6 ms·

Are processors like Square any better?

icelancer 4y ago
Possibly. I'm still angry at Square because I emailed them repeatedly 10+ years ago telling them to add gateway processing (which they didn't have), and they took forever. Stripe's business shouldn't even exist. Square had a head start and should have just made a payment gateway/API and eaten their lunch. They absolutely had an internal API, quite obviously, so not productizing it and letting a whole new business in Stripe come around and launch that product and crush them was absurd. I've used Square's on-premises processing for minor stuff like a side business of mine, but nothing too serious. Their fees aren't too good; they're comparable to Stripe but Stripe's ecosystem for developers is far better. If/when we switch, we'll probably just go to a bare bones payment processor that is much cheaper than Stripe with less support.
- GingerMidas 4y ago
  That's pretty funny in hindsight. > If/when we switch, we'll probably just go to a bare bones payment processor that is much cheaper than Stripe with less support. Also what we're considering right about now
  - icelancer 4y ago
    Even I can see the humor in it. You are right! I hate to switch off Stripe, but the premium I'm paying is theoretically for better support and developer-friendly actions. I'm not getting that right now, so... why am I paying a premium? Years ago their customer service slashed our rates because of our increased volume and even pc himself reached out to me about a technical matter (and the company was not small). Over the last year the customer service has gone to complete shit in our experience and the rates are still uncompetitively high. Frustrating.
    - WillPostForFood 4y ago
      Who are you looking at switching to? I'm also starting to evaluate alternatives to Stripe.
      - icelancer 4y ago
        I don't want to drop any names here because we're in the exploratory phase, haven't even started negotiations with anyone yet. But there are alternatives that are quite a bit cheaper that offer fewer frills. Humorously enough we needed a sales tax solution, and Stripe Tax is vastly outgunned by its competitors, possibly leading to the layoffs in its department. It is a significantly inferior product to Avalara, which is the leading product in the space.
        NickRead 4y ago
        you should definitely check out the merchant of record model. Funnily enough, I work in the payments space and this is a use case we see all the time - as businesses start scale and hit tax thresholds, they start implementing even more tools to handle this on top of their existing payment stack. Instead, perhaps consider a billing platform that handles payments, subscriptions and sales tax all in one. With the merchant of record model, you remove the need to worry about sales tax altogether, the payment provider does so on your behalf (including liability if there is a miscalculation). Shoot me an email if you want any more info nick.read @paddle.com, happy to provide more info
      - PRLDRS 4y ago
        There are a lot of alternatives: Checkout.com, Adyen, are the most tech forward I’ve found.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - sneakymichael 4y ago
      Anecdotally: I've been looking to get answers from Stripe, about fees-related questions that either make my proposed use viable or unviable, and I've received nothing but copied & pasted email replies, a week+ later (or not at all), which essentially ignore what I've asked. Incredibly frustrating. When I mention the experience to friends, they joke that I have Stockholm Syndrome; to want to continue pursuing them, despite their complete disregard.
