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Ask HN: What are some low cost payment processing alternatives to Stripe?
I'm looking to process ~20k transactions a month with an average ticket size of $15 per transaction. Would ISOs(Independent sales organizations) with sponsor banks be good options to consider?
- soumid 3y agoFor non-US residents (digital nomads), besides Stripe and PayPal, other payment companies have strict KYC requirements. Most payment companies require local residency and SSN. Why should Stripe be avoided? Is it difficult to pass their underwriting policy?
- tmikaeld 3y agoThe most low-cost I know of with widest reach (most countries) is https://www.adyen.com/pricing https://www.adyen.com/pricing Because you can choose which processor you want to use and there are many low-cost ones, including some inter-bank ones with fixed cost (no %) Most shops like WooCommerce and Shopify have ready-to-use plugins for it. (I'm not affiliated, but i build e-commerce for brands)
- CMCDragonkai 3y agoThey may reject you for no reason though, well no given reason.
- tmikaeld 3y agoThat applies to any and all payment processors..
- hiyer 3y agoOn a related note, you can look at hyperswitch [1], which is an open-source payment orchestrator that supports multiple payment processors. You can self-host it or they have a hosted version as well. 1. https://github.com/juspay/hyperswitch https://github.com/juspay/hyperswitch (not affiliated with this project in any way)
- sramam 3y agoDo you use this? I can't seem to figure what their pricing strategy is or who's running it. > Free-tier > Free-tier for startups. Lowest Price for others.
- unmole 3y ago> who's running it. Juspay is an Indian payment aggregator. They are quite big and are used by high profile brands: https://juspay.in/ https://juspay.in/
- sundarurfriend 3y agoAnd - tangential to this topic but maybe of interest to folks here - their stack is heavily Haskell-based. https://juspay.in/tech https://juspay.in/tech
- Nars088 3y agoHyperswitch is free to use for the first 10k transactions of the month. After that it costs $0.04 per transaction. It is a payment switch that comes pre integrated with major processors. So as a merchant your business relationship with processors like Stripe or Adyen remains the same (I'm affiliated with this product)
- NavyG 3y agoAdyen is a good option, however they have a monthly fixed fee ($120) and looks like they might not onboard small merchants with less than $50M ARR
- tmikaeld 3y agoThe candy-shop on my street use Adyen, I'd be very surprised if they had $50M ARR
- lnalx 3y agoAre you sure about the fixed fee? Their website says it isn't. > We do not have monthly fees, set-up fees, integration fees or closure fees. We do have a minimum invoice depending on industry or business model. Please speak to a member of our sales team for more details.
- louis-lau 3y agoThe minimum invoice is $120. Though it seems they can waive that if they like you during sales. It's all a little vague which I honestly despise.
- gndk 3y agoI talked to them in December 2022 and they now require a minimum of €5m/year to even consider you. The reason given was that underwriting/KYC for such small accounts is not worth it anymore. So not really an option for small businesses unfortunately. The Adyen sales rep I talked to recommended https://www.mollie.com https://www.mollie.com.
- pg_1234 3y agoI found GoCardless to be better and cheaper than Stripe. Not sure what their minimum viable throughput is though ...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hknmtt 3y agoEvery country has couple, if not dozens, of payment processors. Most of them will support foreign customers as well. So you have hundreds and thousands of options here. Bottom line will be that they are all essentially the same when it comes to functionality and pricing because they are the middlemen between you and visa/mastercard/... and not much else. So there is very little variety possible in this little space. It will mostly come down to how "pretty" their gateway is(unless you are doing direct integration without redirection), how responsive their support team is and how they bill you and provide transaction information. Again, not much variety. So pick the cheapest one and be done with it.
- rahkiin 3y agoOutside of the US this is not true at all. There are plenty of ways to transfer money without touching the CC networks but instead use interbank communications. iDeal, Klarna, SEPA: all fixed pricing instead of percentage based fees. It depends on where you want to provide your services.
- beardyw 3y ago> Outside of the US this is not true at all I think you meant "not entirely true". Yes, there are other options.
- rpodraza 3y agoIn Poland barely anyone uses cards for online payments. There are couple of different options: one-time automatic transfers that support major banks, BLIK (payment via one-time code), etc.
- Roark66 3y agoExactly, and it works well. Unfortunately as a customer you don't have the level of protection with these services a CC or a specialised top up "virtual" debit card has. Charge backs etc. It's one of the reasons why these alternative payment methods are a lot less risky to process and therefore cheaper for the merchants. So it makes me wonder why global companies like Google are so "credit card" centric. For example. You can attach a debit card as a payment mechanism for Google cloud services, but it can't be a top up one... Why? It is very annoying I have to open an extra account with overdraft block just to maintain some control on the spending if they suddenly decide to charge a wrong amount.
