Earlier quoted context omitted.
and then there's this guy.
[flagged]
You can shave 4 bytes off of your comment by omitting the redundant "www." in your first link.
How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe
121–130 of 195 posts
Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe
#122If you are wondering how Stripe could even start with just 7 lines of code, it's a bit misleading: With Stripe, all a startup had to do was add seven lines of code to its site to handle payments: What once took weeks was now a cut-and-paste job. I.E. the simplicity of the Stripe platform (taking only 7 lines of code for developers) was how they succeeded, not that they built a startup at first with just 7 lines of co…
I feel like I just wasted 15 minutes digging for that and being disappointed that their MVP wasn't a 7-liner. Guess I should have come to the comments first.
That is what i do :)
Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe
#123I am just now in the process of completing a migration from Paypal PayFlow (Recurring Profiles) to Stripe (Subscriptions)
While Stripe's API documentation is MUCH easier to understand on the face there is a lot of undocumented complexity hidden away in there that was documented in Payflow Pro (mostly -- in a hard to find 400 page pdf).
In the end it is worth it for our specific use case. But like anything involving money over time it is much harder then it seems. Obviously, WAY more then "7 lines of code" to do it even halfway right.
I have to give massive credit to both organizations support engineers who helped us move the card details across without us ever seeing them. In the end they even ended up having to do a complex customer_id mapping for us to get it done in a way that allowed us to recreate the behaviour we had in PayFlow in Subscriptions
Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope. The Stripe advantage over PayPal is that Stripe operates more like a merchant account, where the buyer sees the seller's name on the credit card statement. PayPal injects itself into the checkout process, Stripe is basically a white label. Stripe also has easier underwriting. I suspect Stripe is taking more business from merchant accounts/gateways than PayPal, because they are different markets.
Question is when will Stripe (or someone else) operate even =more= like a merchant account (ie, interchange+ pricing).
They already do. You just need high enough volume.
Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
The PayPal form is roughly the same number of lines. The real break through for stripe was it was an alternative to PayPal with a modern UI.
Nope. The Stripe advantage over PayPal is that Stripe operates more like a merchant account, where the buyer sees the seller's name on the credit card statement. PayPal injects itself into the checkout process, Stripe is basically a white label. Stripe also has easier underwriting. I suspect Stripe is taking more business from merchant accounts/gateways than PayPal, because they are different markets.
Don't forget about their fantastic API and documentation.
Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
To expand, it's these 7 lines. (Actually 12) - more or less. Maybe not precisely that, but it's the bit where you add a payment form to your website. It's a nice headline, but it really leaves out the tremendous amount of back-end work that went into making that front end easy to use.
The PayPal form is roughly the same number of lines. The real break through for stripe was it was an alternative to PayPal with a modern UI.
The PayPal form also involved redirecting all your users over to PayPal. Stripe has always integrated into your site/service which is part of what made that form so nifty.
Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, the /your-server-side-code bit seems like the most difficult. Did Stripe not implement this aspect as well? I would have no idea how to securely process credit card transactions server-side.
If I remember how they worked (last did stripe integration a ways back), the script instruments your form's submit event to do an (ajax if possible) POST to stripe's server, which processes everything, and returns back a (merchant specific) "token" representing a redeemable charge to the customer. The form is then posted to your server, but all it gets is the "token", which it can then use your private merchant key t…
Correct, and the big reason for that is it means you don't have to be PCI compliant since the card never touches your server, only stripes. That's why Stripe blew up, Paypal had no such offering for allowing you to use your own checkout form but not have to pass the card through your server.
Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe
#128Though not the primary focus of the article, this struck a chord with me: > When bored in class, Patrick read books. “I would line up the angles so I was hidden from the teacher’s view,” he says, adding that he found out years later that an enlightened principal had instructed teachers to allow it.
I used to do something similar, I had quite a few bad teachers in college on some very interesting classes, I would cut class to go to the lab and study the same subject being taught there.
Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe
#129>>>> "Stripe made its debut in 2011 .... had spent two years testing their service and forming relationships with banks, credit card companies, and regulators so customers wouldn’t have to".
Can somebody help throw light on:
how Paypal was lagging in 2011 when compared to stripe ?
-OR-
how Collisons went forming better relationship with bank to build a system better than Paypal ?
Re: How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe
#130I am just now in the process of completing a migration from Paypal PayFlow (Recurring Profiles) to Stripe (Subscriptions) While Stripe's API documentation is MUCH easier to understand on the face there is a lot of undocumented complexity hidden away in there that was documented in Payflow Pro (mostly -- in a hard to find 400 page pdf). In the end it is worth it for our specific use case. But like anything involving m…
I'd love to hear more about the complexity you ran into to see if we can make it easier. Could you email me at edwin@stripe.com?