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Show HN: List of Stripe Alternatives

122 points by NetOpWibby 4y ago

Seems like every time there's a negative Stripe story on here, the inevitable question, "any alternatives?" gets asked. Hell, I was tempted to ask myself. Instead, I decided to search hn.algolia.com to see for myself what others have recommended in the past. Might as well share the list with y'all, make it meta. -- 2Checkout | https://www.2checkout.com Adyen | https://www.adyen.com Amazon Pay | https://pay.amazon.com Authorize.net | https://www.authorize.net Balance | https://www.getbalance.com Braintree | https://www.braintreepayments.com ChargeBee | https://www.chargebee.com Chargify | https://www.chargify.com Checkout.com | https://www.checkout.com DigitalRiver | https://www.digitalriver.com Dwolla | https://www.dwolla.com FastSpring | https://fastspring.com GoCardless | https://gocardless.com MangoPay | https://www.mangopay.com Mollie | https://www.mollie.com Opayo (previously SagePay) | https://www.opayo.co.uk Paddle | https://www.paddle.com Payoneer | https://www.payoneer.com PayPal | https://www.paypal.com Qonto | https://qonto.com/en Spreedly | https://www.spreedly.com Square | https://squareup.com Verifone | https://www.verifone.com/en/us White | https://whitepayments.com -- Observations from my data collection: Sassy appears to have been acquired by FastSpring. Balanced Payments apparently went under but I found another payment service called "Balance" instead. Paymill is defunct but their Github org has a bunch of code. No idea what happened to Spryng Payments but Spryng still exists. It's also worth mentioning that a true "Stripe alternative" simply does not exist. No one does everything they do and I'm pretty sure most services are lacking in the developer documentation department. Still, having options is always great.

