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Some European alternatives you might be able to find/negotiate better fees with: - mollie (Netherlands) - adyen (Netherlands) - Klarna (Sweden) - Paylike (D

Some European alternatives you might be able to find/negotiate better fees with: - mollie (Netherlands) - adyen (Netherlands) - Klarna (Sweden) - Paylike (Denmark) - Mangopay (Luxembourg) - Quickpay (Denmark) (added in edit) The ones I've tried of those, have an OK development experience, maybe not as polished as Stripe, but much better than the alternatives that were around before Stripe (huge hassle back then). Ideally, you'll support at least two providers you can switch between, if you can afford the development of supporting two, as at one point or another, it'll save your ass or at least a bit of money as fee structures change between providers. It'll also be easier to integrate a third one in the future when you eventually find the perfect one (until they turn into the next Stripe). > Dispute fees (also known as chargebacks) will increase from €15 to €20. Due to costs for managing dispute evidence submissions, we'll no longer refund this fee if the customer's bank resolves the dispute in your favor. This strikes me as weird. User buys something from me, regrets it and issues a chargeback, dispute gets started and bank says I did nothing wrong, so the charge still sticks, but Stripe gets to keep the fee for handling the dispute?

marcopicentini 4y ago
If a customer has already entered its credit card through Stripe for a recurring subscription, how do you migrate to another provider without asking again credit card? Stripe locked us in.
- rafram 4y ago
  I’m not sure the intention is to lock you in. Giving businesses access to full credit card numbers does nothing but enable and encourage bad behavior.
- xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
  What's the alternative? You want to do your own PCI compliance? You're not locked in. People migrate off Stripe all the time.
- captn3m0 4y ago
  Stripe offers PAN data export https://stripe.com/docs/account/data-migrations/pan-export https://stripe.com/docs/account/data-migrations/pan-export > If you decide to leave Stripe for another payment processor, we’ll work with your new processor’s team to securely transfer your credit card data.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > Stripe locked us in. PAN Migrations. https://stripe.com/docs/account/data-migrations/pan-export https://stripe.com/docs/account/data-migrations/pan-export Different payment providers also can help you with the import, here is an example on how to import data from Stripe to Adyen: https://docs.adyen.com/development-resources/migrating-payment-data https://docs.adyen.com/development-resources/migrating-payme...
sleepyhead 4y ago
Given that 3DSecure is required for all European cards we should have been seeing lower fees since that requirement. Instead fees are going up.
- Raed667 4y ago
  How can a user dispute a transaction if they used 3DSecure?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - sleepyhead 4y ago
    A dispute is not only for transactions you didn't perform, it is also for situations like not getting the purchased product or similar. So 3DSecure will significantly decrease fraud, not other disputes.
    - kramerger 4y ago
      But fraud are the problematic ones, the normal disputes are not as costly
      - sleepyhead 4y ago
        My experience is that disputes are 100% from Americans who are encouraged by banks to "just do a dispute" anytime they are dissatisfied with anything. And in 100% of these cases it is customers who forgot to cancel or just didn't need the service as much, not really any actual dissatisfaction. Most fraud is stopped by Stripe and not really a big issue, in some cases we do a manual check and it is obvious fraud (no account activity, info not matching, fake data entry etc) and we just refund the charge before any dispute is made.
        lxgr 4y ago
        On the other hand, the existence of a consumer-leaning disputes resolution system, while pretty unfair to merchants in some situations, is probably a big accelerator for e-commerce in general. I'm much more likely to enter my card number somewhere online knowing that I'll be made whole if something doesn't work out than knowing I'll have to fight for my money back, submit evidence I might not have etc. Just like with fraud [1], and for similar reasons, the optimal number of successful "false disputes" in a payments and commerce system is probably non-zero: Hopefully, for every dishonest/egregious dispute, merchants see dozens of customers that would otherwise not dare to do business with an unknown/new merchant. [1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fraud/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
amelius 4y ago
Aren't there open source libraries available that abstract away the payment processor?
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  No, they have to be with to a payment processor. But you can get a better deal than Stripe if you have a business mid-size and up. You can program that connection yourself, but honestly, if you are able to pull it off you will start selling that solution for a suitable price and that's where we are at today. And I think that is good.
- pjc50 4y ago
  The processor saves you significant effort for card transactions by simplifying your merchant relationship with the card processor. Technically, you can just talk directly to them over their API: https://developer.mastercard.com/apis https://developer.mastercard.com/apis
  - amelius 4y ago
    This is no longer true if you want to talk to 5 different processors, or want to swap one out for another easily.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  You'd still need certifications to handle the info, and negociate with each issuer to get access. From memory they have legal obligation to open an API and give access, but no real penalty if it doesn't work or is utterly garbage or impractical.