      - icelancer 4y ago
        Yeah that's sad. I asked for a fee reduction 2 years into our relationship, and they said no because of XYZ but if we hit revenue targets ABC that they'd re-evaluate. About a year later, we hit revenue targets ABC, I waited a month (just for systems to catch up) and emailed them. We had a good discussion about a rate cut and they knocked their fees down as they promised. I emailed in 3-4 years after that and asked for a rate cut as our revenues had gone up by about 10x, and they said they could not, but provided explanations on why because of high international processing, high AMEX/Discover processing, etc. Totally cool, I understood that and appreciated the detailed email. Wasn't disappointed at all. I tried back a year or so later when our revenues shot up but got the same message more or less, but still personalized. Again, I had to try, but also, not unhappy. And since all of those excellent customer service responses - many of which did not go my way, which is not how I rate interactions - it's been awful. The corporate card team refuses to answer questions or even apologize for their insane limit cuts. They presumably are hiding behind bullshit KYC/AML justifications for their actions or protecting their algorithmic decisions in order to provide us zero actionable customer support with no personalization. It's embarrassing.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- deepstack 4y ago
  Yeah that's tech for you! E4X was a ES standard, but Mozilla dropped it in 2014, then FB pick it and made JSX and now that is the defacto "Front-End" development.
ecommerceguy 4y ago
Better in what way? I personally would never use a Square product (I feel the entire org has major ethical issues) however other players in this space include Braintree, Amazon Payments and a host of 3rd parties - although 3rd parties are discontinuing internet based direct gateway access such as CardConnect.
- mtrpcic 4y ago
  I'm curious what ethical issues you have with Square, but are fine with Amazon Payments.
- djbusby 4y ago
  PayPal owns BrainTree now
- insane_dreamer 4y ago
  Square has more ethical issues than Amazon?
tomnipotent 4y ago
You're better off with Adyen.
- sneakymichael 4y ago
  Their offering perfectly fit the bill for what we needed, but they turned us away; citing a requirement of transacting €5M per year, despite us needing a payment handler /for launch/.
  - lawgimenez 4y ago
    That’s sad. We integrated Adyen like 5-6 years ago and this requirement was nowhere to be found. All I remember was their SDKs are difficult to integrate.
- lovingCranberry 4y ago
  OT: I just went through Adyen's prohibited businesses. Why does every major payment processor prohibit vendors of adult toys from using their payment services? I mean, those aren't even high risk businesses. Credit card fraud usually happens when you offer high priced electronics. Chargebacks usually happen when you sell digital goods like templates, ebooks, videos etc.
  - cyral 4y ago
    You need a merchant account from a high-risk processor, combined with a generic gateway like Authorize.Net. (Don't use their built in processor) The all in one solutions like Stripe or Adyen are convenient but they aren't what high-risk industries need.
    - lovingCranberry 4y ago
      Yes, but how are adult toy sellers "high risk"?
      - bsder 4y ago
rkunde 4y ago
No, neither for merchants nor for developers.