NetOpWibby 4y ago
Oh, forgot to mention that 2Checkout and Verifone are the same product but still have different sites for some reason. Or at the very least, Verifone owns 2Checkout.
zzz345345 4y ago
Any of those support crypto and credit card? I added Coinbase commerce to my site as an option but unfortunately it doesnt support Monero.
- colesantiago 4y ago
  Why would Coinbase or any other exchange ever support Monero? It's only usecase is illegitimate payments, the risk isn't worth Coinbase adding it. In fact, please don't consider using crypto at all, it has no usecase other than speculation and you are likely to lose money due to volatility. Consider bank transfer instead.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    > Consider bank transfer instead. That stuff is a nightmare. I've dealt with both USD and cryptocurrency payouts and can see why some legitimate businesses would prefer the latter.
- donatzsky 4y ago
  Skrill (not on the list, but seems to be in the same space as PayPal) has some crypto features. No idea about the details, since I just saw it mentioned on the website, but didn't go further.
- NetOpWibby 4y ago
  You should just use something like OpenNode and accept Bitcoin. - https://www.opennode.com https://www.opennode.com
pyronite 4y ago
We're excited to see how the open-source Lago (https://www.getlago.com/ https://www.getlago.com/) develops. Does anyone here have experience working with it?
- NetOpWibby 4y ago
  AFAICT they don't process payments.
- eps 4y ago
  Who are "we"?
efortis 4y ago
- Visa | https://developer.visa.com https://developer.visa.com - Masterpass by Mastercard | https://masterpass.com https://masterpass.com
- NetOpWibby 4y ago
  From Visa's site: > Visa Checkout does not accept direct merchant connections. You will need to work with a partner to integrate Visa Checkout into your solution. You can find Partners to integrate with Visa Checkout here. Masterpass looks like it operates similarly.
paxys 4y ago
While this is a good list of companies that operate roughly in the same space as Stripe, a more useful one for the intended audience would be finding replacements for the specific Stripe services/APIs they are using. It's not as simple as saying "just switch from Stripe to PayPal/Square". Most of these companies specialize in a specific problem with very little overlap with the rest. Stripe doesn't have a real 1:1 competitor.
- NetOpWibby 4y ago
  We're back to patchwork quilting the services we need...this is the sixth day of 2023. I wonder what enterprising HN reader is gonna take up the mantle to embark on building a true alternative.
huhtenberg 4y ago
2Checkout, DigitalRiver, FastSpring, Paddle and Payoneer used to be reasonably popular in "old-school" shareware circles. These aren't payment processors. They all come from pre-Stripe times and they are so-called "registration services". These are effectively resellers, providing "full service" that includes order processing, customer callbacks (fraud detection), distribution of activation codes, first line of support for licensing inquiries, etc. -- all the things that used to be complicated in the era when people ordered by phone, fax and email, paid with cheques and the software was licensed fully offline using either procedurally-generated codes or codes hardcoded into executables. They all are still stuck there - rigid, clunky, buggy and, above all, unnecessary expensive. These aren't Stripe alternatives. These are dinosaurs desperately clinging to life.
- transitivebs 4y ago
  Paddle has a pretty legit API from my experience. Agree on the other ones for sure.
- dividuum 4y ago
  Cannot speak for the others, but paddle also does handle all tax related issues for you. That can quickly get pretty complicated if you have international customers.
- phphphphp 4y ago
  I have no relationship to Paddle but they deserve defending, as they’re absolutely not a “dinosaur clinging to life” and are in fact a very valuable player given the changing regulatory and tax landscape across the world. The phrase to use to describe Paddle is “merchant of record” and it’s more valuable today than it was a few years ago, and it’s more valuable than Stripe in certain circumstances. There are many scenarios in which a business selling digital services would have a rational reason to choose Paddle over Stripe today. Paddle may have started out as you describe but that’s not what they are today. Personally, I’d argue they’ve done a better job innovating in their niche than Stripe has.
  - j45 4y ago
hot_gril 4y ago
Some of these are viable payment processors, but if you're trying to run anything vaguely like a market, it's hard to replace Stripe. I've tried. In detail, something that handles both credit card payments from users and ACH payouts to users, possibly with some substitutions like debit instead of credit or wire instead of ACH. Ideally allowing user-to-user payments without having to float the money yourself. Stripe is handling some big regulatory hurdles for you, like KYC.
NetOpWibby 4y ago
Personally, I'm looking into Checkout and Mollie (hope they're not UK-only) and will use OpenNode as my crypto payment provider.
AlexITC 4y ago
I investigated a bit about this and found Square promising because it allows creating a link to allow customers engage in a subscription, which is super helpful to not code such a flow when validating a product. I don't know whether Paddle supports this but a customer is super happy with them, it was also super simple to integrate from the developer side. Thanks for the list.
Geee 4y ago
Not really a Stripe alternative - but if you run out of alternatives, there's always Bitcoin. That is, if you want to accept payments without using any third-party service. I wish more people implemented Bitcoin (Lightning) payments on their websites. I always pay with Bitcoin when there's an option; simply because it's easier and faster, compared to typing in my CC info and 2FAing it with my bank app. Bitcoin requires just scanning a QR code with a mobile wallet. BTCPay Server[0] is the most popular (I think) self-hosted software for accepting Bitcoin payments. It's also available as a hosted version. [0] https://btcpayserver.org https://btcpayserver.org
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  Most of our customers want to pay by credit card, so no.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  For some people this might imply a certain opinion from the business that may turn them off. It’s a little like if the cashier at the store is wearing a MAGA hat. Certainly not that extreme for most, but it would make me think twice about if this is a company that I want to buy from.
  - Geee 4y ago
    For small websites, it may just be an easy and practical technological solution, sparing the need to integrate with third-party services or platforms. I'm not sure why you see it as a negative, but for the merchant it's just another payment gateway. Also, in some countries these payment services might not be so readily available, and Bitcoin might be the only solution for accepting payments globally. Also, I think it's quite a small group of people who associate Bitcoin with something negative. Some people might relate it to drugs, but that is really based only on the early days of bitcoin use and hasn't been the main use case for years. For 99% of people it's an investment, and some of these also use it for payments whenever it's possible.
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  We've accepted Bitcoin as payment on our website for years. Not a single customer has chosen that option.
AussieWog93 4y ago
I use these guys (based in Australia): https://pinpayments.com/ https://pinpayments.com/ Excellent support, and no bullshit. It really as simple as creating an account, installing the plugin on my website then collecting payments.
- NetOpWibby 4y ago
  Ah, they seem to only serve Australia and New Zealand. scrolls to footer Oh, their parent company is Checkout.com!
  - llagerlof 4y ago
    checkout.com is bad?
    - NetOpWibby 4y ago
      Nope, they're one of the alternatives in the OP.
folli 4y ago
I'm specifically looking for a payment provider handling SaaS subscriptions (monthly/annually). Any recommendations?
alberth 4y ago
Stripe is the only processor I’m aware of that is self-service and you can be accepting payments within minutes. But that comes with a major downside, you don’t actually get a merchant account. If having a merchant account is important to you, Adyen is pretty great.
1xdevloper 4y ago
Lemon Squeezy [1] is another great option. I use it on my site RemoteFriendly. They are take 5% and handle all the tax, fraud stuff for you as a merchant of record. [1] https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/ https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/
screamingninja 4y ago
Is there an inclusion criteria for this list? You listed PayPal as an alternative. I cannot imagine recommending Paypal to someone complaining about Stripe- arguably there are more complaints on HN about Paypal than Stripe!
- NetOpWibby 4y ago
  > I decided to search hn.algolia.com to see for myself what others have recommended in the past.
ju 4y ago
SumUp | https://sumup.com/ https://sumup.com/
- NetOpWibby 4y ago
  I don't think PoS fits the bill...
  - mbirth 4y ago
    It has an API for online payments: https://developer.sumup.com/docs/online-payments/introduction/getting-started/ https://developer.sumup.com/docs/online-payments/introductio...
    - NetOpWibby 4y ago
      Oh neat! It wasn't surfaced on their homepage.
j45 4y ago
Great list, thank you. One option is to always have more than one payment processor activated. Splitting payments across providers early on doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There are libraries focused in billing and payment management and leaving the payment processing only to stripe, etc. These libraries that can handle multiple payment providers and help reduce dependency on the a single payment provider for payment management functionality. It’s always felt like a risk. One stand alone library that I’m looking at is https://killbill.io/ https://killbill.io/ If there are alternatives to this that folks have experience with - it would be great if you could share
- anton-stigg 4y ago
  Hey, there's Stigg (http://stigg.io/ http://stigg.io/) and its like an abstraction layer on top of billing for SaaS. I think it counts as an alternative to killbill in some way.
  - j45 4y ago
    Thank you, didn’t know this existed
isuleman 4y ago
Snipcart
rajnathani 4y ago
TIL about Amazon Pay.