  - amelius 4y ago
    I think you typically need to have a key only. You could get that key from their admin page, and hand it to the abstraction layer. Seems simple enough? Not sure what you mean by impractical API. If their API is not practical, then nobody would use it, I suppose. If it is barely practical, then an abstraction layer would be a godsent.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
What's the impact of not disputing chargebacks? If I'm going to be charged 20 euros whether I succeed or not then for small disputes I may not bother spending the time to submit evidence anymore... Edit: I see that they have a Chargeback Protection product with costs 0.4% per transaction in which case they "cover the disputed amount and waive any dispute fees without needing to submit any evidence" (another comment by smca)... So cynically that sounds like a commercial tactic to sell that product!
- capableweb 4y ago
  The fee gets taken regardless. Also, too many disputes (guessing overturned disputes are calculated differently than uphold ones) can lead to further fines: > If the dispute activity for your business exceeds the thresholds set by the networks for a prolonged period of time (usually multiple months), you might be subject to fines. https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/measuring https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/measuring
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    > The fee gets taken regardless. Yes, that's my point.
  - carlosjobim 4y ago
    >The fee gets taken regardless. The fee gets paid back in full to you by Stripe if you win the dispute.
    - quelltext 4y ago
      Not anymore (in Europe at least) from the article.
      - carlosjobim 4y ago
        In the communiqué from Stripe, they state that any such fee will be repaid if you win the dispute. https://support.stripe.com/questions/pricing-updates-for-businesses-based-in-the-european-economic-area-(eea) https://support.stripe.com/questions/pricing-updates-for-bus...
sluongng 4y ago
It would be nice if some services like Github Sponsor or Substack or Hashnode would allow different providers integration. Right now, Stripe dominates the market still.
olau 4y ago
Now that you mention a Danish one, Quickpay (Denmark) has been around for a long time.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Thanks, added that one to the list as well :)
LatteLazy 4y ago
Devils advocate: is dis-incentivises businesses that causes a lot of charge back requests even if those requests are ultimately unsuccessful. There was a spate of people selling PS5 boxes on Ebay a while back. They clearly said PS5 "box" but the word box is small and surrounded by "New" "Unwanted gift" etc and priced at the RRP of a PS5. So people bought them and mistakenly thinking they were getting a PS5. Ebay ultimately banned such products (I believe). But I can see a payment provider wanting to dissuade crappy products with a lot of unhappy customers.
makeitdouble 4y ago
Adyen is relatively solid if you know what you're doing, Mangopay felt like a small hippie solution in comparison. The upside is Mangopay was pretty reactive when we needed a human to talk to, the downside being that many requests would just end in "tough luck, we're too smal for that" We ended up moving to Adyen for that reason.
- quelltext 4y ago
  Doesn't Adyen only take on established companies? You cannot just sign up and get started.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    You can signup and get started with a test integration: https://www.adyen.com/signup https://www.adyen.com/signup But to be approved you need to talk with them. As long as what you're doing is a real company (and you have documentation to prove it), they'll approve you. But you do need to setup a proper business before being able to go live with payments.
    - DizzyDoo 4y ago
      I thought Adyen had a minimum payment volume threshold set? 1000 payments a month, or something similar?
- sleepyhead 4y ago
  Can you share some details on the hippies and too small situations with Mangopay?
- TheCapeGreek 4y ago
  Mangopay IME was a huge PITA for the last few years. Only in the last year with management change have they actually started to give a damn.
pjan 4y ago
> Ideally, you'll support at least two providers you can switch between, if you can afford the development of supporting two It is however not that simple if you want to remember your customers payment information, and don’t want any PCI-DSS liability or obligations. You’ll need a card vaulting solution in the middle, which comes as additional burden (and cost!) on top of the other payment provider integration. There’s big volumes you need to process to offset all of this, and probably not ROI sensible for many.
- nik736 4y ago
  Do you have any suggestion for "card vaulting providers"? This is interesting actually, store cards without PCI-DSS obligations and use those cards with the payment provider that makes the most sense at that point in time.
  - pjan 4y ago
    Spreedly, TokenEx, Very Good Security are some that I'm aware of. I'm surprised Stripe hasn't come with their own multi-processing router solution for enterprises at this point; whichever major payment processor who would do this, could become a de facto choice as primary or secondary payment gateway for enterprises requiring this.
    - section_me 4y ago
      hyperswitch[1] looks to be trying to work in this space. 1. https://github.com/juspay/hyperswitch https://github.com/juspay/hyperswitch
      - enigma20 4y ago
        Nice! Didn't know this. There are commercial solutions which offer even more integrations https://www.ppro.com https://www.ppro.com
- tzs 4y ago
