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Inside Stripe
- sailfast 15y agoSeems like a great service. Thanks for the article. How does Stripe line up in terms of services compared to GoCardless which was up here the other day: https://gocardless.com/ https://gocardless.com/ Differences in the agreement / metrics / UI / API? Seems like the 1.9% fee difference could add up.
- lfittl 15y agoThis comes up again and again, unfortunately. Its Apples and Oranges - and I get the feeling GoCardless don't say this clearly enough: GoCardless does not process credit card transactions. They process bank debits (= low fees, different system), and are UK only. Stripe does process credit card transactions, and doesn't do bank debit.
- frankdenbow 15y agoBeen very pleased working with Stripe for one of my projects. It just feels like it was very carefully thought out. Hope they continue to make strides in the developer community.
- old-gregg 15y agoStripe has been fantastic for us at http://mailgun.net http://mailgun.net Aside from solving the problem of dealing with recurring payments, they bring some unexpected benefits to the table. Their reporting (and the overall dashboard design) is so good that we canceled our original plans for building our own reporting completely - we just link directly to Stripe reports and customer pages from our own backoffice admin portal.
- iseff 15y agoAgreed. Stripe is working wonders for us at: http://www.mobiledevhq.com http://www.mobiledevhq.com We tried to integrate with PayPal's recurring APIs for three weeks, scrapped it when we found Stripe, and had it completely ready to go in 24hrs. Not to mention their customer support is absolutely fantastic. I get responses within seconds in their Campfire chat room and hours if I send an email, anytime of day.
- rgrieselhuber 15y agoWe were lucky in that Stripe was made available right as we were starting http://www.ginzametrics.com http://www.ginzametrics.com. We never had to deal with the painful issues that we've seen other companies go through with their billing systems. Their dashboard has also come a long way so that many of the back office management things I thought I was going to have to build have been taken care of. You can create / manage plans, customers and more. It's hard to believe nobody has solved this problem until now but I'm glad that somebody finally did.
- _pius 15y agoSuch a great service.
- siavosh 15y agoCan someone explain how stripe/square can get around the merchant account requirement?
- lbotos 15y agoAs far as I understand it, Stripe IS your merchant account. They are similar to a Paypal type service. Does that help?
- bennylope 15y agoIf I'm not mistaken they provide the merchant account implicitly.
- EREFUNDO 15y agoThey are a third party payments aggregator (TPPA), just like PayPal when it started. They make it possible for merchants to accept credit card and bank transfers without the need to setup a merchant account with a bank or card association. The aggregator provides the means for facilitating payment from the consumer. The merchant is paid by the aggregator.
- davecap1 15y agoI wish it worked in Canada... Any other Canadians out there wishing the same thing?
- waterside81 15y agoYou should look into Moneris (RBC+BMO venture). Sane API, good support, decent fee structure. http://www.moneris.com/ http://www.moneris.com/
- bendauphinee 15y agoDo you have a page you can point to where they do the drop-in .js, or something as simple as the curl call that Stripe offers an example of? Man I wish we had Stripe here in Canada.
- erohead 15y agoMoneris is a huge pain and hassle for a small tech business.
- waterside81 15y agoReally, why? My experience is the exact opposite. I run two startups in Toronto, both use Moneris, no problems. I had cards processing within a day or two.
- jguimont 15y agoHow can a badly put together website full of stock photos tell me they do anything different from their competitors?
- gravitronic 15y ago100%! I understand the ridiculous amount of red tape that is probably slowing them down, but not having a paypal alternative is brutal. Wepay is also not available in Canada last I looked.
- pc 15y agoWe're working on this right now.
- neovive 15y agoGreat product! Looking forward to trying it out very soon. Anyone know the ergo keyboard being used?
- patricklynch 15y agoKinesis Advantage - http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/ http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/
- chaz 15y agoGreat keyboard ... have 3 of them. Really wish they would make a Bluetooth one.
- timerickson 15y agoOn the same topic, does anyone know the display arms they're using in that last picture? The mechanical thing holding up the Apple LCD Displays.
- collision 15y agoErgotron: http://www.ergotron.com/ http://www.ergotron.com/
- outside1234 15y agodoes anyone know if there is a way to transfer credit cards from Stripe to another 3rd party if they raise their rates? (I'm worried about this being a "low introductory offer") Or do you have to solicit credit card info from all your customers again?
- aaronblohowiak 15y agoFrom their FAQ: >Tell me about data portability. >That's not a question. We feel pretty strongly about data portability. We'll try to keep you with us by offering a better product than all of our competitors, but we won't keep you by locking you in. If you want to leave us for somebody else, we'll help you migrate your credit card data in a secure and PCI-compliant way. We're programmers at heart, and we strongly believe in open systems and a level playing field.
