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Do people feel Stripe APIs are really that good? I’ve always found them unintuitive, tons of options, weird edge cases, breaking occasionally, etc. I’m sure pa

Do people feel Stripe APIs are really that good? I’ve always found them unintuitive, tons of options, weird edge cases, breaking occasionally, etc. I’m sure payments are convoluted, but I’d still imagine they could be meaningfully easier for the bulk 80% of use case?

rpmisms 2mo ago
Yes, Stripe is extremely good at what they do. Payments are complicated.
- ballon_monkey 2mo ago
  Payments themselves are so much complicated. Payments to support multi-currency, jurisdictions, countries, scenarios, that's complicated.
  - rpmisms 2mo ago
    I'm friends with a payment docs writer. Holy crap are payments complicated.
umpalumpaaa 2mo ago
I have implemented the Swift payment Spec and I can tell you having this abstracted in a nice API is so much better.
Aeolun 2mo ago
I mean. They used to be good. When they started out their docs were absolutely far above the competition. They aren’t now, and Stripe has lived long enough that they’ve seen themselves become the villain.
- georgel 2mo ago
  Feature bloat definitely made their API and product docs harder than the early days. Stripe Checkout would have saved my teams days, but I agree, they need to go back to their roots and make the 99% use case very easy.
- ElProlactin 2mo ago
  Stripe has the worst payment APIs, except for all the others.
- nkohari 2mo ago
  I worked on developer experience at Stripe for a few years. What really happened is that Stripe's products used to be simple. If you're only accepting credit cards and only serving the US market, the API surface is extremely simple. Once you start going multinational and accepting different types of payments it gets much more complex. For example, OXXO gives users a barcode and lets them take it to a physical location and complete the purchase, so instead of a system like Visa which can confirm a transaction in a maximum of O(seconds), you also have to support methods where confirmations take O(days). Building custom API endpoints for each payment method isn't realistic, since there are hundreds worldwide, and merchants want a single integration point that can support anything from credit cards to coupon-based systems like OXXO. TL;DR -- Stripe's APIs are definitely more complex now, but it's not because of poor design, it's because they simply have to be in order to serve the customers and markets the company is now reaching.
teaearlgraycold 2mo ago
I expect many of the warts in the API surface are there because they want to avoid changing things for fear of breaking someone else's business.
tyre 2mo ago
Stripe's APIs are very good. They could be better, but it's difficult to change the underpinnings of financial infrastructure. A lot of risk, little incentive to move, and you're designing something that has to last (and make sense) for 15+ years in the future. I worked on this at Stripe in 2022. We were the first teams to start building v2 APIs and data models to solve exactly this problem. The first target launch date (in Feb 2022) was November 2022. It was launched in May of 2025. My reporting line, as an EM, was Netflix, Oracle, Oracle. No one had startup experience. It was drenched in politics. The engineers were largely brilliant, kind, and hardworking. I still love the company and believe in Patrick. Believe me, he deeply understands what you're saying and wants it to be the best it can be. But it was clear to me, even then, that they'd lost a lot of what made them special. They could maintain it, but I wasn't sure they could do it again. Banking-as-a-Service was one opportunity, Link was another, and now this will be a third. We'll see. (I say this with a lot of love for Stripe and Stripes.) Coincidentally, I had a conversation with a recruiter at Anthropic and saw them doing something very similar. They were starting a new team in a new vertical and wanted someone with experience running an org of 100+ people. I would bet real money that it will be a fraction of the product/impact it could be (though still probably make money!)
- qwerpy 2mo ago
  > Netflix, Oracle, Oracle Well that brings back some memories. I remember there was a third Oracle in that chain, but he left earlier compared to the others.
- aleqs 2mo ago
  Your love/adoration of Stripe and Patrick seems irrational. Yeah Stripe built a decent payments API, but nothing particularly innovative or ground breaking. In recent times it's become pretty clear that they are aggressively shifting from a tech company to basically a marketing agency. They haven't been able to build anything new/notable in years, all of their new products are external acquisitions. All creative/innovative engineering spirit in the company is aggressively being crushed by new leadership who are all highly political business/sales/marketing people. The technical 'leadership' at stripe is a complete joke now.
jwr 2mo ago
They are certainly much better than the competition. That said, do not believe the marketing hype. If you want to accept various kinds of payments, you will eventually run into the stupid limitations of the payment system, and Stripe APIs will not abstract this for you in spite of what they advertise. For example, redirect-based payment methods (iDEAL, Bancontact, Sofort) are a huge source of complexity, and handling all the additional states a payment can be in is far from obvious. Stripe mostly just drops them in your lap and says "deal with it".
sensanaty 2mo ago
I work for a competitor and can confidently say they have amazing docs. Payments are complex, and they definitely do cover the bulk 80% case in a REALLY good way. We have this workshop thing we make most new joiners go through where they integrate our own APIs into a demo app and the number 1 response from anyone familiar with the wider payments industry is that we should aim to make our docs more like Stripe's lol
joshstrange 2mo ago
I think their API's are good on their own but in the payments space they are on a completely different level. I've integrated with a number of payment processors (6+) and every single time (without fail) I find myself comparing them to Stripe (unfavorably, for the other processor). Docs are a mess, API is a mess, web portal is stuck in the 90's, things that are a form on Stripe are an email at best, a call/meeting at worse. For one processor I had to have 4-5 calls before they would give me a key and let me buy hardware. I doggedly jumped over every barrier, worked with their shit docs, called their terrible API and in the end, <2 weeks before I was going live, found that in production over half my credit cards were failing to be charged. When I asked them about it they said "contact your bank", as if that was a valid response for why 4 of my 6 credit cards threw an error (with no recourse/message). In <2 week I had Stripe hardware and completely re-wrote the implementation in time for launch. Stripe is not the cheapest by far, but you'd have to pay me quite a bit of money to consider using anyone else.
- scarab92 2mo ago
  This is why I would never invest in Stripe. The moat protecting their high margins is temporary. Competitors will obviously improve their developer experience over time, and then win on price. Stripe are stuck. They know they need to lower rates over the long term, but since they already make so much profit overcharging existing customers, they are hesitant to do so, meaning new competitors will enter with a price advantage without a competitive response from Strioe.
  - joshstrange 2mo ago
    > plus all new competitors will do better than Stripe on this, because they can design a brand new API. So far it hasn't happened and they've had the time. Point me at an API better than Stripe's with lower fees and I'll be interested but so far I haven't seen anything like that.

