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The post is spot on. My initial attraction to Stripe was because of a reason mentioned in the post: not wanting to redirect or otherwise interrupt the normal o

The post is spot on. My initial attraction to Stripe was because of a reason mentioned in the post: not wanting to redirect or otherwise interrupt the normal order process of my site with another company's (branded) checkout form just to handle credit card payments. The other reason for initial attraction was of course their elegant API, which was very refreshing to see after having dealt with Intuit's QBMS API (shudder) in the past. Stripe really sealed the deal though when I tweeted them to ask my first question about signup and one of the co-founders reached out to me. Since then, I've been in contact to share my feedback or ask other questions, and the quality and timing of their responses is one of the best I've ever seen. When a customer of ours had an issue placing his order, I wrote Stripe to see if they could offer any insight as to what errors they might be seeing on their end. While the error was unrelated to Stripe itself, they were so awesome that they actually took the initiative to browse through our checkout page and point out the spot that they thought to be the issue. A company that stands beside you when debugging your checkout page, maintaining swift response times on an issue that isn't even theirs? That's customer support. I probably sound like I'm gushing right now, but I just have mad respect for this company. The product isn't the only thing that's top notch, the people behind it rock too.

saurik 15y ago
You almost always get amazing customer support from early stage companies. I'm certain people got amazing customer support from people high up at PayPal when it was just starting. You cannot judge a company on whether a co-founder responds to you on Twitter in a short period of time, and if you did, you should probably judge it negatively: I would wonder what was wrong with PayPal if someone that high up had enough time to be sitting around checking Twitter. (edit: I typed this over too long a period of time, and some of this post appeared after I had already submitted a draft with the above paragraph that received some upvotes, so I've now edited again to add this edit paragraph to explain that everything after this point was added after I received said upvotes. ;P) Also, I'm very curious about their API... I didn't see much information on chargebacks. Processors like Litle & Co make it very easy to fully automate the chargeback representment flow. PayPal, incidentally, does /not/ provide this either, but they do have APIs that let you (with only some hoops to get through bugs that I've filed with them, and we may see fixed fairly soon) correlate and track all of the chargebacks and how they relate to your transactions. Yet, when Stripe first started appearing on Hacker News, their website seemed to have almost no information on chargebacks. I asked after this, and the page "appeared" with an apology that it was supposedly there but not linked, but it then had very little information on it. I still (checking again now) see no information on how I'd determine /which/ transactions had chargebacks automatically: they seem to seriously rely on sending an e-mail? Why does their API page never once mention the word "chargeback"?
- michaelschade 15y ago
  That's somewhat a fair point, but I'll disagree. In that instance, the co-founder replied, but I've heard from a number of Stripe's other employees since then, and in every case the customer support has been wonderful. Perhaps that's solely because they are still a startup, but given what I know now about the people themselves, I don't believe that to be the case. I don't mean my original comment to suggest that the co-founder will always be the one to respond to a tweet as Stripe grows, but I do suspect that their standards for customer service will remain high, and someone in the company will give a quick and quality response. That said, with Stripe, I believe that–even if they aren't the ones responding to every tweet, which is admittedly much to ask–the co-founders will continue to have an eye on what people are saying about them and interact appropriately, not wall themselves off. Edit to reflect your edit: I remember that HN thread where you brought up chargebacks. For anyone interested, they discuss how they handle chargebacks here: https://stripe.com/help/chargebacks https://stripe.com/help/chargebacks I can't attest as to why they manage chargebacks that way, and will not speculate beyond the note that they are still new and seem to be developing their service in response to customer feedback and perceived needs. For you, or anyone else who might be interested in requesting features regarding chargebacks or any other aspect of their service, I highly recommend writing in: support@stripe.com or https://stripe.com/help/contact https://stripe.com/help/contact. As I mentioned, they're very responsive, and seem to love the feedback.
  - saurik 15y ago