- outside1234 15y agolet me answer my own question: see https://stripe.com/help/faq https://stripe.com/help/faq and "Tell me about data portability."
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- thematt 15y agoI love Stripe and it's been awesome to use, but must repeat a question I asked in another thread. I wonder if that level of simplicity is sustainable for them going forward. The reason other payment providers have paperwork and approval processes is because of liability and the reality that there are unscrupulous merchants out there. Is Stripe assuming an increased liability because of the ease at which anybody can just sign up?
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- collision 15y agoWe think a lot about risk, and actually do more verification than traditional merchant-account providers. We just don't make you do busywork like mailing us a voided check or a utility bill. We certainly believe that the approach is sustainable, and the data so far strongly supports this.
- thematt 15y agoAwesome, glad to hear it! Thanks for the disrupting the space, I know I'm not the only one who appreciates it.
- taurussai 15y agoAS businesses scale, is it fair to assume they would want to start accepting and storing credit card information - basically the costs would be much lower? If so how do they meet security requirements/compliance?
- john_p_wood 15y agoI just finished using these guys for a product I'm launching next week. Great service and great support. Highly recommended.
- kenrik 15y agoIf you read about the early founding of PayPal you will find one of the big issues they faced was fraud. I hope they give that angle enough thought otherwise they are going to start leaking cash like the Costa Concordia took on water.
- rogerbinns 15y agoOn reading the article you would note in the second paragraph that two of the backers are Paypal cofounders. That would lead us to expect Stripe do have a big clue about the fraud issues. It will only be later that we'll find out what happens behind the scenes. For example Paypal works wonderfully right up until they decide to hold your funds while they investigate. Stripe will probably end up doing something similar and also have similar collateral damage (false positives). The Stripe FAQ includes a chargeback section which would cover the other likely scenario - people claiming not to have received the item/never made the transaction/it wasn't what they ordered etc.
- miles_matthias 15y agoStripe looks so awesome that it's got me thinking about charging for things that I might not have bothered charging for in the past. I think that's one of the unseen benefits. I'm looking forward to using Stripe.
- fbuilesv 15y agoA lot of people doesn't notice this, but when all you have to do to start charging people is include a couple lines of Javascript then the game totally changes. Imagine being able to charge (or just put a donation button) on all those weekend projects you see advertised in HN! I think that as soon as they start expanding outside the US the market for web applications will radically change.
- djtriptych 15y agoHehe the desk shown there is exactly the same setup at http://stripe.com/jobs http://stripe.com/jobs page. And yet none of the other workstations come with $1500 Herman Miller Embodys... I can also identify a pair of grados in the far right. Aging SR60s if I had to guess...
- jonah 15y agoThe 'phones ont the desk behind the Embody appear to be Sennheiser HD 202. http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/home_en.nsf/root/private_headphones_hifi_wired-headphones_504291 http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/home_en.nsf/root/privat...
- scott_s 15y agoI have always attributed PayPal's problems to having to perform fraud prevention on a massive scale. That's where I understand most of the initial difficulty comes from in getting a PayPal account setup: they have to weed out scams and money laundering. Same with the horror stories I read: most of those people have circumstances that would also preclude them from a standard merchant account. So is Stripe doing fraud prevention differently? Put another way, are they an entirely different animal from PayPal and Google Checkout, or are they betting that they can do a better job at what PayPal and Google Checkout already do?
- davidpoarch 15y agoYou are absolutely correct. That's one of PayPal's main weaknesses. I am not sure how Stripe is dealing with it; though they probably have to go through a similar screening process, which isn't foolproof. I am a co-founder of a nascent third party payments aggregator (TPPA) called PayGuard (currently in stealth mode - Beta version is being built), and our system inherently includes automatic fraud prevention; so we not only save money by eliminating the screening process, but we also save by virtually eliminating all 'dispute resolution'-leading scenarios. As far as a comparison for Stripe, they seem to be similar to Braintree, but geared more towards early stage online merchants. The following link may answer some of your other questions: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-of-using-Stripe-for-in-app-transactions-instead-of-Paypal-or-Braintree-are-the-costs-much-lower-how-good-is-the-security http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-of-using-Stripe...
- scott_s 15y agoour system inherently includes automatic fraud prevention If you're willing to share more, I'm listening. PayPal has "automatic fraud prevention" in the sense that, if you do something that deviates from what they expect, they suspend your account. I assume you mean something different. Also, I followed the Quora question to this related one: http://www.quora.com/How-are-Square-and-Stripe-able-to-accept-payments-on-merchants-behalf-without-requiring-them-to-hold-their-own-merchant-accounts-with-a-banking-financial-institution http://www.quora.com/How-are-Square-and-Stripe-able-to-accep... I'm still confused about one thing, though. I understand that PayPal is both an aggregator and the merchant of record. It sounds like Braintree is not and aggregator and not the merchant of record. But this poster claims that Stripe is an aggregator, but not the merchant of record, and I don't understand what that means.