122 points by NetOpWibby 4y ago

NetOpWibby 4y ago

Oh, forgot to mention that 2Checkout and Verifone are the same product but still have different sites for some reason. Or at the very least, Verifone owns 2Checkout.

zzz345345 4y ago

Any of those support crypto and credit card? I added Coinbase commerce to my site as an option but unfortunately it doesnt support Monero.

colesantiago 4y ago
Why would Coinbase or any other exchange ever support Monero? It's only usecase is illegitimate payments, the risk isn't worth Coinbase adding it. In fact, please don't consider using crypto at all, it has no usecase other than speculation and you are likely to lose money due to volatility. Consider bank transfer instead.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  > Consider bank transfer instead. That stuff is a nightmare. I've dealt with both USD and cryptocurrency payouts and can see why some legitimate businesses would prefer the latter.
donatzsky 4y ago
Skrill (not on the list, but seems to be in the same space as PayPal) has some crypto features. No idea about the details, since I just saw it mentioned on the website, but didn't go further.
NetOpWibby 4y ago
You should just use something like OpenNode and accept Bitcoin. - https://www.opennode.com https://www.opennode.com

pyronite 4y ago

We're excited to see how the open-source Lago (https://www.getlago.com/ https://www.getlago.com/) develops. Does anyone here have experience working with it?