  Even with a card vaulting solution I think it may be difficult to support more than one provider, at least for Visa and MasterCard, due to Visa's Stored Credentials Framework (SCF). SCF was a set of requirements for using stored cards that Visa originally announced would be required starting sometime around 2017, and MasterCard said they would adopt it too. So many payment processors were going to fail to meet the deadline to implement it they moved it back a year. The main payment processor we use met that deadline and we started using it. But many others did not and it was pushed back another year. I'm not sure when it finally actually came into effect because I didn’t pay much attention after that. Under SCF when you charge a card and intend to store that card you have to set a flag in the transaction signaling that intent. After the transaction you need to save the Visa or MasterCard assigned transaction ID. Later, when you use the stored card there's flag you have to set that marks this transaction as using a stored card, a flag you have to set if the charge is merchant initiated (e.g., an automatic subscription renewal) rather than customer initiated (e.g., they order something from website and elect to put it on their on file card), and you have to provide the transaction ID of the transaction that was done when you first stored the card. It's that prior transaction ID that is the problem. With many payment processors the transaction ID they give you is one they generate, not the one that Visa or MasterCard generates. As part of implementing SCF those processors will remember the Visa or MasterCard transaction associated with transactions that had the "we are going to store this card" flag set, and so later when you use the stored card you just have to provide the transaction ID they gave you and they look up the Visa/MasterCard transaction ID to send to the card company. So say you charge a new Visa card through provider X, setting the "we are going to store this card" flag. X gives you an X transaction number X-1234, which you remember, and X remembers that X-1234 means Visa transaction ID V918273. A year later it is time to auto-renew that customer, and you want to do that through provider Y. But Y's interface expects a Y transaction ID. You can't give them X-1234 and have them do anything sensible with it. As far as I can tell for many combinations of X and Y there is simply no way to do an on file charge at Y with a card that was put on file after an X transaction, except perhaps by at the time of the X transaction also doing something like a $1 authorize with Y and hoping that the Y transaction ID for that will work with Y for later doing an actual charge. You need some way to get the Visa/MasterCard transaction ID, and you need X and Y to allow you to provide a Visa/MasterCard transaction ID for the SCF stuff.
gggggg5 4y ago
>This strikes me as weird. User buys something from me, regrets it and issues a chargeback, dispute gets started and bank says I did nothing wrong, so the charge still sticks, but Stripe gets to keep the fee for handling the dispute? You should include this in your contract terms with the customer and collect the dispute fee from them. It's not reasonable of you to expect Stripe to just absorb this cost.
- dachryn 4y ago
  good luck actually getting that money. What are you going to do, sue over 20 euro?
  - gggggg5 4y ago
    I don't necessarily disagree, but I guess you could run their card again for the 20 :)
    - jeromegv 4y ago
      If you're not storing their card (and really you shouldn't), you cannot "re-run" their card.
      - gggggg5 4y ago
        That's not at all how payment processing works in 2023. You can absolutely "re-run" their tokenized card without storing their card info yourself-
    - jermaustin1 4y ago
      and when it gets charged back, you have to eat the 20 again?
      - gggggg5 4y ago
        Perhaps charge a chargeback fee of 40 euros? It'll cover both of the chargeback fees you'll have to pay stripe.
joering2 4y ago
> User buys something from me, regrets it and issues a chargeback, dispute gets started and bank says I did nothing wrong, so the charge still sticks, but Stripe gets to keep the fee for handling the dispute? I am surprised how little Stripe charges. I processed close to 100MM since 2012 via different merchants, including Polcard, banks such as Harris, Wells, BOA, etc, and even 10 years ago typical fee was $35. And no, they never give you the fee back; if you win they give you the charge amount back, but the processing fee always remained with MSP. On the upside, over the years credit cards vendors made it harder to file the dispute. Yes its easier to do it online with few clicks, but that's not a dispute yet. These days most people sit in banks and research into charge, including calling merchant, before they submit a CB with the card system.
traceroute66 4y ago
> - Klarna (Sweden) Erm, isn't Klarna a BNPL company ? Important not to conflate BNPL with merchant services (card payments).
- Hamuko 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure I've bought stuff from online retailers using some kind of a Klarna widget and I just used my credit card directly. Actually, I can find several emails that say something along the lines of "Klarna - Card payment" or "Klarna Checkout". Never done BNPL.
- BillinghamJ 4y ago
  Klarna operates more payment services than just the BNPL credit option e.g. Sofort is run by Klarna for some reason - https://www.klarna.com/pay-now/business/merchant-support/whats-relationship-sofort-klarna/ https://www.klarna.com/pay-now/business/merchant-support/wha... So it seems conceivable that they have options to process regular card payments too
anovikov 4y ago
Names of the last 2 and maybe 3 sound very Russian to me. Are they just registered there, but really these are Russian own businesses?
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  That's almost "1950s red scare" level of paranoia
- rafram 4y ago
  What does “sound very Russian” even mean?
- MagnumOpus 4y ago
  No they are not, and 20 seconds of googling will show it. Why are you pushing the FUD?
sschueller 4y ago
For Switzerland I can recommend https://www.payrexx.com/ https://www.payrexx.com/ . They also support Twint directly without extra contracts.
jasonlotito 4y ago
