One that comes to mind is LemonSqueezy
Ask HN: What are some low cost payment processing alternatives to Stripe?
41–50 of 117 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some low cost payment processing alternatives to Stripe?
#42According to some people on Twitter, this should've been deleted lol
Re: Ask HN: What are some low cost payment processing alternatives to Stripe?
#43I've heard braintree is pretty good these days, and iirc they're actually slightly cheaper than Stripe. https://www.braintreepayments.com/products/braintree-direct
I'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
What 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.
Re: Ask HN: What are some low cost payment processing alternatives to Stripe?
#44payplug: https://www.payplug.com/
Is this also available in the US?
Re: Ask HN: What are some low cost payment processing alternatives to Stripe?
#45For 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?
Hey I was referring to accepting payments online on my website. So this is the payment processing fees I was referring to
Re: Ask HN: What are some low cost payment processing alternatives to Stripe?
#46Full disclosure, I work for Stripe. The question you want to ask is why are these alternatives cheaper than Stripe? What is the tradeoff.
Re: Ask HN: What are some low cost payment processing alternatives to Stripe?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do 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.
> who's running it. Juspay is an Indian payment aggregator. They are quite big and are used by high profile brands: https://juspay.in/
And - tangential to this topic but maybe of interest to folks here - their stack is heavily Haskell-based.
Re: Ask HN: What are some low cost payment processing alternatives to Stripe?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 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.
Exactly, 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.…
> 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.
Generally, you'd have to have your bank account hacked to have a reason to reverse a charge on these types of systems. It happens, but very, very rarely and the banks have a lot of reasons to make sure it doesn't happen. That or you gave money to a scammer and that's your own fault (but they'll still help you).
This is why the fees are much, much lower. Often these systems even verify that you actually have the money and can transfer the amount to your business bank account on the same day. You can't do that with credit cards.
Re: Ask HN: What are some low cost payment processing alternatives to Stripe?
#49Not 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 dollar…
Why is American Express so expensive?
Other answers are good but keep in mind that other brands can be pretty expensive. If you are B2B but most of your business is using a credit card, Visa and Mastercard business card and government purchase card transactions are more costly than American Express.
I don't think Stripe loses any money on a transaction. All interchange rates are less than 2.99%, but some are very close. For very low volume/low ticket price, stripe is a pretty good deal. But if high volume, there's bound to be a better option that pays off considerably the sooner you implement it.
Now, if you can get most of your customers using debit cards or ACH-type transactions, you can really achieve a low cost if you use a processor with interchange-based pricing.
Why support American Express? Their members tend to be better customers in my experience, and they appreciate that you support their preference.
Re: Ask HN: What are some low cost payment processing alternatives to Stripe?
#50Full disclosure, I work for Stripe. The question you want to ask is why are these alternatives cheaper than Stripe? What is the tradeoff.
One 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?