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Stripe Reader
- rvz 5y agoSomeone has thrown down the gauntlet at Square. [0] [0] https://twitter.com/Square/status/1405222258206031873 https://twitter.com/Square/status/1405222258206031873
- ZephyrBlu 5y agoReally though, how many ways are there to make a white square box?
- nikolay 5y agoPlus, Stripe's is not white, but black, and it's supplied by a third-party vendor. Update: The new M2 version is not available at the Stripe store still. Anyway, I hope they used a better quality plastic than Square, which gets scratched and dirty so easily.
- throwkeep 5y agoPlease let us plebs invest in Stripe already!
- 542458 5y agoIf you punch “1337” into the pinpad it redirects you to their jobs page - cute.
- J5892 5y agoI came to the comments solely to see if anyone found secret codes. Edit: Found the key sequence handling code addToKeySequence(t) { if (this.keySequence.push(t), this.insertCardScreen.createShowDotsAnimation(this.keySequence.length).play(), this.keySequence.length < 4) this.insertCardScreen.createHideLogosAnimation().play(); else { switch (this.keySequence.join("")) { case "1337": this.handleWpp(); break; case "4242": this.handleInsertCard(); break; default: this.handleInvalidCode() } this.keySequence.length = 0 } }
- smaddock 5y agoFor those not in the know, 4242 is used as a common test card number. https://stripe.com/docs/testing#cards https://stripe.com/docs/testing#cards
- cdmckay 5y agoI believe it comes from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- OisinMoran 5y agoNot entirely sure on the actual origins of this specific number but I think a crucial piece is that it passes the Luhn algorithm check [0] that is used to validate card numbers (and in generation of them to make single digit errors not result in another valid card number). 42 itself also passes the test but card numbers usually come in blocks of 4 digits so 4242 probably seems more card-like. As to where the 42 from the Guide came from, I would recommend consulting The Hunting of the Snark. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm
- random3 5y agoAlso cute: "1649 roles across all locations and all teams."
- dang 5y agoI merged this comment into this thread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534884 but I'm not sure if it belongs here or there.
- user3939382 5y agoIs it my imagination, or do the offerings from Square and Stripe continue to converge?
- edwinwee 5y ago(I work at Stripe.) The offerings are meant for different use-cases. Stripe Terminal’s great for developers looking to deploy in-person payments at tech-forward companies. Square’s great for coffee shops and other SMBs!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- what_ever 5y agoWhat's stopping from coffee shops and SMBs from using Stripe? Why shouldn't they?
- notatoad 5y ago>great for developers I'm guessing this means that the setup process of stripe terminal isn't to the point where a non-developer can plug it in and go. Square is great because anybody competent enough to install an app on their phone can use it
- jackson1442 5y agoThey also don’t come with Point-of-Sale software. Square is all-inclusive while Stripe is DIY.
- pbreit 5y agoThe whole point of sale system.
- paxys 5y agoThey'll have to build their own app and the rest of the checkout system themselves.
- orliesaurus 5y agoHow do you enter a PIN code? i.e. Wholefoods accepts contactless payments and then guess what...you need a PIN code. I guess an app somewhere (like on a phone or iPad) needs to be handed over to you to do that...? I really dislike PIN code backed payments, the whole touchless/contactless experience should be as fast as paying for the "tube" in London with an Oyster IMHO
- jackson1442 5y agoGenerally mobile/web based payments don’t require PIN. I’ve never been prompted on a Square or Toast machine— only place I’ve ever been asked is on a traditional PINpad and Clover machines.
- orliesaurus 5y agoThat's actually true! I totally forgot about my most recent Square/Clover experience...it's been months since I paid on those. Thank you for reminding me. I wonder how does it work in the back at the bank level, why are those OK vs like a Wholefoods or corner-store...
- jackson1442 5y agoI think it’s configurable at the store. I’ve noticed a lot of transactions that ask for my pin usually say “please enter your pin or press here to skip,” save for 7-eleven (that’s like the only place where I actually have to enter it). PIN entry likely reduces liability, and I believe it’s significantly harder to chargeback for fraud.
- posguy 5y agoNeither Square or Toast support PIN entry, whereas a Clover (made by First Data, the largest processing platform) and Ingenico/Verifone equipment have the proper hardware to ensure physical security while they encrypt the PIN in transit back to the bank your platform uses to process the transaction. PIN Debit transactions are less expensive to process since there is less risk, but it adds complexity (First Data has many different bank keyloads like Carlton 500, Wells 350, etc depending on the bank that is underwriting the chargeback risk for your account if your company folds).
- yoloyoloyoloa 5y agoStripe is not available in my country. So seeing articles like this just makes me annoyed.
- posguy 5y agoStripe makes none of the hardware that is currently available (the BBPOS Chipper™ 2X BT or Verifone P400). Not sure which processing platform they are riding atop of these days (perhaps Tsys?) but we maintain a separate First Data account and CardConnect integration since Stripe's support for certain BINs of business cards is lacking. Said banks expect a breakdown of what was taxable to be sent along with the transaction, otherwise the transaction will be declined. 2.7% + $0.05 per transaction is expensive for in person payments. We are averaging 1.2% (since debit is so cheap) for our First Data account, with next day funding (Stripe has variable delivery, sometimes taking up to a week).