> This strikes me as weird. User buys something from me, regrets it and issues a chargeback, dispute gets started and bank says I did nothing wrong, so the charge still sticks, but Stripe gets to keep the fee for handling the dispute? It's about risk. This requires time and effort to reconcile. Someone has to do something. The fee covers this. Does it suck? For you, sure. For the customer? No. It's peace of mind. It's why people willingly shop online. Don't like it? Negotiate your own terms with a bank for your own merchant account. And yes the charge sticks. If you have 1000 purchases and all 1000 people dispute, that's a hassle the bank needs to deal with. Compared to someone with 1000 purchases with 1 dispute, even if that dispute is valid, it's much less work. Much less costly for the bank. So part of your responsibility as a merchant is to prevent that as much as possible. > Stripe gets to keep the fee for handling the dispute? No, the bank is keeping the money. Stripe had the money taken. This is passed on to you. Seriously, this is payment processing 101.
- Silhouette 4y ago
  Seriously, this is payment processing 101. It is still weird and one-sided. Merchants are still being abused and in some cases that still causes them serious harm through no fault of their own. Unregulated chargebacks should still be legislated out of existence - preferably along with the whole anachronistic card payments system. It is still insane that so much everyday commerce relies on such an antiquated, dangerous, inefficient system in the 21st century. So it's entirely reasonable for someone who isn't intimately familiar with how all of this actually works to be surprised by the situation and think it's broken. Because it is. It's not really Stripe's fault here though.
  - sirsinsalot 4y ago
    It's clearly efficient at making the right people a lot of money.
jsumrall 4y ago
Buckaroo (Netherlands) is also an option if you’re fine with so-so documentation of the API.
fatfox 4y ago
Also worth checking out Braintree (PayPal). It's not the worst dev experience.
- capableweb 4y ago
  As the notice from Stripe is about Stripe customers in Europe, I thought the alternative list should be focused on European alternatives.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
SSLy 4y ago
For Poland, Przelewy24 or direct BLIK integration might be an option.
Aeolun 4y ago
> This strikes me as weird. It’s very normal. It’s why a lot of services immediately ban you for life if you ever issue a chargeback (regardless of validity). Stripe was the sole sensible service out there (that I know of) where chargebacks wouldn’t hit a small business as hard as long as they could prove they were in the right. But it seems Stripe is becoming everything it originally railed against.
- BonoboIO 4y ago
  The endless cycle :D
- brianwawok 4y ago
  Except you will lose every chargeback. Despite evidence including IP logs and screenshots. Easier to just lifeban every customer that does a chargeback vs spend 10 hours dealing with stripe + bank, and still losing, no matter the reason.
  - dinkblam 4y ago
    > Except you will lose every chargeback we were winning at least 50% of our chargebacks by providing evidence. > Easier to just lifeban every customer true. funny how an instrument that is supposed to combat fraud (by companies), is now mostly used to commit fraud (by consumers)
    - brianwawok 4y ago
      What kind of evidence is that, for what kind of chargeback? I have literal screenshots of a customer saying the opposite of the complaint, and still lost.
      - dinkblam 4y ago
        just screenshots from the server backend showing that the customer has actually used the product he has purchased as well as written confirmation that we never received a request for a refund > saying the opposite of the complaint, and still lost. yeah. even if its obvious that the customer made a fraudulent chargeback, you may loose. my only point was that not all chargebacks are lost, it is possible to win a good percentage. i wish Stripe had an option to auto-block all customers who requested a chargeback from ever purchasing again...
miroljub 4y ago
None of these services is Merchant of Record (that handles taxes). Neither is Stripe. At this day and age, I don't understand why would any small to medium business that sells online internationally use anything else but Merchant of Records. International taxes are just a PITA that it's not worth trading a few percent of payment processor fee for a full-blown team of international tax accountants.
- 0xDEF 4y ago
  What are some Stripe alternatives that provide Merchant of Record?
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    Paddle comes to mind.
    - Silhouette 4y ago
      Despite the clear advantages of the MoR model for many small and growth businesses there is still little competition in that space. Paddle is always the one that comes to mind because there are so few alternative resellers catering for the same merchants right now. The lack of a vibrant, competitive market for MoRs is a significant risk that has to be weighed against the advantages. But in 5-10 years I won't be surprised if Paddle is the new Stripe because of that. It has the same feeling of being a disruptive upstart but solving a real and significant problem that Stripe had at the start. And with the way the political winds have been blowing in much of the world I can only see that problem becoming more significant for more businesses over the next few years.
bodomalo 4y ago
I doubt any of those payment providers mentioned does not take the chargeback fee on a credit-card dispute. Anyway, they might handle customer-communication with the merchant better. Stripe offers nothing. If the customer could "contact" the seller, everyhting would work out better. Just think - you have only 11 CHARS(!!!) to describe your service, thats what the customer sees on his monthyl CC bill. I am unable to describe it to everc customer in 11 chars, so 1 out of 1000 belives it was fraud because people do not remember what they bought online.