rpmisms 2mo ago

Yes, Stripe is extremely good at what they do. Payments are complicated.

ballon_monkey 2mo ago
Payments themselves are so much complicated. Payments to support multi-currency, jurisdictions, countries, scenarios, that's complicated.
- rpmisms 2mo ago
  I'm friends with a payment docs writer. Holy crap are payments complicated.

umpalumpaaa 2mo ago

I have implemented the Swift payment Spec and I can tell you having this abstracted in a nice API is so much better.

Aeolun 2mo ago

I mean. They used to be good. When they started out their docs were absolutely far above the competition. They aren’t now, and Stripe has lived long enough that they’ve seen themselves become the villain.

georgel 2mo ago
Feature bloat definitely made their API and product docs harder than the early days. Stripe Checkout would have saved my teams days, but I agree, they need to go back to their roots and make the 99% use case very easy.
ElProlactin 2mo ago
Stripe has the worst payment APIs, except for all the others.
nkohari 2mo ago
I worked on developer experience at Stripe for a few years. What really happened is that Stripe's products used to be simple. If you're only accepting credit cards and only serving the US market, the API surface is extremely simple. Once you start going multinational and accepting different types of payments it gets much more complex. For example, OXXO gives users a barcode and lets them take it to a physical location and complete the purchase, so instead of a system like Visa which can confirm a transaction in a maximum of O(seconds), you also have to support methods where confirmations take O(days). Building custom API endpoints for each payment method isn't realistic, since there are hundreds worldwide, and merchants want a single integration point that can support anything from credit cards to coupon-based systems like OXXO. TL;DR -- Stripe's APIs are definitely more complex now, but it's not because of poor design, it's because they simply have to be in order to serve the customers and markets the company is now reaching.

teaearlgraycold 2mo ago

I expect many of the warts in the API surface are there because they want to avoid changing things for fear of breaking someone else's business.