- rmdes 3y agoMollie - https://www.mollie.com/ https://www.mollie.com/
- buf 3y agoThis is the first I've heard of it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Great for those starting in Europe, it seems. And PayPal!!!!
- Version467 3y agoI've had a bad experience with them (though that was a few years ago). Back then they manually reviewed each website before enabling payment processing (which is fine), but then just didn't get back to us. We tried messaging them for a status update, but only got a generic answer that it'd take another couple days. After three or four weeks and another back and forth we just gave up. As I said, this was a couple years ago, so things might be very different now (we might've been an outlier even back then), but it left a bad taste, because the customer service was so unhelpful, even though they were much smaller than stripe.
- michelb 3y agoI have had good experiences with them for the past ±10 years.
- gndk 3y agoWe currently use them as our main PSP. It's ok. Unfortunately they seem to have stopped working on their main payment product for years and it stagnated. I asked a sales rep years ago if they have plans to integrate Amazon Pay. He said yes. It is still not available. They have Apple Pay, but not Google Pay. After PayPal, these wallets are the most important payment methods in e-commerce here, yet they don't seem to know this and/or refuse to add them for whatever reason. Instead they now offer loans that are repaid with a percentage of sales. The conditions are horrible. Probably related to selling a good amount of shares to Blackstone PE in 2021. So the enshittification has started. I guess they are working towards an IPO, so price hikes will probably come, too. Hope they prove me wrong and turn it around.
- 3y ago
- neom 3y agoI've heard braintree is pretty good these days, and iirc they're actually slightly cheaper than Stripe. https://www.braintreepayments.com/products/braintree-direct https://www.braintreepayments.com/products/braintree-direct
- buf 3y agoI've been using braintree for 9 years on one of my projects, and while it does "work", there doesn't seem to be much innovation happening, sadly. I use them for their direct integration with paypal, who owns them
- cj 3y agoWhat features are missing? In contrast, I almost feel like Stripe is innovating too much. I wish they stopped product development, no more redesigns, no more API breaking changes, it already "just works" so why rewrite and "improve" everything endlessly.
- davetron5000 3y agoTheir engineers need promotions so how else can they get them?
- smca 3y agoBraintree is a good chunk more expensive than Stripe for OP's needs if they're in the US. Based on the info they shared: • Braintree: 2.59% + $0.49 > Braintree fees: $17,570 cost for 20K txns/month ($15 AOV) • Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30 > Stripe fees: $14,700 cost for 20K txns/month ($15 AOV) So Stripe is around 16% cheaper for their use case on standard pricing alone.
- dubcanada 3y agoThough I suppose that 16% does depend on what the average transaction fee is. If you are higher then $15 it does scale towards Braintree being cheaper.
- NavyG 3y agoHas anyone used Helcim or Stax? These processors pricing seems to be around $0.15 per transaction. If this is true why don't so many people use it?
- notwhereyouare 3y agoI’ve used stax in the past. It is cheaper than stripe, but you’re also paying a monthly fee. In our case, it was $120 a month for a physical terminal in the office. I don’t know what the differences are for API transactions. It wasn’t something we were doing. We are now with mxmerchant and they are okay? I’ve never seen a credit card merchant go down and not take transactions, but in the 1.5 years we’ve used them, they’ve gone down twice. But we need to use them because they are the only processor the software uses and we need to now take cards through their system
- NavyG 3y agoInteresting, have you also tried online payments (card not present) with them? If so how is the reliability in that case?
- notwhereyouare 3y agoWe didn’t. I spent like 30 minutes investigating and then we didn’t go that route with them. Nothing against them, just went a different route
- littlestymaar 3y agopayplug: https://www.payplug.com/ https://www.payplug.com/
- NavyG 3y agoIs this also available in the US?
- hmert 3y agoHello, (I’m co-founder of MonoPayments, white label payment platform for fintechs.) If you want to pay less, you have to use local processors with local currencies. This would be a complex operation. 1. Establish a company at that jurisdiction 2. Make agreements with processors, it could be banks or wallet providers. 3. You need a treasurer (or CFO) 4. Foreign Exchange rates will be a concern after a while.
- NavyG 3y agoI currently operate only in US and I am willing to put in the effort for integration, PCI compliance etc. Do you have any recommendations for the local processors you mentioned?
- hmert 3y agoFor US, I recommend Paypal. If your payment gateway supports paypal it will cover 80% of transactions.