marcopicentini 4y ago

If a customer has already entered its credit card through Stripe for a recurring subscription, how do you migrate to another provider without asking again credit card? Stripe locked us in.

rafram 4y ago
I’m not sure the intention is to lock you in. Giving businesses access to full credit card numbers does nothing but enable and encourage bad behavior.
xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
What's the alternative? You want to do your own PCI compliance? You're not locked in. People migrate off Stripe all the time.
captn3m0 4y ago
Stripe offers PAN data export https://stripe.com/docs/account/data-migrations/pan-export https://stripe.com/docs/account/data-migrations/pan-export > If you decide to leave Stripe for another payment processor, we’ll work with your new processor’s team to securely transfer your credit card data.
capableweb 4y ago
> Stripe locked us in. PAN Migrations. https://stripe.com/docs/account/data-migrations/pan-export https://stripe.com/docs/account/data-migrations/pan-export Different payment providers also can help you with the import, here is an example on how to import data from Stripe to Adyen: https://docs.adyen.com/development-resources/migrating-payment-data https://docs.adyen.com/development-resources/migrating-payme...

sleepyhead 4y ago

Given that 3DSecure is required for all European cards we should have been seeing lower fees since that requirement. Instead fees are going up.

Raed667 4y ago
How can a user dispute a transaction if they used 3DSecure?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- sleepyhead 4y ago
  A dispute is not only for transactions you didn't perform, it is also for situations like not getting the purchased product or similar. So 3DSecure will significantly decrease fraud, not other disputes.
  - kramerger 4y ago
    But fraud are the problematic ones, the normal disputes are not as costly
    - sleepyhead 4y ago
      My experience is that disputes are 100% from Americans who are encouraged by banks to "just do a dispute" anytime they are dissatisfied with anything. And in 100% of these cases it is customers who forgot to cancel or just didn't need the service as much, not really any actual dissatisfaction. Most fraud is stopped by Stripe and not really a big issue, in some cases we do a manual check and it is obvious fraud (no account activity, info not matching, fake data entry etc) and we just refund the charge before any dispute is made.
      - lxgr 4y ago
        On the other hand, the existence of a consumer-leaning disputes resolution system, while pretty unfair to merchants in some situations, is probably a big accelerator for e-commerce in general. I'm much more likely to enter my card number somewhere online knowing that I'll be made whole if something doesn't work out than knowing I'll have to fight for my money back, submit evidence I might not have etc. Just like with fraud [1], and for similar reasons, the optimal number of successful "false disputes" in a payments and commerce system is probably non-zero: Hopefully, for every dishonest/egregious dispute, merchants see dozens of customers that would otherwise not dare to do business with an unknown/new merchant. [1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fraud/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

amelius 4y ago

Aren't there open source libraries available that abstract away the payment processor?

carlosjobim 4y ago
No, they have to be with to a payment processor. But you can get a better deal than Stripe if you have a business mid-size and up. You can program that connection yourself, but honestly, if you are able to pull it off you will start selling that solution for a suitable price and that's where we are at today. And I think that is good.
pjc50 4y ago
The processor saves you significant effort for card transactions by simplifying your merchant relationship with the card processor. Technically, you can just talk directly to them over their API: https://developer.mastercard.com/apis https://developer.mastercard.com/apis
- amelius 4y ago
  This is no longer true if you want to talk to 5 different processors, or want to swap one out for another easily.
makeitdouble 4y ago
You'd still need certifications to handle the info, and negociate with each issuer to get access. From memory they have legal obligation to open an API and give access, but no real penalty if it doesn't work or is utterly garbage or impractical.
- amelius 4y ago
  I think you typically need to have a key only. You could get that key from their admin page, and hand it to the abstraction layer. Seems simple enough? Not sure what you mean by impractical API. If their API is not practical, then nobody would use it, I suppose. If it is barely practical, then an abstraction layer would be a godsent.

mytailorisrich 4y ago

What's the impact of not disputing chargebacks? If I'm going to be charged 20 euros whether I succeed or not then for small disputes I may not bother spending the time to submit evidence anymore... Edit: I see that they have a Chargeback Protection product with costs 0.4% per transaction in which case they "cover the disputed amount and waive any dispute fees without needing to submit any evidence" (another comment by smca)... So cynically that sounds like a commercial tactic to sell that product!

