerman 5y ago
Thanks for the great feedback, Daniel! We'll be launching an API for Payment Links soon; drop me a note at jackerman@stripe.com and you'll be one of the first to try it out.

vincentmarle 5y ago

> no code required While I love this, is there a way to also programmatically create these links?

edwinwee 5y ago
Working on it! A Payment Links API is coming very soon.

rorykoehler 5y ago

I thought about building this on top of Stripe (and after seeing this I am glad I didn't). My use case was to replace cashapp etc for all the musicians doing live stuff on the web. They all need logins which is unnecessary friction if you just want to give someone money.

zanethomas 5y ago

Stripe sucks because it 'deplatforms' those it disagrees with.

benhurmarcel 5y ago

Sorry, I'm not familiar with using Stripe yet. Is it possible to set a shipping fee depending on the customer's location?

jackerman 5y ago
Stripe Checkout does support shipping rates. Further details here: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout/shipping https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout/shipping Happy to chat more via email if helpful as you get started with Stripe — I'm jackerman@stripe.com

algo_trader 5y ago

Can this be (or will be) integrated with Stripe Connect? So that a StripeLink buyer who is being charges can also later receive revenue ?

jackerman 5y ago
Indeed it can! Drop us a note at jackerman@stripe.com and tolu@stripe.com and we'll be happy to help you get started

rayrag 5y ago

Payments aside, will you release/open source your colour accessibility tool? Any chance? https://stripe.com/blog/accessible-color-systems https://stripe.com/blog/accessible-color-systems https://videos.ctfassets.net/fzn2n1nzq965/7GDaCnGLsYrdVIwXIqURwA/630fea9f6c464c7b6ac518cd97e91ba8/colortool-loop.mp4?w=1620&fm=webm https://videos.ctfassets.net/fzn2n1nzq965/7GDaCnGLsYrdVIwXIq...

IncRnd 5y ago

This is a great idea! It's best to let buyers simply buy and move on with their lives. This seems to do that. Don't make them do anything when they already want to say yes.

jackerman 5y ago
Totally! We couldn't agree with you more.

eloff 5y ago

I'm reluctant to hijack this thread, but please support payments in Panama. These payment links would be a big deal there. Panama uses the USD and has the best developed banking and financial services in all Central America. I've been hoping stripe would get here ever since you launched as a company. When you launched Atlas I've considered it, but the accounting and taxes are complicated and expensive. I believe one even needs to charge state sales taxes in some states.

edwinwee 5y ago
Panama's on our list! (Assume you've already done so but you can sign up to get notified at https://stripe.com/global#PA https://stripe.com/global#PA.)
- eloff 5y ago
  I did, but it's been 7 years? More? I lost faith that it might happen. I can't wait to be wrong about that!
humaniania 5y ago
Has Panama fixed their money laundering problems yet?
- eloff 5y ago
  Mostly, yes. The large banks are strict about know your customer rules and willing to divulge information to foreign states depending on tax treaties. Keep in mind the Panama papers you probably are thinking of had little to do with Panama. The law firm was located in Panama, but the corporations and shady financial things were happening in the usual handful of island nations. If the law firm was located in New York it would have been the Manhattan papers - it didn't have much to do with Panama at all.

bgilly 5y ago

This is great. I've just implemented it to replace the clunky mess I had in place while waiting for this type of product from Stripe. Thank you!

jackerman 5y ago
Thrilled to hear it, and can't wait to hear your feedback!
- bgilly 5y ago
  So far I have no feedback other than how smooth it was to use. I had a subscription plan already in place. Chose option to create link. Put the link on my website where I used to have a 3rd party’s stripe front-end. Now it’s direct and clean and supports faster payment mechanisms. Awesome!

sbaildon 5y ago

Congratulations on another cool product! I happened to build something to scratch the same itch a couple of weeks back, using Stripe Checkout, iOS Shortcuts, and serverless functions: https://baildon.co/writings/contactless-pos https://baildon.co/writings/contactless-pos

jackerman 5y ago
Thank you so much! Can't wait to hear your feedback about Payment Links.