NetOpWibby 4y ago
AFAICT they don't process payments.
eps 4y ago
Who are "we"?

efortis 4y ago

- Visa | https://developer.visa.com https://developer.visa.com - Masterpass by Mastercard | https://masterpass.com https://masterpass.com

NetOpWibby 4y ago
From Visa's site: > Visa Checkout does not accept direct merchant connections. You will need to work with a partner to integrate Visa Checkout into your solution. You can find Partners to integrate with Visa Checkout here. Masterpass looks like it operates similarly.

paxys 4y ago

While this is a good list of companies that operate roughly in the same space as Stripe, a more useful one for the intended audience would be finding replacements for the specific Stripe services/APIs they are using. It's not as simple as saying "just switch from Stripe to PayPal/Square". Most of these companies specialize in a specific problem with very little overlap with the rest. Stripe doesn't have a real 1:1 competitor.

NetOpWibby 4y ago
We're back to patchwork quilting the services we need...this is the sixth day of 2023. I wonder what enterprising HN reader is gonna take up the mantle to embark on building a true alternative.

huhtenberg 4y ago

2Checkout, DigitalRiver, FastSpring, Paddle and Payoneer used to be reasonably popular in "old-school" shareware circles. These aren't payment processors. They all come from pre-Stripe times and they are so-called "registration services". These are effectively resellers, providing "full service" that includes order processing, customer callbacks (fraud detection), distribution of activation codes, first line of support for licensing inquiries, etc. -- all the things that used to be complicated in the era when people ordered by phone, fax and email, paid with cheques and the software was licensed fully offline using either procedurally-generated codes or codes hardcoded into executables. They all are still stuck there - rigid, clunky, buggy and, above all, unnecessary expensive. These aren't Stripe alternatives. These are dinosaurs desperately clinging to life.

transitivebs 4y ago
Paddle has a pretty legit API from my experience. Agree on the other ones for sure.
dividuum 4y ago
Cannot speak for the others, but paddle also does handle all tax related issues for you. That can quickly get pretty complicated if you have international customers.
phphphphp 4y ago
I have no relationship to Paddle but they deserve defending, as they’re absolutely not a “dinosaur clinging to life” and are in fact a very valuable player given the changing regulatory and tax landscape across the world. The phrase to use to describe Paddle is “merchant of record” and it’s more valuable today than it was a few years ago, and it’s more valuable than Stripe in certain circumstances. There are many scenarios in which a business selling digital services would have a rational reason to choose Paddle over Stripe today. Paddle may have started out as you describe but that’s not what they are today. Personally, I’d argue they’ve done a better job innovating in their niche than Stripe has.
- j45 4y ago

hot_gril 4y ago

Some of these are viable payment processors, but if you're trying to run anything vaguely like a market, it's hard to replace Stripe. I've tried. In detail, something that handles both credit card payments from users and ACH payouts to users, possibly with some substitutions like debit instead of credit or wire instead of ACH. Ideally allowing user-to-user payments without having to float the money yourself. Stripe is handling some big regulatory hurdles for you, like KYC.

NetOpWibby 4y ago

Personally, I'm looking into Checkout and Mollie (hope they're not UK-only) and will use OpenNode as my crypto payment provider.

AlexITC 4y ago

I investigated a bit about this and found Square promising because it allows creating a link to allow customers engage in a subscription, which is super helpful to not code such a flow when validating a product. I don't know whether Paddle supports this but a customer is super happy with them, it was also super simple to integrate from the developer side. Thanks for the list.