    I am curious if you've ever actually called PayPal. I have received nothing but high quality support from them. You can call them throughout most of the working day (until 8pm PST, I believe), and they seem to have somewhat knowledgable engineers available at that tech tier. They also have a merchant technical support site that seemingly no one knows about where you can often get answers in the middle of the night (I often get responses back at 12:30). If you are even reasonably sized you can also ask for a dedicated account manager: I have the cell phone number of someone at PayPal whose job it is to find me answers to problems I have. Though, I cannot say PayPal is perfect. I have run into a bunch of annoying issues correlating settlements (bugs filed recently, will be curious to see if they get fixed), and their pricing is not the best that is out there (although is still better than Stripe). I am curious if you've looked into any alternatives. I've spent the last few days talking to Litle & Co, and I must say that the people there /love/ talking to you about payments... their booth at ad:tech was the most enjoyable conversation I've had about payments in a while, and I got to spend another half hour on the phone with them yesterday learning more about how bank ACH settlement works. Edit to reflect your edit ;P That is the page I just had gone and reviewed now. It still seems incredibly manual. I would not feel comfortable running a site at scale where I'm dealing with receiving e-mails in an undocumented (probably designed-for-humans) format as my only source of notifications for chargebacks. :( It is often these "at scale" issues that are seemingly not handled by them; example: per their API page, Stripe does not resend webhooks if there is an error in the response... doesn't this make them useless to rely on? Am I required to sit around and poll my transactions to feel 100% certain that I didn't miss something because my load balancer accidentally gave them a 503 during some traffic spike? :(
powertower 15y ago
> not wanting to redirect or otherwise interrupt the normal order process of my site with another company's (branded) checkout form just to handle credit card payments. That's a restriction only for the free accounts. With the Pro account ($30/month) you use the API and your customers never leave your site.
- michaelschade 15y ago
  Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. Edit: I was looking at it more and, as MichaelGG pointed out, I think it still means that you have to handle the credit card on your server and be PCI compliant.
- MichaelGG 15y ago
  But doesn't that API require you to submit the card number to them from your server and hence makes you have to do a ton of PCI compliance work?
  - aysar 15y ago
    Would like to know more about this- i thought the whole point of it was that you didn't have to deal with PCI... Edit: i just checked; https://www.paypal.com/pcicompliance https://www.paypal.com/pcicompliance It looks like Paypal takes care of PCI compliance only if you use; PayPal Website Payments Standard, Email Payments, or Payflow Link. Otherwise you're on your own.
    - dangrossman 15y ago
      It's common sense once you boil it down to this: If someone's credit card number hits your server at any time, you are liable for a proper level of care for that information. The proper level of care in this case is set by the payment industry in the form of PCIDSS (the Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standards). So setups where the data goes through you, you're on the hook. Where you're sending someone to an external site to pay, in a frame or otherwise, then you're not. A quick glance at the implementation guide for any payment system, present or future, is enough to know who's on the hook for PCIDSS just by seeing whether the card number's gonna get POSTed to your server or someone else's.
ra 15y ago
If only Stripe were available in other jurisdictions. Stripe, please come to Australia!
- decadentcactus 15y ago
  Doubleplusupvote on this one. Although I'm wondering if I can still use it if incorporated in the US.
  - phatbyte 15y ago
    No you can't unfortunately, you must have a US bank account :( I tried that already
- michaelschade 15y ago
  I hear it's something that they're working on. You can sign up at https://stripe.com/global https://stripe.com/global to be notified when they do come to your country. I bet that also gives them a priority list.
bittermang 15y ago
> maintaining swift response times on an issue that isn't even theirs? But the problem is theirs. Their site says it all: "No setup fees, no monthly fees, no card storage fees, no hidden costs: you only get charged when you earn money." Therefore, if you're having an issue with your checkout form and their API, it very much is their problem. You're not able to process payments, so you're not able to get paid. Because you're not getting paid, they're not getting paid.
- michaelschade 15y ago
  That's a huge stretch. It would be like claiming that an engineer at Google should email me whenever my website goes down and help me fix it because, if my website is down, then it's one less website in their index, and they need sites in their index in order to sell advertising. To make sure that I'm clear: the problem was entirely unrelated to Stripe; it had to do with a different component of my site.
- gtaylor 15y ago
  I don't even think the "Why?" of good support matters, from our (the user's) concern, as long as the support is there and fast. Technically, PayPal depends on people sending payments through them to draw profit, as well, but that didn't get us good support. The big takeaway from the top of this thread is: Stripe's support was fast, even when it wasn't necessarily their service that was causing the issue. Why they came to the rescue fast doesn't really matter.