- tomnipotent 3y agoNot at your volume. It would probably cost you more to switch than you'd save, considering the time and training investment involved. Assuming $250k per year at $15/transaction gives ~16,666 transactions a year. With base Stripe pricing, that means you're paying $5k for the $0.30 per transaction fee and another $7.2k for the 2.9% interchange plus fee. So $12.2k in fees per $250k processed, or 4.9% of processed dollars. Adyen is probably going to be about the same given your volume. It's important to know that Stripe charges the same fee even though the fee for processing American Express is different from Visa, which is different from Discover and all are more expensive than debit cards. If your business skews highly towards American Express, than Stripe is actually giving you the best rate you could hope for. If you're volume skews debit cards, than Stripe is giving you the worst rate.
- flangola7 3y agoWhy is American Express so expensive?
- navigate8310 3y agoIn my country, they offer some of the best rewards rates and customer care services. Their no-frills chargeback protections and airport lounge network are somewhat better than what I have with my Visa card. However, Amex lacks offline acceptance and can be quite challenging to meet the "milestones" for annual fee waiver.
- tomnipotent 3y agoIt's how they pay for their best-in-class rewards and offerings. This means card holders are more likely to make big purchases on an Amex than other cards, and why many small ma n' pa shops don't accept them.
- jesterson 3y agoTheir perks for cardholders are substantially better than VISA/MC in most cases
- projektfu 3y ago
- riadsila 3y agoNot sure if this previous thread from years ago will be of any use, sharing it just in case any of the alternatives are still relevant or could be of use for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22596082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22596082 Mentions Adyen, Braintree, and Paddle
- rayquazatime 3y agoPaddle now looks super expensive, with like 5% + $0.5 what is happening?
- rayquazatime 3y agoOkay this includes fraud and tax as well. Any idea how paddle's Fraud management compares with Stripe's radar?
- khemdhaliwal 3y agoKhem from Paddle here - we'll be able to fight chargebacks on your behalf too as part of that :) The price above includes the entire payments stack (filing and remitting of taxes too), so you're compliant globally out of the box. We often help teams avoid having to hire lots of external accounting resource. Happy to chat if you'd like to learn more :)
- NavyG 3y agoCurious: you must have done a lot of groundwork to provide the whole stack as a solution, would love to hear from you how you internally select the processors you work with. Or are you directly integrated with banks and card networks?
- khemdhaliwal 3y agoSure - it's always evolving as we add more gateways and payment methods. We currently have three Stripe gateways (each region), WorldPay and Checkout.com. We find that payments getting accepted is dependent on a whole number of things and having the ability to re-route and retry based on the location of the transaction massively helps boost chances of it going through. You're absolutely correct in that haha - we exist to make sure teams don't have to do all this work internally themselves, as it becomes increasingly messy the more you grow. Can I ask what category of product it is you're selling?
- dingi 3y agoDepends on where you tap into the digital payments chain. At the highest level (with highest fees) are the payfacs (Payment facilitators). Above them are the payment acquirers with comparatively low fees, higher joining fees, more rigorous certification process and the PCI compliance is a chore you need to repeat every year. Above that is not that easy to tap into such as direct link to credit card networks and banks. At your volume, PayFac like Stripe is the best option IMO.
- Xixi 3y agoOnly tangentially related, but does someone know good competitors to Stripe in Japan? I need support for subscriptions in USD and EUR. Last time I checked, there were a few choices (besides Stripe and PayPal), but many supported either only JPY, or only one time payments...
- justusw 3y agoI’m also interested to hear, as I am using Stripe for my Japanese startup.
- la_fayette 3y agoBitcoin lightning network
- lofties 3y agoRealistic alternatives.
- jeremycarter 3y agoIn an alternative universe perhaps where irrational ideas are mass adopted maybe...
- lnalx 3y agoThis is definitely the more robust, durable and cheaper alternative. But clearly is a utopia for today.
- rewmie 3y agoFor over a decade I've been having free bank accounts with free Visa and MasterCard debit and credit cards, and I've been using them with services that allow me to create as many free virtual credit cards I wish. I thought these services were already widespread. Are people still paying for debit and credit cards?
- NavyG 3y agoHey I was referring to accepting payments online on my website. So this is the payment processing fees I was referring to
- sschueller 3y agoHighly depends on in which country you are. For Switzerland I can recommend payrexx which also accept Swiss payment systems such a Twint. https://payrexx.com/en/ https://payrexx.com/en/
- chakintosh 3y agoOne that comes to mind is LemonSqueezy
- NavyG 3y agoThis seems more like a merchant of record partner though
- merwanedr 3y agoAccording to some people on Twitter, this should've been deleted lol
- NavyG 3y agoTwitter where? link pls
- bibosj 3y agoFull disclosure, I work for Stripe. The question you want to ask is why are these alternatives cheaper than Stripe? What is the tradeoff.
