Stripe Billing • Hacker News Board

Re: Stripe Billing

#41

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #7

I see a new 0.4% to 0.7% fee, that is enough to make me start shopping competitors on Monday. The stripe processing fee is already high. It seems that all I get is some hosted invoice stuff.. which I could build in a weekend and not have to pay a fee on? Thinking about it, a medium sized SaaS company billing 15 million a year. 14,000,000 *.004 = 56k a year? For the same product they already had? Obviously it is cool…

It's all about the fraud control and the reduction in chargebacks. Yes, you can hack up a credit card payment gateway in a long night (been there, done that), but on the modern web you'll get killed by fraud. That's the hard part and if it is your own merchant account you're always going to be a few chargebacks away from losing that merchant account and by extension getting into really hot water with your business.

Re: Stripe Billing

#42

Post by whitepoplar » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

mstefff wrote: post #12

How is this any different than the subscriptions they previously offered? And what do services like Recurly do that Stripe subscriptions don't? And when is Stripe going to automatically handle sales tax?

This. Also, how does it compare to something like Chargebee?

Re: Stripe Billing

#43

Post by tarstarr » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

drinchev wrote: post #26

I think most difficult problem is still proper accounting. I'm with a client right now, based in Europe and we had >really good time Having a service like Cleverbridge [1] / Avangate [2], where they end-up having someone to manage this for them for a bigger % of the sale, was the better deal. Not sure how the startup-scene will solve this, but it's actually still really hard to do this properly. My best solution woul…

(Stripe PM here) We're actually working on exactly this problem right now. :) More to come in the next couple months, if you're interested in beta testing let me know! (tara@stripe.com)

Re: Stripe Billing

#44

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

drinchev wrote: post #26

I think most difficult problem is still proper accounting. I'm with a client right now, based in Europe and we had >really good time Having a service like Cleverbridge [1] / Avangate [2], where they end-up having someone to manage this for them for a bigger % of the sale, was the better deal. Not sure how the startup-scene will solve this, but it's actually still really hard to do this properly. My best solution woul…

And that's before you get into VAT-MOSS and all that jazz. That's the real issue if your payment gateway doesn't do a perfect job of it, even better if you have to issue refunds.

Re: Stripe Billing

#45

Post by citizens » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

chrisper wrote: post #34

citizens wrote: post #17

Looks buggy to me. I created a test invoice and specified that it should be payable at a later date and only via ACH. I checked the preview link and the only option to pay was by credit card. I sent the invoice anyway and the test user's credit card was immediately charged.

Are you sure it's a charge and not a hold?

It was a (failed) charge.

Re: Stripe Billing

#46

Post by k__ » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

aidos wrote: post #13

Having used Chargebee for a long time I would say that this problem space is much larger than it first appears. There are a lot of boxes to tick before a solution like this does all the stuff you’ll need it to (but have no idea about).

haha, I already wanted to ask if this is a viable alternative to chargebee

Re: Stripe Billing

#47

Post by jotto » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

mstefff wrote: post #12

How is this any different than the subscriptions they previously offered? And what do services like Recurly do that Stripe subscriptions don't? And when is Stripe going to automatically handle sales tax?

Previously they only offered tiered billing (e.g.: gold, silver, bronze plans), further, the API for that was structured so you're billing for the next month.

This announcement suggests "usage-based", which is how AWS and Google Cloud bill you: for how much you used during the previous billing period.

Re: Stripe Billing

#48

Post by nodesocket » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #7

I see a new 0.4% to 0.7% fee, that is enough to make me start shopping competitors on Monday. The stripe processing fee is already high. It seems that all I get is some hosted invoice stuff.. which I could build in a weekend and not have to pay a fee on? Thinking about it, a medium sized SaaS company billing 15 million a year. 14,000,000 *.004 = 56k a year? For the same product they already had? Obviously it is cool…

I could be wrong but the 0.4% fee only seems to kick in after $1M. It's not clear if that is $1M a year or $1M lifetime.

Re: Stripe Billing

#49

Post by gargarplex » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

digitalbase wrote: post #21

gargarplex wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but now Stripe is adding in features like email invoices, presumably the ability to for customers to update payment info, etc. I don't know how much exactly has been added incrementally and how much is available in this release, but I'm optimistic that soon I will be able to phase Recurly out of our stack...If someone from Stripe wants to build a Recurly -> Stripe migration toolset, I'd love that!

As we speak, we are writing code to move from stripe to recurly/adyen. The analytics/easy plan mgmt and email invoicing in recurly is something stripe doesn't have. Would you advise against that ?

No, I would not advise against that. There is a reason I pay the (annoying) 1% + $99/$299 fee to Recurly.

I was hoping that this signaled that Stripe was beginning to integrate that valuable featureset into the Stripe platform.

Re: Stripe Billing

#50

Post by pbarnes_1 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

taurath wrote: post #31

brianwawok wrote: post #7

I see a new 0.4% to 0.7% fee, that is enough to make me start shopping competitors on Monday. The stripe processing fee is already high. It seems that all I get is some hosted invoice stuff.. which I could build in a weekend and not have to pay a fee on? Thinking about it, a medium sized SaaS company billing 15 million a year. 14,000,000 *.004 = 56k a year? For the same product they already had? Obviously it is cool…

I think they're hoping that the reduced churn rate will make up for the added fees. A "whoops please update your card" email gives people the opportunity to decide whether a sub is valuable, while a quiet background payment tends to be less noticed.

But we already built that ourselves...