saurik 15y ago

You almost always get amazing customer support from early stage companies. I'm certain people got amazing customer support from people high up at PayPal when it was just starting. You cannot judge a company on whether a co-founder responds to you on Twitter in a short period of time, and if you did, you should probably judge it negatively: I would wonder what was wrong with PayPal if someone that high up had enough time to be sitting around checking Twitter. (edit: I typed this over too long a period of time, and some of this post appeared after I had already submitted a draft with the above paragraph that received some upvotes, so I've now edited again to add this edit paragraph to explain that everything after this point was added after I received said upvotes. ;P) Also, I'm very curious about their API... I didn't see much information on chargebacks. Processors like Litle & Co make it very easy to fully automate the chargeback representment flow. PayPal, incidentally, does /not/ provide this either, but they do have APIs that let you (with only some hoops to get through bugs that I've filed with them, and we may see fixed fairly soon) correlate and track all of the chargebacks and how they relate to your transactions. Yet, when Stripe first started appearing on Hacker News, their website seemed to have almost no information on chargebacks. I asked after this, and the page "appeared" with an apology that it was supposedly there but not linked, but it then had very little information on it. I still (checking again now) see no information on how I'd determine /which/ transactions had chargebacks automatically: they seem to seriously rely on sending an e-mail? Why does their API page never once mention the word "chargeback"?

michaelschade 15y ago
That's somewhat a fair point, but I'll disagree. In that instance, the co-founder replied, but I've heard from a number of Stripe's other employees since then, and in every case the customer support has been wonderful. Perhaps that's solely because they are still a startup, but given what I know now about the people themselves, I don't believe that to be the case. I don't mean my original comment to suggest that the co-founder will always be the one to respond to a tweet as Stripe grows, but I do suspect that their standards for customer service will remain high, and someone in the company will give a quick and quality response. That said, with Stripe, I believe that–even if they aren't the ones responding to every tweet, which is admittedly much to ask–the co-founders will continue to have an eye on what people are saying about them and interact appropriately, not wall themselves off. Edit to reflect your edit: I remember that HN thread where you brought up chargebacks. For anyone interested, they discuss how they handle chargebacks here: https://stripe.com/help/chargebacks https://stripe.com/help/chargebacks I can't attest as to why they manage chargebacks that way, and will not speculate beyond the note that they are still new and seem to be developing their service in response to customer feedback and perceived needs. For you, or anyone else who might be interested in requesting features regarding chargebacks or any other aspect of their service, I highly recommend writing in: support@stripe.com or https://stripe.com/help/contact https://stripe.com/help/contact. As I mentioned, they're very responsive, and seem to love the feedback.
- saurik 15y ago
  I am curious if you've ever actually called PayPal. I have received nothing but high quality support from them. You can call them throughout most of the working day (until 8pm PST, I believe), and they seem to have somewhat knowledgable engineers available at that tech tier. They also have a merchant technical support site that seemingly no one knows about where you can often get answers in the middle of the night (I often get responses back at 12:30). If you are even reasonably sized you can also ask for a dedicated account manager: I have the cell phone number of someone at PayPal whose job it is to find me answers to problems I have. Though, I cannot say PayPal is perfect. I have run into a bunch of annoying issues correlating settlements (bugs filed recently, will be curious to see if they get fixed), and their pricing is not the best that is out there (although is still better than Stripe). I am curious if you've looked into any alternatives. I've spent the last few days talking to Litle & Co, and I must say that the people there /love/ talking to you about payments... their booth at ad:tech was the most enjoyable conversation I've had about payments in a while, and I got to spend another half hour on the phone with them yesterday learning more about how bank ACH settlement works. Edit to reflect your edit ;P That is the page I just had gone and reviewed now. It still seems incredibly manual. I would not feel comfortable running a site at scale where I'm dealing with receiving e-mails in an undocumented (probably designed-for-humans) format as my only source of notifications for chargebacks. :( It is often these "at scale" issues that are seemingly not handled by them; example: per their API page, Stripe does not resend webhooks if there is an error in the response... doesn't this make them useless to rely on? Am I required to sit around and poll my transactions to feel 100% certain that I didn't miss something because my load balancer accidentally gave them a 503 during some traffic spike? :(

