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Stripe in Japan

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Re: Stripe in Japan

#61

Post by nicolas_t »

Quick stats about credit card usage in Japan for people interested.

In Tokyo, most shops and restaurants accept credit card. In other cities (including Kyoto and Osaka), only about 30% of restaurants or smaller shops accept credit card. Chain store and department store usually accept credit cards, it's just the small mom and pop shop that are taking some time. The situation is improving fast though.

Online, I have a friend managing an ecommerce there with about 400 million dollar sales per year. Right now, 40% of the orders are cash on delivery. It was 60% of the orders three years ago.

Credit card is hard to get for foreigners (like usual) and for young people without stable jobs (banks tend to be rather risk averse).

I'm happy that Stripe is in Japan because the existing credit card providers are mostly incompetent and have really stupid apis.

Re: Stripe in Japan

#62

Post by piquadrat »

vertex-four wrote: post #57
nolok wrote: post #49

I evaluated stripe for a French company here in Europe, having heard lots of good things about them, and I have to say that while the integration was top notch, they were vastly inferior to local bank competitors in two areas : no support whatsoever for 3D secure (once you've started using it, you never want to go back), and way higher pricing. National banks (CIC, Caisse d'Epargne) both offered % way, way lower than…

> no support whatsoever for 3D secure This has always confused me about Stripe. They have integrations with various market-specific systems for many markets, but they don't have something that both vendors and consumers expect in the EU.

They apparently are working on it [1]. I asked to join the private beta a few months ago, but haven't been invited so far.

[1]: https://support.stripe.com/questions/does-stripe-support-3d-...

Re: Stripe in Japan

#64

Post by charlesdm »

nolok wrote: post #49

I evaluated stripe for a French company here in Europe, having heard lots of good things about them, and I have to say that while the integration was top notch, they were vastly inferior to local bank competitors in two areas : no support whatsoever for 3D secure (once you've started using it, you never want to go back), and way higher pricing. National banks (CIC, Caisse d'Epargne) both offered % way, way lower than…

If you do sufficient volume, I would assume you can negotiate the price per transaction way down.

Re: Stripe in Japan

#65

Post by vertex-four »

briandear wrote: post #58
nolok wrote: post #49

I evaluated stripe for a French company here in Europe, having heard lots of good things about them, and I have to say that while the integration was top notch, they were vastly inferior to local bank competitors in two areas : no support whatsoever for 3D secure (once you've started using it, you never want to go back), and way higher pricing. National banks (CIC, Caisse d'Epargne) both offered % way, way lower than…

Doing an IT integration with a French bank? No thanks. Aren't they still using SOAP? As far as 3D, that 'service' is a pain. A consumer has to call their bank to 'enable' the service and do silly things like wait for pin codes in the mail to activate their cell phones and just various "security" theater. France has the highest rate of credit card fraud rate in Europe so even with all of that bureaucracy, it still has…

My own experience of 3D Secure in the UK is that my bank flashes up a page and then it works automatically. With a friend's card, he has a password he enters. It works fine.

Re: Stripe in Japan

#67

Post by izacus »

troels wrote: post #60
kyriakos wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an expert on this topic but... The central banks of eurozone countries are governed directly by the European central bank. They are not controlled by each member state's government. Eurozone also means they all use a single currency and are all members of the single European market. There are no different laws for cross border payments. So I guess there must be another reason we don't know about.

No expert either, but there is definitely domestic regulations in place. Besides, the eurozone is only a subset of EU. The UK has its own currency, for example.

So why isn't the Eurozone supported?

Re: Stripe in Japan

#69

Post by [deleted] »

richardw wrote: post #66
_urga wrote: post #25

Well done on the Japan launch. Any plans to add South Africa soon? It would be great to have Stripe on African soil.

Local newish payment processor that looks quite slick: http://www.peachpayments.com/ Haven't tried them, though.

[deleted]

Re: Stripe in Japan

#70

Post by Xixi »

nolok wrote: post #49

I evaluated stripe for a French company here in Europe, having heard lots of good things about them, and I have to say that while the integration was top notch, they were vastly inferior to local bank competitors in two areas : no support whatsoever for 3D secure (once you've started using it, you never want to go back), and way higher pricing. National banks (CIC, Caisse d'Epargne) both offered % way, way lower than…

Reduce the employee count from 12 to 1, who isn't even a real employee because the company has no revenue yet, and suddenly Stripe proposition is much more interesting: it allows you to focus on your product, and finding product-market fit, instead of sitting with someone in a bank. Even when that someone is kind, competent and helpful (as has been my experience with several French banks, special mention to the Banque Populaire de Lorraine), even with exactly zero revenues yet. At such an early stage the ease of integration is overall much more important than the smaller transaction fee.
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