capableweb 4y ago
The fee gets taken regardless. Also, too many disputes (guessing overturned disputes are calculated differently than uphold ones) can lead to further fines: > If the dispute activity for your business exceeds the thresholds set by the networks for a prolonged period of time (usually multiple months), you might be subject to fines. https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/measuring https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/measuring
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  > The fee gets taken regardless. Yes, that's my point.
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  >The fee gets taken regardless. The fee gets paid back in full to you by Stripe if you win the dispute.
  - quelltext 4y ago
    Not anymore (in Europe at least) from the article.
    - carlosjobim 4y ago
      In the communiqué from Stripe, they state that any such fee will be repaid if you win the dispute. https://support.stripe.com/questions/pricing-updates-for-businesses-based-in-the-european-economic-area-(eea) https://support.stripe.com/questions/pricing-updates-for-bus...

sluongng 4y ago

It would be nice if some services like Github Sponsor or Substack or Hashnode would allow different providers integration. Right now, Stripe dominates the market still.

olau 4y ago

Now that you mention a Danish one, Quickpay (Denmark) has been around for a long time.

capableweb 4y ago
Thanks, added that one to the list as well :)

LatteLazy 4y ago

Devils advocate: is dis-incentivises businesses that causes a lot of charge back requests even if those requests are ultimately unsuccessful. There was a spate of people selling PS5 boxes on Ebay a while back. They clearly said PS5 "box" but the word box is small and surrounded by "New" "Unwanted gift" etc and priced at the RRP of a PS5. So people bought them and mistakenly thinking they were getting a PS5. Ebay ultimately banned such products (I believe). But I can see a payment provider wanting to dissuade crappy products with a lot of unhappy customers.

makeitdouble 4y ago

Adyen is relatively solid if you know what you're doing, Mangopay felt like a small hippie solution in comparison. The upside is Mangopay was pretty reactive when we needed a human to talk to, the downside being that many requests would just end in "tough luck, we're too smal for that" We ended up moving to Adyen for that reason.

quelltext 4y ago
Doesn't Adyen only take on established companies? You cannot just sign up and get started.
- capableweb 4y ago
  You can signup and get started with a test integration: https://www.adyen.com/signup https://www.adyen.com/signup But to be approved you need to talk with them. As long as what you're doing is a real company (and you have documentation to prove it), they'll approve you. But you do need to setup a proper business before being able to go live with payments.
  - DizzyDoo 4y ago
    I thought Adyen had a minimum payment volume threshold set? 1000 payments a month, or something similar?
sleepyhead 4y ago
Can you share some details on the hippies and too small situations with Mangopay?
TheCapeGreek 4y ago
Mangopay IME was a huge PITA for the last few years. Only in the last year with management change have they actually started to give a damn.

pjan 4y ago

> Ideally, you'll support at least two providers you can switch between, if you can afford the development of supporting two It is however not that simple if you want to remember your customers payment information, and don’t want any PCI-DSS liability or obligations. You’ll need a card vaulting solution in the middle, which comes as additional burden (and cost!) on top of the other payment provider integration. There’s big volumes you need to process to offset all of this, and probably not ROI sensible for many.