- sundarurfriend 3y agoOne obvious answer is that Stripe has name recognition and fame, which means they can afford to charge more and get away with it. And smaller companies have an incentive to prioritize growth and user acquisition over immediate profit. But what other tradeoffs are you implying there to be? I understand in a vague sense that payment processors deal with a lot of ugly behind-the-scenes stuff like mind-boggling varieties of frauds, dispute resolutions, regulations, etc., but what exactly is the difference in this specific case, and how might it affect a potential user in practice?
- NavyG 3y agoYes, want to understand the trade off and would like to know what the challenge is in integrating directly with a payment provider that is closer to the networks / banks. I love Stripe for how easy it is to get started with but I am looking for opportunities to save cost further but getting closer to the acquirer
- davetron5000 3y agoI dunno, the OP may want to work with a processor that provides transparent and clear customer service.
- tail_exchange 3y agoWhat is your experience with Stripe's customer service?
- mbStavola 3y agoWhile we're talking about Stripe alternatives, anyone have a good Stripe Tax alternative? Their pricing is actually insane as they charge per API call rather than transaction amount. That sort of pricing made sense for TaxJar because it was their whole deal, but post-acquisition it would've made more sense to treat the tax product as a complement to the core business and just tack on a small 50c fee for successful tax collection.
- khemdhaliwal 3y agoHey mbStavola, Khem from the Paddle team here. We see quite a few sites switch over from Stripe Tax - offloading tax (including the filing) is our core competency (rather than bundling loads of tools together) and we'd charge per transaction for everything to save you paying unnecessary fees. Happy to chat if you'd like to learn more :)
- mbStavola 3y agoI'd absolutely love to switch to Paddle, the product seems great. Unfortunately, my business is a marketplace which I don't believe Paddle supports. Happy to be wrong on that though! Are there any plans to have a marketplace offering?
- khemdhaliwal 3y agoUnfortunately not sadly - we'd love to but the tax categories prevent us from working with any site where the products aren't yours. This is because it takes on all the tax liability. Stripe are awesome for that (can appreciate the costs stack up internationally though). At your avg transaction size I'm not sure I'd know anything cheaper that's worth the extra work. Best of Luck!
- abcd_f 3y ago[flagged]
- ericpauley 3y ago
- ChatGTP 3y agoSo...there kind of isn't any good alternatives?
- andrewshadura 3y agohttps://www.kevin.eu/ https://www.kevin.eu/ looks interesting. Apart from card payments, it supports instant account to account transfers.
- sourcecodeplz 3y agoThat landing page is ridiculous for a payment processor.
- NavyG 3y agoSuper interesting, is this available in the US?
- dubcanada 3y agoHave you considered going to one of the archaic platforms and getting a proper merchant account? Moneris, banks (Chase, Wells Fargo), etc? Pretty much all of them will probably offer better support (a customer support line) and cheaper transaction fee. You lose the developer friendliness, so you'll have to debate if that matters to you. To me it never did. Or you could take a look at stax https://staxpayments.com/ https://staxpayments.com/
- NavyG 3y agoYess I am willing to trade off developer friendliness. Have you personally used stax or any of these archaic platforms?
- dubcanada 3y agoI have used Moneris, and one provided by Costco and a bank before. They are all terrible SOAP garbage, but they work. I cannot recommend any for the US market as I am Canadian, maybe others have suggestions?
- khemdhaliwal 3y agoHey NavyG - Khem from the Paddle team here. We offer a merchant of record model which takes all of the manual work/integrations away and can migrate customers seamlessly over so you can focus on the product. Happy to chat if you'd like to learn more.
- sfmike 3y agoauthorize.net
- gndk 3y agoUnderrated, but probably the best long-term solution. Along with direct integration of popular wallets like PayPal, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay. GoCardless for bank account based stuff.
- APersonSomewher 3y agoI would like to know, if i'm correct in thinking, this is what GNU Taler could solve, too?
- Kalpeshbhalekar 3y agoI have seen a few alternatives to stripe, but this depends a bit on your location and services you provide. Check out: https://atlas.scoutflo.com/?q=stripe https://atlas.scoutflo.com/?q=stripe (They have listed all open source, stripe alternatives)
- hocuspocus 3y agohttps://stancer.com https://stancer.com
- aPoCoMiLogin 3y agohttps://recurly.com/ https://recurly.com/ maybe, I can't find this in their pricing page, but from what I know it looks like this: revenue fee 0.500% transaction fee $0.08 and selected plan (there is free one); with your volume that would be around $3.2k a month in fees.
- aPoCoMiLogin 3y agoalso you need to include the payment gateway, like authorize.net ($25 month, $0.1 trancastion) or something else
- constantinum 3y agohttps://www.chargebee.com/ https://www.chargebee.com/ Apart from billing, helps you solve recurring revenue related use cases.
- vrangan1989 3y agoWe have used Stax, they are pretty good. https://staxpayments.com/pricing/ https://staxpayments.com/pricing/