Geee 4y ago

Not really a Stripe alternative - but if you run out of alternatives, there's always Bitcoin. That is, if you want to accept payments without using any third-party service. I wish more people implemented Bitcoin (Lightning) payments on their websites. I always pay with Bitcoin when there's an option; simply because it's easier and faster, compared to typing in my CC info and 2FAing it with my bank app. Bitcoin requires just scanning a QR code with a mobile wallet. BTCPay Server[0] is the most popular (I think) self-hosted software for accepting Bitcoin payments. It's also available as a hosted version. [0] https://btcpayserver.org https://btcpayserver.org

andrewflnr 4y ago
Most of our customers want to pay by credit card, so no.
danpalmer 4y ago
For some people this might imply a certain opinion from the business that may turn them off. It’s a little like if the cashier at the store is wearing a MAGA hat. Certainly not that extreme for most, but it would make me think twice about if this is a company that I want to buy from.
- Geee 4y ago
  For small websites, it may just be an easy and practical technological solution, sparing the need to integrate with third-party services or platforms. I'm not sure why you see it as a negative, but for the merchant it's just another payment gateway. Also, in some countries these payment services might not be so readily available, and Bitcoin might be the only solution for accepting payments globally. Also, I think it's quite a small group of people who associate Bitcoin with something negative. Some people might relate it to drugs, but that is really based only on the early days of bitcoin use and hasn't been the main use case for years. For 99% of people it's an investment, and some of these also use it for payments whenever it's possible.
carlosjobim 4y ago
We've accepted Bitcoin as payment on our website for years. Not a single customer has chosen that option.

AussieWog93 4y ago

I use these guys (based in Australia): https://pinpayments.com/ https://pinpayments.com/ Excellent support, and no bullshit. It really as simple as creating an account, installing the plugin on my website then collecting payments.

NetOpWibby 4y ago
Ah, they seem to only serve Australia and New Zealand. scrolls to footer Oh, their parent company is Checkout.com!
- llagerlof 4y ago
  checkout.com is bad?
  - NetOpWibby 4y ago
    Nope, they're one of the alternatives in the OP.

folli 4y ago

I'm specifically looking for a payment provider handling SaaS subscriptions (monthly/annually). Any recommendations?

alberth 4y ago

Stripe is the only processor I’m aware of that is self-service and you can be accepting payments within minutes. But that comes with a major downside, you don’t actually get a merchant account. If having a merchant account is important to you, Adyen is pretty great.

1xdevloper 4y ago

Lemon Squeezy [1] is another great option. I use it on my site RemoteFriendly. They are take 5% and handle all the tax, fraud stuff for you as a merchant of record. [1] https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/ https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/

screamingninja 4y ago

Is there an inclusion criteria for this list? You listed PayPal as an alternative. I cannot imagine recommending Paypal to someone complaining about Stripe- arguably there are more complaints on HN about Paypal than Stripe!

NetOpWibby 4y ago
> I decided to search hn.algolia.com to see for myself what others have recommended in the past.

ju 4y ago

SumUp | https://sumup.com/ https://sumup.com/

NetOpWibby 4y ago
I don't think PoS fits the bill...
- mbirth 4y ago
  It has an API for online payments: https://developer.sumup.com/docs/online-payments/introduction/getting-started/ https://developer.sumup.com/docs/online-payments/introductio...
  - NetOpWibby 4y ago
    Oh neat! It wasn't surfaced on their homepage.

j45 4y ago

Great list, thank you. One option is to always have more than one payment processor activated. Splitting payments across providers early on doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There are libraries focused in billing and payment management and leaving the payment processing only to stripe, etc. These libraries that can handle multiple payment providers and help reduce dependency on the a single payment provider for payment management functionality. It’s always felt like a risk. One stand alone library that I’m looking at is https://killbill.io/ https://killbill.io/ If there are alternatives to this that folks have experience with - it would be great if you could share

anton-stigg 4y ago
Hey, there's Stigg (http://stigg.io/ http://stigg.io/) and its like an abstraction layer on top of billing for SaaS. I think it counts as an alternative to killbill in some way.
- j45 4y ago
  Thank you, didn’t know this existed

isuleman 4y ago

Snipcart

rajnathani 4y ago

TIL about Amazon Pay.