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Stripe Billing

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Re: Stripe Billing

#331

Post by chrishynes »

folli wrote: post #329
chrishynes wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not just a communication problem, it's a pattern. You guys did the same thing last year when you stopped returning fees on refunds. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that you weren't returning fees anymore. I get not returning the flat 0.30 transaction fee, but not returning the % fees smacks of being more worried about the corporate bottom line than customers. Many processors refund the % fees, and there's…

Which payment processor would you recommend now? Edit: See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16772655

Depends on volume and risk profile. There are many very sharp Authorize.Net resellers out there that will work with you to get a great rate for your situation. I've seen 2.2% rates on 50k/mo of processing for low risk customers. Of course, with that you get some additional fees to factor in -- monthly statement fee, international, Amex, etc... but it pencils out to way lower than 3% at a decent volume.

For example, these guys: https://www.netcompaysystem.com

And many of these processors will give you gross deposit which is the only way to make things easy for an accountant. The net fees model Stripe uses is a nightmare for reconciliation at any sort of scale.

This isn't to say I've abandoned Stripe entirely -- there are some cases where it makes sense, when you're actually using some of the advanced features and API, not just a straightforward card charge.

I just completed a Stripe Connect integration that handles millions a month for several clients... but even there you run into half baked/stapled on feelings when you try to produce a full featured process that works at scale. For example, there's no straightforward way to provide a batch report for a Stripe Connect client -- the charge ID's don't match up with the platform account, and the only way to fully map which charges/refunds/chargebacks are in a given deposit for the client account is to link them up by amount and date/time....

Re: Stripe Billing

#332

Post by intheon »

degenerate wrote: post #100
pg_bot wrote: post #84

This is extremely disappointing. For my business this means an additional 0.4%-0.7% fee added onto a service I currently use for free justified by features that I cannot use for compliance purposes. This new invoicing process does not qualify as an exempt financial service for a covered entity. (see subsection 1179 of HIPAA) So unless they are now willing to sign a business associates agreement I just got a price hik…

I don't do $1MM in business but I'll definitely shop around once I get close. Prior to this announcement I wouldn't think twice about staying with Stripe forever. This is the first time I've ever thought, hmm, who else can I use?

Same here. I just took a look at Braintree and it has convinced me.

Re: Stripe Billing

#333

Post by robbiemitchell »

welder wrote: post #65
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…

Looks like Stripe Payments (the minimum you need to process credit card payments) is still 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction, for existing Stripe recurring billing users. For any new projects I'll be using Braintree for recurring billing. Edit: the fee increase is only after $1M in revenue so still makes sense to use Stripe in a project's early stages.

I'm curious how it could possibly go much lower than that. The credit card processors impose fees on everyone, including Stripe.

Re: Stripe Billing

#334

Post by farnsworthy »

chrishynes wrote: post #331
folli wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which payment processor would you recommend now? Edit: See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16772655

Depends on volume and risk profile. There are many very sharp Authorize.Net resellers out there that will work with you to get a great rate for your situation. I've seen 2.2% rates on 50k/mo of processing for low risk customers. Of course, with that you get some additional fees to factor in -- monthly statement fee, international, Amex, etc... but it pencils out to way lower than 3% at a decent volume. For example, t…

How about for new startups (with low or no volume)?

Re: Stripe Billing

#335

Post by farnsworthy »

dboreham wrote: post #147
softwarefounder wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"build in a weekend"

I'm working in my spare time on a series of articles about the curious psychology of the software development world. This one is near the top of my list!

I could write that series in a weekend.

Re: Stripe Billing

#336

Post by robbiemitchell »

Everyone here is complaining about price, so let me offer a counterpoint.

My understanding is that 2.9% + 30 cents is barely above what you would expect the credit card networks themselves to be charging Stripe. The margins are razor thin. If you have beef with this percentage of your revenue being taken, it's with the credit cards.

Adding a .4% fee on top is likely cheaper than using a separate service on top, like Chargify/Recurly/Chargebee. (Sure, if you had already built your own stuff on top of Stripe, you don't see this tradeoff as real. But all of those are legitimate businesses, suggesting there's a huge market out there of people who don't prioritize eng time like you.)

.4% isn't nothing, but put it in context of a functioning SaaS business with product priorities, especially when you think about expensive it is to hire software engineering talent. It's going to be a fraction of a fully loaded engineer's time that is probably best dedicated to other parts of the business. (Fully loaded = take a salary, add 30% for taxes and benefits, plus ammortized recruiting fees.) A one-time or occasional integration project frees up engineering to focus on other stuff and enables other teams to work on their own.

Re: Stripe Billing

#337

Post by eitland »

literallycancer wrote: post #314
woolvalley wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no lack of regulation in the USA, it's just the USA has some wrong regulations that creates horrible results you see sometimes. Most of it is from a lack of single payer healthcare and a public culture of infrastructure neglect with high amounts of waste compared to pretty much everywhere else in the world. I really think it comes down to legislation philosophy. In the english speaking countries, cost of com…

If you are a 1 man show, how about not collecting data you most likely don't need anyway? And the 4% global revenue fine the GDPR is famous for does exactly what you want -- scales with the means of the business.

Last I saw there was a minimum fine of x million Euros.

Edit: had to verify. It seems a bit more reasonable: """Article 83 of the General Data Protection Regulation provides details of the administrative fines. There are two tiers of fines. The first is up to €10 million or 2% of annual global turnover of the previous year, whichever is higher. The second is up to €20 million or 4% of annual turnover of the previous year, whichever is higher.""" - https://www.gdpr.associates/what-is-gdpr/understanding-gdpr-...

Re: Stripe Billing

#338

Post by nickfzx »

scrollaway wrote: post #200
dictum wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's free For non-basic usage, that's a con, not a pro.

But it's better than Baremetrics, so I don't get your point. It being free just makes it both better and less expensive. ChartMoguls is excellent if you want to be on a paid plan. It's also super expensive.

We don't want to be perceived as cheap, but super expensive isn't our plan either. We're free for companies below $10K MRR, then charge on subscriber volumes. We can offer custom pricing to high-volume/low-margin businesses, feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss nick [at] chartmogul.com

Re: Stripe Billing

#339

Post by saryant »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #306
nothrabannosir wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Against all my instincts, even though this post is unconstructive and snarky and flame bait, and even though I am European (or perhaps because of it), I have to upvote this. European people, those voting for representatives voting for representatives (!) making the laws, need to start feeling the negative feedback of the regulations. I’m not saying there are no benefits to consumer protection; there are, I am a massi…

I doubt that EU regulations are more onerous than their US counterparts. And, obviously, the EU is mostly just replacing country-specific regulations, making it about 16x easier to enter the European market. I'd also like people to name specific regulations they disagree with, yet any time I challenge s/o they slink away. In this case, a stripe rep in this thread posted a list of their todos for the EU. Note that lit…

I lead a payments team.

US requirements around what we put on invoices: 0 EU requirements around what we put on invoices: Still figuring it out

The technical implementation is not difficult. It's dealing with all the lawyers and accountants who have to understand regulations of 27 different countries.

There is a significant difference between "not regulated" and "regulated at all". The burden of understanding the regulation itself is a cost, even if the actual compliance turns out to be simple.

Re: Stripe Billing

#340

Post by lioeters »

lossolo wrote: post #132
lioeters wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"another for EU clients where I pay only 1.7%" May I ask which payment processor you're using in the EU?

Cardinity. Comparison with Stripe here: https://cardinity.com/stripe-alternative

Thank you for the information!
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