nik736 4y ago
Do you have any suggestion for "card vaulting providers"? This is interesting actually, store cards without PCI-DSS obligations and use those cards with the payment provider that makes the most sense at that point in time.
- pjan 4y ago
  Spreedly, TokenEx, Very Good Security are some that I'm aware of. I'm surprised Stripe hasn't come with their own multi-processing router solution for enterprises at this point; whichever major payment processor who would do this, could become a de facto choice as primary or secondary payment gateway for enterprises requiring this.
  - section_me 4y ago
    hyperswitch[1] looks to be trying to work in this space. 1. https://github.com/juspay/hyperswitch https://github.com/juspay/hyperswitch
    - enigma20 4y ago
      Nice! Didn't know this. There are commercial solutions which offer even more integrations https://www.ppro.com https://www.ppro.com
tzs 4y ago
Even with a card vaulting solution I think it may be difficult to support more than one provider, at least for Visa and MasterCard, due to Visa's Stored Credentials Framework (SCF). SCF was a set of requirements for using stored cards that Visa originally announced would be required starting sometime around 2017, and MasterCard said they would adopt it too. So many payment processors were going to fail to meet the deadline to implement it they moved it back a year. The main payment processor we use met that deadline and we started using it. But many others did not and it was pushed back another year. I'm not sure when it finally actually came into effect because I didn’t pay much attention after that. Under SCF when you charge a card and intend to store that card you have to set a flag in the transaction signaling that intent. After the transaction you need to save the Visa or MasterCard assigned transaction ID. Later, when you use the stored card there's flag you have to set that marks this transaction as using a stored card, a flag you have to set if the charge is merchant initiated (e.g., an automatic subscription renewal) rather than customer initiated (e.g., they order something from website and elect to put it on their on file card), and you have to provide the transaction ID of the transaction that was done when you first stored the card. It's that prior transaction ID that is the problem. With many payment processors the transaction ID they give you is one they generate, not the one that Visa or MasterCard generates. As part of implementing SCF those processors will remember the Visa or MasterCard transaction associated with transactions that had the "we are going to store this card" flag set, and so later when you use the stored card you just have to provide the transaction ID they gave you and they look up the Visa/MasterCard transaction ID to send to the card company. So say you charge a new Visa card through provider X, setting the "we are going to store this card" flag. X gives you an X transaction number X-1234, which you remember, and X remembers that X-1234 means Visa transaction ID V918273. A year later it is time to auto-renew that customer, and you want to do that through provider Y. But Y's interface expects a Y transaction ID. You can't give them X-1234 and have them do anything sensible with it. As far as I can tell for many combinations of X and Y there is simply no way to do an on file charge at Y with a card that was put on file after an X transaction, except perhaps by at the time of the X transaction also doing something like a $1 authorize with Y and hoping that the Y transaction ID for that will work with Y for later doing an actual charge. You need some way to get the Visa/MasterCard transaction ID, and you need X and Y to allow you to provide a Visa/MasterCard transaction ID for the SCF stuff.

gggggg5 4y ago

>This strikes me as weird. User buys something from me, regrets it and issues a chargeback, dispute gets started and bank says I did nothing wrong, so the charge still sticks, but Stripe gets to keep the fee for handling the dispute? You should include this in your contract terms with the customer and collect the dispute fee from them. It's not reasonable of you to expect Stripe to just absorb this cost.

dachryn 4y ago
good luck actually getting that money. What are you going to do, sue over 20 euro?
- gggggg5 4y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree, but I guess you could run their card again for the 20 :)
  - jeromegv 4y ago
    If you're not storing their card (and really you shouldn't), you cannot "re-run" their card.
    - gggggg5 4y ago
      That's not at all how payment processing works in 2023. You can absolutely "re-run" their tokenized card without storing their card info yourself-
  - jermaustin1 4y ago
    and when it gets charged back, you have to eat the 20 again?
    - gggggg5 4y ago
      Perhaps charge a chargeback fee of 40 euros? It'll cover both of the chargeback fees you'll have to pay stripe.

joering2 4y ago

> User buys something from me, regrets it and issues a chargeback, dispute gets started and bank says I did nothing wrong, so the charge still sticks, but Stripe gets to keep the fee for handling the dispute? I am surprised how little Stripe charges. I processed close to 100MM since 2012 via different merchants, including Polcard, banks such as Harris, Wells, BOA, etc, and even 10 years ago typical fee was $35. And no, they never give you the fee back; if you win they give you the charge amount back, but the processing fee always remained with MSP. On the upside, over the years credit cards vendors made it harder to file the dispute. Yes its easier to do it online with few clicks, but that's not a dispute yet. These days most people sit in banks and research into charge, including calling merchant, before they submit a CB with the card system.

traceroute66 4y ago

> - Klarna (Sweden) Erm, isn't Klarna a BNPL company ? Important not to conflate BNPL with merchant services (card payments).

Hamuko 4y ago
I'm pretty sure I've bought stuff from online retailers using some kind of a Klarna widget and I just used my credit card directly. Actually, I can find several emails that say something along the lines of "Klarna - Card payment" or "Klarna Checkout". Never done BNPL.
BillinghamJ 4y ago
Klarna operates more payment services than just the BNPL credit option e.g. Sofort is run by Klarna for some reason - https://www.klarna.com/pay-now/business/merchant-support/whats-relationship-sofort-klarna/ https://www.klarna.com/pay-now/business/merchant-support/wha... So it seems conceivable that they have options to process regular card payments too

anovikov 4y ago

Names of the last 2 and maybe 3 sound very Russian to me. Are they just registered there, but really these are Russian own businesses?

mardifoufs 4y ago
That's almost "1950s red scare" level of paranoia
rafram 4y ago
What does “sound very Russian” even mean?
MagnumOpus 4y ago
No they are not, and 20 seconds of googling will show it. Why are you pushing the FUD?

sschueller 4y ago

For Switzerland I can recommend https://www.payrexx.com/ https://www.payrexx.com/ . They also support Twint directly without extra contracts.