- plusbryan 15y agoMicropayments support would be wonderful
- 9999 15y agoI think it's essential for their success too. I can't use them without micropayment support.
- porterhaney 15y agoI'll second this notion. Even if there is a way to collect micropayments, but not process them until they are large enough to process efficiently with the current credit card framework.
- mrkurt 15y agoIt's reasonably easy to do this with Stripe today, there's no reason you have to send a "charge" their way until it's accumulated enough to be worthwhile.
- Baggz 15y ago+1
- monsterix 15y agoWe're using Stripe and it's been awesome right from day-1.
- gtaylor 15y agoWe're loving it over at http://coursebookapp.com http://coursebookapp.com. We've been happily humming along for a few months, PayPal-free.
- moses1400 15y agoStripe has been awesome for us at CloudContacts!
- humbyvaldes 15y agoStripe is great, simple and awesome support. Once I got past the super simple first charge, I had some technical questions. I jumped into their support chat and had my question answered, plus some helpful php links.
- whyleyc 15y agoCan any of the Stripe team comment on when you'll be launching support for UK businesses ?
- pc 15y agoSorry, we can't give a timeline. I wish we could.
- westiseast 15y agoI wish you could too! What's stopping you right now?
- patrickk 15y agoThere's undoubtably tons of red tape for them to navigate whenever they enter a new territory. See the linked article for the hassle they had in the States. They also tried setting up in Ireland originally but some Irish banker pretty much laughed them out of the room by the sound of things when they had a meeting. Is there any wonder why the US is a more fertile environment for entrepreneurship?
- ajtaylor 15y agoGiven what Irish bankers did to the country, I wouldn't give much credence to their opinion. Unfortunately they still pull the strings and have incredible political clout. I'm not even Irish (though I lived there a few years) and it makes me sick thinking what the banks did, and then to foist it off onto the Irish taxpayers. Ireland's loss is the US' gain!
- PStamatiou 15y agoStripe has been amazing for us. We've even gotten emails from them (most recently Saikat!) about how we were accidentally hitting their API twice. They helped us find a bug. No other company I've integrated with us paid that close attention to such matters. We've changed our internal usage of Stripe many times (from doing lots of recurring work with various plans and invoice item adding) to just doing simple charges and it's worked great every time. We're quite proud of our Stripe-powered CC form on Picplum! http://dl.dropbox.com/u/186198/Screenshots/t26p.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/186198/Screenshots/t26p.png
- dedene 15y agoIf only they would come to Europe (or any European alternative would rise and stand up against Paypal). They're an amazing and promising startup and I do hope they succeed soon in expanding across the ocean.
- pc 15y agoWe're working on doing exactly this.
- metadata 15y agoI would love to know expected timeframe. Being in Europe and not part of EU (yet), handling payments is a major pain. Waiting for years to be able to complete charge on my own site instead of redirecting to a payment processing company. All that easy analytics and A/B testing opportunities....
- rosstamicah 15y agoHere's how my startup ended up using Stripe: After being told by Paypal I couldnt use Paypal at all (due to my business model being a violation of their Acceptable Use Policy) and then more recently Braintree telling me I could only process low number transactions (less than $250), Im happy to say that http://www.sponsorist.com http://www.sponsorist.com now processes payments with Stripe.
- plasma 15y agoPlease come to Australia! I can't confirm or deny I'm working on a direct competitor. Am I serious? Or joking, just to light a fire under you? Please hurry! :)
- ajtaylor 15y agoSeconded! The Australian market is ripe for a company like Stripe. People are just now getting happy with buying things online, so hurry!
- kingnothing 15y agoThis is completely off topic for the business model, but how do you like the orange Embody chair in the last picture? It looks like the fabric is getting dyed from jeans, but other than that, how is the actual chair?
- richardw 15y agoI absolutely love mine. Love it. Had one for about 2 years and it fits like no other chair I've tried. Only problem is that I have to remember to keep a towel on it when I'm not here because one of our cats loves it. That's unnecessary hassle for what is essentially a work tool, but if I didn't the seat would be clawed up within months.
- jc123 15y agoWhat is it about Stripe that is taking Google and Paypal a long time to imitate? Article mentioned api took tons iterations and stringent auditing, but the api is now known and auditing established companies should be relatively faster. It seems unlikely that the first mover advantage will allow enough time for Stripe to make a dent in the market. Flying under the radar longer might be better, but congrats to the team for all the accomplishments.