tyre 2mo ago

Stripe's APIs are very good. They could be better, but it's difficult to change the underpinnings of financial infrastructure. A lot of risk, little incentive to move, and you're designing something that has to last (and make sense) for 15+ years in the future. I worked on this at Stripe in 2022. We were the first teams to start building v2 APIs and data models to solve exactly this problem. The first target launch date (in Feb 2022) was November 2022. It was launched in May of 2025. My reporting line, as an EM, was Netflix, Oracle, Oracle. No one had startup experience. It was drenched in politics. The engineers were largely brilliant, kind, and hardworking. I still love the company and believe in Patrick. Believe me, he deeply understands what you're saying and wants it to be the best it can be. But it was clear to me, even then, that they'd lost a lot of what made them special. They could maintain it, but I wasn't sure they could do it again. Banking-as-a-Service was one opportunity, Link was another, and now this will be a third. We'll see. (I say this with a lot of love for Stripe and Stripes.) Coincidentally, I had a conversation with a recruiter at Anthropic and saw them doing something very similar. They were starting a new team in a new vertical and wanted someone with experience running an org of 100+ people. I would bet real money that it will be a fraction of the product/impact it could be (though still probably make money!)

qwerpy 2mo ago
> Netflix, Oracle, Oracle Well that brings back some memories. I remember there was a third Oracle in that chain, but he left earlier compared to the others.
aleqs 2mo ago
Your love/adoration of Stripe and Patrick seems irrational. Yeah Stripe built a decent payments API, but nothing particularly innovative or ground breaking. In recent times it's become pretty clear that they are aggressively shifting from a tech company to basically a marketing agency. They haven't been able to build anything new/notable in years, all of their new products are external acquisitions. All creative/innovative engineering spirit in the company is aggressively being crushed by new leadership who are all highly political business/sales/marketing people. The technical 'leadership' at stripe is a complete joke now.

jwr 2mo ago

They are certainly much better than the competition. That said, do not believe the marketing hype. If you want to accept various kinds of payments, you will eventually run into the stupid limitations of the payment system, and Stripe APIs will not abstract this for you in spite of what they advertise. For example, redirect-based payment methods (iDEAL, Bancontact, Sofort) are a huge source of complexity, and handling all the additional states a payment can be in is far from obvious. Stripe mostly just drops them in your lap and says "deal with it".

sensanaty 2mo ago

I work for a competitor and can confidently say they have amazing docs. Payments are complex, and they definitely do cover the bulk 80% case in a REALLY good way. We have this workshop thing we make most new joiners go through where they integrate our own APIs into a demo app and the number 1 response from anyone familiar with the wider payments industry is that we should aim to make our docs more like Stripe's lol

joshstrange 2mo ago

I think their API's are good on their own but in the payments space they are on a completely different level. I've integrated with a number of payment processors (6+) and every single time (without fail) I find myself comparing them to Stripe (unfavorably, for the other processor). Docs are a mess, API is a mess, web portal is stuck in the 90's, things that are a form on Stripe are an email at best, a call/meeting at worse. For one processor I had to have 4-5 calls before they would give me a key and let me buy hardware. I doggedly jumped over every barrier, worked with their shit docs, called their terrible API and in the end, <2 weeks before I was going live, found that in production over half my credit cards were failing to be charged. When I asked them about it they said "contact your bank", as if that was a valid response for why 4 of my 6 credit cards threw an error (with no recourse/message). In <2 week I had Stripe hardware and completely re-wrote the implementation in time for launch. Stripe is not the cheapest by far, but you'd have to pay me quite a bit of money to consider using anyone else.

scarab92 2mo ago
This is why I would never invest in Stripe. The moat protecting their high margins is temporary. Competitors will obviously improve their developer experience over time, and then win on price. Stripe are stuck. They know they need to lower rates over the long term, but since they already make so much profit overcharging existing customers, they are hesitant to do so, meaning new competitors will enter with a price advantage without a competitive response from Strioe.
- joshstrange 2mo ago
  > plus all new competitors will do better than Stripe on this, because they can design a brand new API. So far it hasn't happened and they've had the time. Point me at an API better than Stripe's with lower fees and I'll be interested but so far I haven't seen anything like that.