Possibly. I'm still angry at Square because I emailed them repeatedly 10+ years ago telling them to add gateway processing (which they didn't have), and they took forever. Stripe's business shouldn't even exist. Square had a head start and should have just made a payment gateway/API and eaten their lunch. They absolutely had an internal API, quite obviously, so not productizing it and letting a whole new business in Stripe come around and launch that product and crush them was absurd. I've used Square's on-premises processing for minor stuff like a side business of mine, but nothing too serious. Their fees aren't too good; they're comparable to Stripe but Stripe's ecosystem for developers is far better. If/when we switch, we'll probably just go to a bare bones payment processor that is much cheaper than Stripe with less support.

GingerMidas 4y ago
That's pretty funny in hindsight. > If/when we switch, we'll probably just go to a bare bones payment processor that is much cheaper than Stripe with less support. Also what we're considering right about now
- icelancer 4y ago
  Even I can see the humor in it. You are right! I hate to switch off Stripe, but the premium I'm paying is theoretically for better support and developer-friendly actions. I'm not getting that right now, so... why am I paying a premium? Years ago their customer service slashed our rates because of our increased volume and even pc himself reached out to me about a technical matter (and the company was not small). Over the last year the customer service has gone to complete shit in our experience and the rates are still uncompetitively high. Frustrating.
  - WillPostForFood 4y ago
    Who are you looking at switching to? I'm also starting to evaluate alternatives to Stripe.
    - icelancer 4y ago
      I don't want to drop any names here because we're in the exploratory phase, haven't even started negotiations with anyone yet. But there are alternatives that are quite a bit cheaper that offer fewer frills. Humorously enough we needed a sales tax solution, and Stripe Tax is vastly outgunned by its competitors, possibly leading to the layoffs in its department. It is a significantly inferior product to Avalara, which is the leading product in the space.
      - NickRead 4y ago
        you should definitely check out the merchant of record model. Funnily enough, I work in the payments space and this is a use case we see all the time - as businesses start scale and hit tax thresholds, they start implementing even more tools to handle this on top of their existing payment stack. Instead, perhaps consider a billing platform that handles payments, subscriptions and sales tax all in one. With the merchant of record model, you remove the need to worry about sales tax altogether, the payment provider does so on your behalf (including liability if there is a miscalculation). Shoot me an email if you want any more info nick.read @paddle.com, happy to provide more info
    - PRLDRS 4y ago
      There are a lot of alternatives: Checkout.com, Adyen, are the most tech forward I’ve found.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - sneakymichael 4y ago
    Anecdotally: I've been looking to get answers from Stripe, about fees-related questions that either make my proposed use viable or unviable, and I've received nothing but copied & pasted email replies, a week+ later (or not at all), which essentially ignore what I've asked. Incredibly frustrating. When I mention the experience to friends, they joke that I have Stockholm Syndrome; to want to continue pursuing them, despite their complete disregard.
    - icelancer 4y ago
      Yeah that's sad. I asked for a fee reduction 2 years into our relationship, and they said no because of XYZ but if we hit revenue targets ABC that they'd re-evaluate. About a year later, we hit revenue targets ABC, I waited a month (just for systems to catch up) and emailed them. We had a good discussion about a rate cut and they knocked their fees down as they promised. I emailed in 3-4 years after that and asked for a rate cut as our revenues had gone up by about 10x, and they said they could not, but provided explanations on why because of high international processing, high AMEX/Discover processing, etc. Totally cool, I understood that and appreciated the detailed email. Wasn't disappointed at all. I tried back a year or so later when our revenues shot up but got the same message more or less, but still personalized. Again, I had to try, but also, not unhappy. And since all of those excellent customer service responses - many of which did not go my way, which is not how I rate interactions - it's been awful. The corporate card team refuses to answer questions or even apologize for their insane limit cuts. They presumably are hiding behind bullshit KYC/AML justifications for their actions or protecting their algorithmic decisions in order to provide us zero actionable customer support with no personalization. It's embarrassing.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
deepstack 4y ago
Yeah that's tech for you! E4X was a ES standard, but Mozilla dropped it in 2014, then FB pick it and made JSX and now that is the defacto "Front-End" development.

ecommerceguy 4y ago

Better in what way? I personally would never use a Square product (I feel the entire org has major ethical issues) however other players in this space include Braintree, Amazon Payments and a host of 3rd parties - although 3rd parties are discontinuing internet based direct gateway access such as CardConnect.

mtrpcic 4y ago
I'm curious what ethical issues you have with Square, but are fine with Amazon Payments.
djbusby 4y ago
PayPal owns BrainTree now
insane_dreamer 4y ago
Square has more ethical issues than Amazon?

tomnipotent 4y ago

You're better off with Adyen.

sneakymichael 4y ago
Their offering perfectly fit the bill for what we needed, but they turned us away; citing a requirement of transacting €5M per year, despite us needing a payment handler /for launch/.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  That’s sad. We integrated Adyen like 5-6 years ago and this requirement was nowhere to be found. All I remember was their SDKs are difficult to integrate.
lovingCranberry 4y ago
OT: I just went through Adyen's prohibited businesses. Why does every major payment processor prohibit vendors of adult toys from using their payment services? I mean, those aren't even high risk businesses. Credit card fraud usually happens when you offer high priced electronics. Chargebacks usually happen when you sell digital goods like templates, ebooks, videos etc.
- cyral 4y ago
  You need a merchant account from a high-risk processor, combined with a generic gateway like Authorize.Net. (Don't use their built in processor) The all in one solutions like Stripe or Adyen are convenient but they aren't what high-risk industries need.
  - lovingCranberry 4y ago
    Yes, but how are adult toy sellers "high risk"?
    - bsder 4y ago

rkunde 4y ago

No, neither for merchants nor for developers.