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Ask HN: Stripe or Braintree?

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Re: Ask HN: Stripe or Braintree?

#31

Post by joosters »

nickjj wrote: post #9
toomanythings4 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree with this. Braintree will save you a little money but their documentation is horrible; some of the worst I've ever seen. Their email tech support can be responsive and somewhat good but I feel like I have to email them about every little thing cause I can't find the answer in their disconnected documentation.

Also Braintree's registration process was crazy when it came time to move past their sandbox and accept real payments. They wanted so much personal information including my full social security # (not just the last 4), copy of my driver's license and a copy of a recent utility bill. Then on top of that I got questioned because I don't have any credit (I purposely made a life choice not to use credit cards), so they d…

Then on top of that I got questioned because I don't have any credit (I purposely made a life choice not to use credit cards), so they demanded 3 months of my most recent bank statements.

That's not Braintree's fault. In fact, that's them being sensible. The problem is that having no credit records makes you harder to tell apart from a fraudulent user.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe or Braintree?

#32

Post by nickjj »

joosters wrote: post #31
nickjj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Braintree's registration process was crazy when it came time to move past their sandbox and accept real payments. They wanted so much personal information including my full social security # (not just the last 4), copy of my driver's license and a copy of a recent utility bill. Then on top of that I got questioned because I don't have any credit (I purposely made a life choice not to use credit cards), so they d…

Then on top of that I got questioned because I don't have any credit (I purposely made a life choice not to use credit cards), so they demanded 3 months of my most recent bank statements. That's not Braintree's fault. In fact, that's them being sensible. The problem is that having no credit records makes you harder to tell apart from a fraudulent user.

Yeah but Stripe just asked me for my bank account number and last 4 digits of my social.

There was no background check and having to send over copies of various bills, statements, license, etc..

I felt like Stripe requested the least amount of info to legally accept payments where as Braintree requested a million things to build up some type of profile that they'll benefit from later.

You know, it's like the guy who sends you to a form where you need to fill out 4 pages of crap when in reality all he needs is your name to perform the service you're requesting.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe or Braintree?

#33

Post by newton10471 »

FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #20
davismwfl wrote: post #13

You can search HN and find this question many times. My 2 cents, I don't trust any company owned by Paypal as Paypal has a very strange, aggressive and non-transparent and inflexible process to holding funds from businesses, charities etc (even after providing all the extra "evidence" they ask for). Stripe has a lot of advantages, API being a huge one. I have heard of a few people that complain about delays in respon…

"If I were you, no matter who you choose to integrate, I'd encapsulate it behind your own payment "service" so that even if you have to switch or you need to add more then one (highly recommended), then you can." This is the best advice in the comments. I've seen my own code and others become overly coupled to a specific provider's terminology, mechanisms, and expectations - leading it to be exceptionally painful whe…

For those in the ruby/rails world, there's a gem which does this (make it easy to switch between payment vendors) for you: Active Merchant (http://activemerchant.org/).

Re: Ask HN: Stripe or Braintree?

#34

Post by davismwfl »

asadlionpk wrote: post #23
davismwfl wrote: post #13

You can search HN and find this question many times. My 2 cents, I don't trust any company owned by Paypal as Paypal has a very strange, aggressive and non-transparent and inflexible process to holding funds from businesses, charities etc (even after providing all the extra "evidence" they ask for). Stripe has a lot of advantages, API being a huge one. I have heard of a few people that complain about delays in respon…

Dumb question, wouldn't rolling a wrapper over existing payment service also require me to store credit cards myself somewhere so I can easily switch integration later? If so, isn't that risky.

It is not unacceptable to ask for updated payment details every so often, so users don't generally have issues with this and it saves you from having to store the actual card details. You just have to store the token as others pointed out.

Also, if you do integrate multiple providers early on, you can break users up over them so that again your risk is minimized. This does come with some accounting pain, but it mitigates some risk so it is worth it. So essentially if you had to move away from one vendor it isn't your entire customer base all at once.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe or Braintree?

#35

Post by amsstartups »

I personally would recommend Paymentwall, as it is a more international and complete solution.

I have tried multiple payment processors, but no one has such a wide coverage. In addition to card processing, Paymentwall allows you to accept payments made with bank transfers, prepaid cards, mobile payments, and different ewallets.

I never had any issues with expanding to new markets, and am currently processing payments from the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Middle East.

The API integration was straightforward and simple, and gave me access to all of their available options at the same time.

So far it is the best payment processor for international payments I have found.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe or Braintree?

#36

Post by smnscu »

amsstartups wrote: post #35

I personally would recommend Paymentwall, as it is a more international and complete solution. I have tried multiple payment processors, but no one has such a wide coverage. In addition to card processing, Paymentwall allows you to accept payments made with bank transfers, prepaid cards, mobile payments, and different ewallets. I never had any issues with expanding to new markets, and am currently processing payments…

Sounds a bit disingenuous since you just created that account to post this comment.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe or Braintree?

#37

Post by ziikutv »

The thing to realize here is that most of these payment processors have the same functionality. The key difference most of the time is the Documentation/Spec and the support provided by the processor.

I have been working on a Braintree solution for my place of employment and going from Authorize.net/First Data to Braintree was a pleasure! All support queries I've made to them have been answered in couple of hours. This to me makes the biggest difference.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe or Braintree?

#38

Post by ianhawes »

larrik wrote: post #30
asadlionpk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dumb question, wouldn't rolling a wrapper over existing payment service also require me to store credit cards myself somewhere so I can easily switch integration later? If so, isn't that risky.

No, not at all, as long as you aren't afraid to ask for someone's credit card again. You should also be able to transfer credit card information between services (which usually takes weeks and costs thousands, though).

In my experience, transferring between services didn't cost us a dime.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe or Braintree?

#39

Post by fujtech »

The only thing I will add about braintree vs stripe is that they are both aggregators that aggressively underwrite using algorithms. This means they are taking the risks upfront without full due diligence and then when any unexpected activity occurs (high ticket or high volume), your funds can be potentially held for a long time.

Other credit card processing companies may not be able to get you signed up in 5 minutes, but they follow a more traditional process of validating your business and documentation that gives you a more robust foundation for running transactions without problems.

Both of the vendors above however have extremely user friendly documentation and platforms and fast onboarding times. I would recommend them for startups.

Disclosure, I work for Fattmerchant, a fintech startup / payment processor.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe or Braintree?

#40

Post by hrktb »

asadlionpk wrote: post #23
davismwfl wrote: post #13

You can search HN and find this question many times. My 2 cents, I don't trust any company owned by Paypal as Paypal has a very strange, aggressive and non-transparent and inflexible process to holding funds from businesses, charities etc (even after providing all the extra "evidence" they ask for). Stripe has a lot of advantages, API being a huge one. I have heard of a few people that complain about delays in respon…

Dumb question, wouldn't rolling a wrapper over existing payment service also require me to store credit cards myself somewhere so I can easily switch integration later? If so, isn't that risky.

As other said it's usually not a problem to ask again for the credit card, and when you switch payment services the users might actually see different details in their bank transactions, get billed with different delays or otherwise have billing problems.

Having a transition step where the users know something is changing can be helpful to cover the edge cases.

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