- notwhereyouare 5y agoI’m seeing something similar with my company. Around 1-1.5% for our transactions with next day funding. Granted, we do pay a monthly fee that we wouldn’t with stripe. But with our volume, we are saving money
- Mandatum 5y agoThe best thing about Stripe was they made payment processors move. By showing them what good looks like, by showing them there's value in creating an easier, modern platform - their competitors are missing out on a massive market of SMB's that won't care enough for the 1.5% difference in costs. Which is admittedly crazy, but there's a lot of people out there making purchasing and implementation decisions that don't really care about the bottom line.
- danpalmer 5y agoFor an SMB, the 1.5% difference in costs could very reasonably be worth it over the extra time spent integrating with a different company. I work for an online retailer and with Stripe we spend almost no time working on our payments infrastructure because Stripe handles so much of it. That's worth quite a lot to us! Also bear in mind that the 1.5% difference might be on the sticker price, but Stripe fees are negotiable and closer to industry norms at scale.
- edwinwee 5y ago
- toomanybeersies 5y agoLooks exactly like a Square reader [1]. I wouldn't be surprised if they're from the same OEM, just with different firmware. [1] https://squareup.com/au/en/hardware/reader https://squareup.com/au/en/hardware/reader
- blackguardx 5y agoSquare designs all their own stuff. It looks similar because Square did a good job on their chip reader and because there are only so many ways you can make a chip reader without a keypad.
- runawaybottle 5y agoThat’s because Stripe is coming for their lunch.
- tdeck 5y agoCame here to post this, but as a former Square employee I can tell you they designed the "puck" reader from scratch years ago and contracted directly with the manufacturers. Stripe clearly copied the industrial design but I'd imagine the internals are different. It will be interesting to see how Stripe fares with this - in person payments are a very different ball game than online. PayPal and Amazon have tried with what seems to be limited success.
- wiskinator 5y agoI too am ex-Square, and in fact I worked on the firmware for the [https://squareup.com/us/en/hardware/contactless-chip-reader](Square https://squareup.com/us/en/hardware/contactless-chip-reader]... Reader for Contactless and Chip). All hardware design, from the external design through the mechanical and electrical is done in house. Not going to say that Stripe was uh... influenced by the design, but I do think that imitation is a nice form of flattery.
- adamrezich 5y agoI remember ordering a free one of those before I even had a smartphone, back when I only had an iPod touch! I must still have it in a drawer somewhere
- andrethegiant 5y agoIs it just me or has Stripe come out with like 4 new products in the last month?
- agnesv 5y agoNot just you, saw multiple of their new products on HN
- ibraheemdev 5y agoStripe Tax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27459712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27459712 - 6 days ago Stripe Identity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27502993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27502993 - 2 days ago Stripe Terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534884 - 3 hours ago Stripe Reader - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534156 - 2 hours ago
- andrethegiant 5y agoDamn -- 4 products in the last week.
- nikolay 5y agoTerminal is not a new product - only Stripe Reader is. The other readers are made by third parties.
- amelius 5y agoI wonder what 4 products they come up with next week.
- arthurcolle 5y agostill a bummer they got rid of their Stripe Crypto offering
- e28eta 5y ago
- pimlottc 5y agoHow is this different / better than existing readers, for example, the one from Square?
- ripberge 5y agoWould be great if it worked with their JavaScript SDK.
- djmashko2 5y ago(Hi! I work at Stripe on the JavaScript SDK) What types of features / compatibility are you looking for?
- joshstrange 5y agoI think they are just saying they wished this payment device worked with JS instead of just iOS/Android SDKs.
- sydthrowaway 5y agoFunny.. I always get confused between Stripe and Square. This won't help.
- vmception 5y agoBeat me to it and I get the impression that Square already has decent saturation in point of sale systems. Anyone that wasn't already vendor locked, or would have been cash only, is using Square already. Other the past year I've seen many leapfrog that straight to Venmo (haven't seen any vendors using Square's Cashapp personally). If you aren't in the system you're illiquid.
- eloisant 5y agoI don't really see what that bring compared to Stripe Terminal. Other than the fact that it doesn't have a keyboard for typing PIN code, which makes the chip reader useless for many cards (all of them in France at least).
- shadeslayer_ 5y agoAnother day, another Stripe product.
- bruce343434 5y agoEnough about stripe on this site already. Nice ad campaign.
- thawab 5y agoVisa has a product where businesses accept contactless payments on Any NFC-enabled Android phone[1]. I thought that might be something stripe go after instead of it's own hardware. Interested to know why. [1]https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.releaseId.17361.html https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...
- ThatPlayer 5y agoAccording to the video, it is end to end encrypted. So I could see it easier on PCI compliance if my phone never actually gets unencrypted credit card numbers.
- iamacyborg 5y agoYeah, P2PE seems to be the way things are going to ensure easy PCI compliance. https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/assessors_and_solutions/point_to_point_encryption_solutions?agree=true https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/assessors_and_solutions...