powertower 15y ago

> not wanting to redirect or otherwise interrupt the normal order process of my site with another company's (branded) checkout form just to handle credit card payments. That's a restriction only for the free accounts. With the Pro account ($30/month) you use the API and your customers never leave your site.

michaelschade 15y ago
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. Edit: I was looking at it more and, as MichaelGG pointed out, I think it still means that you have to handle the credit card on your server and be PCI compliant.
MichaelGG 15y ago
But doesn't that API require you to submit the card number to them from your server and hence makes you have to do a ton of PCI compliance work?
- aysar 15y ago
  Would like to know more about this- i thought the whole point of it was that you didn't have to deal with PCI... Edit: i just checked; https://www.paypal.com/pcicompliance https://www.paypal.com/pcicompliance It looks like Paypal takes care of PCI compliance only if you use; PayPal Website Payments Standard, Email Payments, or Payflow Link. Otherwise you're on your own.
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    It's common sense once you boil it down to this: If someone's credit card number hits your server at any time, you are liable for a proper level of care for that information. The proper level of care in this case is set by the payment industry in the form of PCIDSS (the Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standards). So setups where the data goes through you, you're on the hook. Where you're sending someone to an external site to pay, in a frame or otherwise, then you're not. A quick glance at the implementation guide for any payment system, present or future, is enough to know who's on the hook for PCIDSS just by seeing whether the card number's gonna get POSTed to your server or someone else's.

ra 15y ago

If only Stripe were available in other jurisdictions. Stripe, please come to Australia!

decadentcactus 15y ago
Doubleplusupvote on this one. Although I'm wondering if I can still use it if incorporated in the US.
- phatbyte 15y ago
  No you can't unfortunately, you must have a US bank account :( I tried that already
michaelschade 15y ago
I hear it's something that they're working on. You can sign up at https://stripe.com/global https://stripe.com/global to be notified when they do come to your country. I bet that also gives them a priority list.

bittermang 15y ago

> maintaining swift response times on an issue that isn't even theirs? But the problem is theirs. Their site says it all: "No setup fees, no monthly fees, no card storage fees, no hidden costs: you only get charged when you earn money." Therefore, if you're having an issue with your checkout form and their API, it very much is their problem. You're not able to process payments, so you're not able to get paid. Because you're not getting paid, they're not getting paid.

michaelschade 15y ago
That's a huge stretch. It would be like claiming that an engineer at Google should email me whenever my website goes down and help me fix it because, if my website is down, then it's one less website in their index, and they need sites in their index in order to sell advertising. To make sure that I'm clear: the problem was entirely unrelated to Stripe; it had to do with a different component of my site.
gtaylor 15y ago
I don't even think the "Why?" of good support matters, from our (the user's) concern, as long as the support is there and fast. Technically, PayPal depends on people sending payments through them to draw profit, as well, but that didn't get us good support. The big takeaway from the top of this thread is: Stripe's support was fast, even when it wasn't necessarily their service that was causing the issue. Why they came to the rescue fast doesn't really matter.