MrsPeaches 5y ago

Very interesting! Is this all based on credit/debit cards? Are there any plans to incorporate mobile money payments?

edwinwee 5y ago
Already works with Apple Pay and Google Pay automatically!

judge2020 5y ago

Would be nice if it accepted a customizable dollar amount input so that it could be used for donations, like Paypal's donate button.

jackerman 5y ago
We're excited to build donations support via Stripe Payment Links. Drop me a note at jackerman@stripe.com and I'll let you know as soon as it is live.
- mattrad 5y ago
  Could you please consider adding support for custom fields as part of this? For example, to be really useful in the in the UK, donation links would need to ask if the donor is eligible for Gift Aid (which increases donations by 25%). This then needs at least house/flat number and postcode to make a valid Gift Aid application (and some organisations may ask for more address details than that). With those additional fields it would mean we could post donation links all over the place, and then get donor details out of Stripe for the donations team. Thanks :)

vineyardmike 5y ago

Thank you for taking the time to come on here and discuss and answer questions! Its great to see someone like you taking the time to answer questions from random people on HN. It really does make me want to consider working with stripe for my next project (or, consider working for stripe for my next job)

ec109685 5y ago

Apple Pay worked great (one sticker purchased). Will you be integrating Chrome's equivalent? Also, there's no good way to share the original link. The one after you click (and page you end up on after purchase) is crufty: https://checkout.stripe.com/pay/cs_live_n1WDYJkCi1wp32H4Zlh8XygztV8lMuVA8wRz1vJNr8RSc1qrBcB5x29N#fidkdWxOYHwnPyd1blppbHNgWlxScjNLcX1mPDBkNXw0Q3RsfVVicDNPSycpJ3VpbGtuQH11anZgYUxhJz8nYVczZkphPFdPPU5WPWtwY1xfJyknd2BjYHd3YHcnPydtcXF1dj8qKmtgcnYrfGZqaGdsa2RxancrZmpoKid4JSUl https://checkout.stripe.com/pay/cs_live_n1WDYJkCi1wp32H4Zlh8... Versus: https://buy.stripe.com/dR6cOd9RJ8KS8nufYZ https://buy.stripe.com/dR6cOd9RJ8KS8nufYZ

Ayesh 5y ago

I couldn't be happier with Stripe, specially when collaborating with European projects, that made local payment integration a breeze. I formerly lived in Sri Lanka, and the country lacks a payment provider worth their salt, let alone an innovative one like Stripe. Perhaps extending the countries that Stripe supports can have the biggest impact.

edwinyzh 5y ago

I guess like other services of stripe, it does NOT support developers from China mainland, right?

juliendorra 5y ago

On the page you mention selling worldwide. But the simplicity of the paylink break down when you sell worldwide, as you have to both collect and remit taxes for each country (as in find a way to to fill the paperwork and pay taxes in separate countries). That’s an additional service to find and connect if you use stripe, sadly. That’s why when we launched Lab Surprise [0], with 19 apps from developers in several different countries, selling worldwide our bundles, we ended up using Paddle: they are the merchant of record, collect and remit the correct taxes in each country. Yes, it’s 5%+0.5cts but for us it was worth it. I’m pretty sure many sellers using Stripe paylinks will just never do the proper remittances in countries that are not their country of origin, but that might end up bitting them hard. Making tax remittance invisible is what can unleash instant worldwide micro-stores without hidden task risk [0] https://uploadvr.com/app-lab-quest-marketing/ https://uploadvr.com/app-lab-quest-marketing/

timmattison 5y ago

I tried this out today and a few things went wrong for me. First, the link that I was given to send to the other party was a tinyurl.com link. This concerns me because I don't think that Stripe or PayNowLink has control of tinyurl.com. If tinyurl.com is exploited then someone can reroute people to a totally different site. Second, Privacy.com debit cards didn't work for me. I've reached out to support to see if that's something they can fix. Is that a known issue?

lorendsr 5y ago

I'd like to be able to enable PPP so that the page shows lower prices for those located in countries with less purchasing power.

lorendsr 5y ago

I'd like to be able to enable email notifications for just payment link payments. Currently only option is all successful payments. Link page: "Get an email after every successful payment by managing your settings." Settings page: "Successful payments. Receive a notification for every successful payment."