- iamacyborg 5y agoPIN on Glass is the endgame here, where any mobile device can effectively become a full featured payment terminal. From experience there's still a large mental barrier from folks willing to process a payment on an individual's mobile device though. Some degree of separate physical widget provides more trust to the transaction. /edit Neat, it looks like the company I used to work for finally released their offering to the market. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/dojo-becomes-first-to-go-live-with-magiccube-s-i-accept-product-as-its-contactless-softpos-pin-in-the-uk-and-ireland-not-constrained-by-contactless-cvm-limits-1030435265 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/dojo-becomes...
- barrkel 5y agoThe most common scenario in which I've made NFC payments to non-fixed points of sale is with street market stalls. Food trucks and the like. There, vendors would prefer to have a cheap NFC terminal to take card payments than have to leave a much more expensive phone within public reach to take payments. Opportunistic thieves wouldn't find much value in an NFC terminal even if it isn't very cheap.
- max_ 5y agoThis looks like a direct competition by to square
- swah 5y agoI don't remember ever "swiping" a card and I'm in Brazil - in there any other market than US for this?
- JshWright 5y agoYou say that as if "the US" isn't a big enough market to justify a product (swiping is pretty rare in the US as well though, EMV is pretty universal, and contactless is gaining ground quickly).
- swah 5y agoNope, just asking really.
- elric 5y agoThe last time I had to swipe a card in Belgium was in the 1990s. That was swipe-and-pin. At no point in my life have I ever had to sign a manual signature for a payment. Lately contactless payments (with and without pin) have been gaining in popularity. Most payment terminals now support them. I'm sure there's a market for Stripe Reader in the US, but I can't imagine there being one over here. Unless they're a lot cheaper than the current providers; or they start accepting a lot more payment methods.
- yitchelle 5y agoI signed on a LCD screen just a week ago in Germany for a card payment in Germany. It is surprising common here. However, contactless payments are gaining popularity very fast here. Actually contactless in general in Germany is rising very rapidly. I think this is due to hygiene fears.
- _fizz_buzz_ 5y agoAt Bauhaus? They always want me to sign.
- 5y ago
- bluewalt 5y agoIt's been almost 3 years Stripe Terminal has been announced and still no announcement for an actual release in Europe. As it was scheduled for the end of 2020 at the beginning, but "undefined" by now, it seems the Stripe teams encounter important difficulties. After 5 requests to support, I'm sure they don't want to communicate clearly for a deployment in Europe, and this is hence a no go to choose Stripe as a payment solution to develop stuff like modern POS software. What a pity, I like Stripe so much...
- edwinwee 5y agoWe’re working on Europe now and Terminal will available soon! Could you email me and I can keep you in the loop? edwin@stripe.com
- unwind 5y agoI (almost) can't believe they didn't name it the Stripe Swipe. On the other hand, being not in the US, swiping cards to read the actual magnetic stripe is really quaint and not something I do a lot of these days. And it would have been weird to name it for a minor/compatibility feature, I guess.
- eqbridges 5y agoNot to mention that “to swipe” has connotations of stealing as well.
- roelmore 5y agoTotally see the rationale for annexing this profit pool (offline / card-present transactions)....but this doesn't feel to me like it is aligned with "increasing the GDP of the internet" -- unless I am missing something. And I'd love to be missing something, because thinking about Stripe and their strategy is very fun.
- a-priori 5y agoThe best online merchants these days are about successfully mixing online and offline experiences. The term of art here, if you want to Google it, is 'omnichannel': the idea that their experience with the merchant should seamlessly span all the channels (online storefront, brick and mortar storefront, support channels, etc.). One major use case for Stripe Reader would be as a payment solution for omnichannel merchants. Omnichannel commerce is a product of the Internet, and specifically an Internet that's capable of supporting commerce, because a business could not operate this way without it. Seen through that lens, Stripe is "increasing the GDP of the Internet" here. Though, I admit, this is starting to stretch the limits of how much you can consider "the Internet" being a separate place.
- herbturbo 5y agoI'm currently implementing Stripe Terminal functionality for an iOS project using the BBPOS Chipper. Does this Stripe hardware do anything that the Chipper doesn't? Or are they simply moving away from generic looking 3rd party hardware?
- edwinwee 5y agoGreat to hear! BBPOS is perfect for iOS projects. Besides the look, Stripe Reader works a bit differently—it can be docked on a counter or mounted on iPad/iPhone.
- rjmunro 5y agoHow can I check the amount if there is no screen on the device?
- edwinwee 5y agoIt's designed to be integrated with a mobile app via our Terminal SDKs (https://stripe.com/docs/terminal/sdk/ios https://stripe.com/docs/terminal/sdk/ios).
- rjmunro 5y agoHow do I know that the device is really running your mobile app, not a copycat app and the real app is running on a device under the table or elsewhere? Seems like an easy thing to fake.
- toomanybeersies 5y agoBy the same reason you know you're not going to get mugged by the cashier, because it's illegal.