jasonlotito 4y ago

> This strikes me as weird. User buys something from me, regrets it and issues a chargeback, dispute gets started and bank says I did nothing wrong, so the charge still sticks, but Stripe gets to keep the fee for handling the dispute? It's about risk. This requires time and effort to reconcile. Someone has to do something. The fee covers this. Does it suck? For you, sure. For the customer? No. It's peace of mind. It's why people willingly shop online. Don't like it? Negotiate your own terms with a bank for your own merchant account. And yes the charge sticks. If you have 1000 purchases and all 1000 people dispute, that's a hassle the bank needs to deal with. Compared to someone with 1000 purchases with 1 dispute, even if that dispute is valid, it's much less work. Much less costly for the bank. So part of your responsibility as a merchant is to prevent that as much as possible. > Stripe gets to keep the fee for handling the dispute? No, the bank is keeping the money. Stripe had the money taken. This is passed on to you. Seriously, this is payment processing 101.

Silhouette 4y ago
Seriously, this is payment processing 101. It is still weird and one-sided. Merchants are still being abused and in some cases that still causes them serious harm through no fault of their own. Unregulated chargebacks should still be legislated out of existence - preferably along with the whole anachronistic card payments system. It is still insane that so much everyday commerce relies on such an antiquated, dangerous, inefficient system in the 21st century. So it's entirely reasonable for someone who isn't intimately familiar with how all of this actually works to be surprised by the situation and think it's broken. Because it is. It's not really Stripe's fault here though.
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  It's clearly efficient at making the right people a lot of money.

jsumrall 4y ago

Buckaroo (Netherlands) is also an option if you’re fine with so-so documentation of the API.

fatfox 4y ago

Also worth checking out Braintree (PayPal). It's not the worst dev experience.

capableweb 4y ago
As the notice from Stripe is about Stripe customers in Europe, I thought the alternative list should be focused on European alternatives.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

SSLy 4y ago

For Poland, Przelewy24 or direct BLIK integration might be an option.

Aeolun 4y ago

> This strikes me as weird. It’s very normal. It’s why a lot of services immediately ban you for life if you ever issue a chargeback (regardless of validity). Stripe was the sole sensible service out there (that I know of) where chargebacks wouldn’t hit a small business as hard as long as they could prove they were in the right. But it seems Stripe is becoming everything it originally railed against.

BonoboIO 4y ago
The endless cycle :D
brianwawok 4y ago
Except you will lose every chargeback. Despite evidence including IP logs and screenshots. Easier to just lifeban every customer that does a chargeback vs spend 10 hours dealing with stripe + bank, and still losing, no matter the reason.
- dinkblam 4y ago
  > Except you will lose every chargeback we were winning at least 50% of our chargebacks by providing evidence. > Easier to just lifeban every customer true. funny how an instrument that is supposed to combat fraud (by companies), is now mostly used to commit fraud (by consumers)
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    What kind of evidence is that, for what kind of chargeback? I have literal screenshots of a customer saying the opposite of the complaint, and still lost.
    - dinkblam 4y ago
      just screenshots from the server backend showing that the customer has actually used the product he has purchased as well as written confirmation that we never received a request for a refund > saying the opposite of the complaint, and still lost. yeah. even if its obvious that the customer made a fraudulent chargeback, you may loose. my only point was that not all chargebacks are lost, it is possible to win a good percentage. i wish Stripe had an option to auto-block all customers who requested a chargeback from ever purchasing again...

miroljub 4y ago

None of these services is Merchant of Record (that handles taxes). Neither is Stripe. At this day and age, I don't understand why would any small to medium business that sells online internationally use anything else but Merchant of Records. International taxes are just a PITA that it's not worth trading a few percent of payment processor fee for a full-blown team of international tax accountants.

0xDEF 4y ago
What are some Stripe alternatives that provide Merchant of Record?
- withinboredom 4y ago
  Paddle comes to mind.
  - Silhouette 4y ago
    Despite the clear advantages of the MoR model for many small and growth businesses there is still little competition in that space. Paddle is always the one that comes to mind because there are so few alternative resellers catering for the same merchants right now. The lack of a vibrant, competitive market for MoRs is a significant risk that has to be weighed against the advantages. But in 5-10 years I won't be surprised if Paddle is the new Stripe because of that. It has the same feeling of being a disruptive upstart but solving a real and significant problem that Stripe had at the start. And with the way the political winds have been blowing in much of the world I can only see that problem becoming more significant for more businesses over the next few years.

bodomalo 4y ago

I doubt any of those payment providers mentioned does not take the chargeback fee on a credit-card dispute. Anyway, they might handle customer-communication with the merchant better. Stripe offers nothing. If the customer could "contact" the seller, everyhting would work out better. Just think - you have only 11 CHARS(!!!) to describe your service, thats what the customer sees on his monthyl CC bill. I am unable to describe it to everc customer in 11 chars, so 1 out of 1000 belives it was fraud because people do not remember what they bought online.