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Stripe Capital

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Re: Stripe Capital

#51

Post by hbosch »

jawns wrote: post #25

The way Stripe Capital has structured repayment of the loan -- fixed fee, dynamic loan term -- is is an interesting way to make it hard to compare against other lenders, which typical express their fees through APRs. The term of the loan is variable, and depends on daily sales, but assuming you have a high volume of sales and take out a small loan, the effective APR is going to be through the roof! For instance, supp…

Well, and of course Stripe doesn't (and hasn't) peddle itself as a value option or a business that gives you the "best deal". The best part about Stripe is convenience, as with all their products. If you take out a small business loan through Stripe, and you use their other checkout or payment tools, it makes repayment automatic. That's the selling point. I don't think anyone looks to Stripe for low fees or value loans.

Re: Stripe Capital

#52

Post by jakelazaroff »

jawns wrote: post #25

The way Stripe Capital has structured repayment of the loan -- fixed fee, dynamic loan term -- is is an interesting way to make it hard to compare against other lenders, which typical express their fees through APRs. The term of the loan is variable, and depends on daily sales, but assuming you have a high volume of sales and take out a small loan, the effective APR is going to be through the roof! For instance, supp…

Isn't this inherent in a fixed fee, though? The faster you pay it off, the higher your effective APR will be. Whereas with a traditional loan your APR is fixed, but you end up owing more money the longer you take to repay it.

Seems to me like they're targeting businesses that do not meet your assumption of high sales volume.

Re: Stripe Capital

#53

Post by tempsy »

jawns wrote: post #25

The way Stripe Capital has structured repayment of the loan -- fixed fee, dynamic loan term -- is is an interesting way to make it hard to compare against other lenders, which typical express their fees through APRs. The term of the loan is variable, and depends on daily sales, but assuming you have a high volume of sales and take out a small loan, the effective APR is going to be through the roof! For instance, supp…

How does this offering compare to Square? Square Capital has been around for years now.

Re: Stripe Capital

#54

Post by Spooky23 »

jawns wrote: post #25

The way Stripe Capital has structured repayment of the loan -- fixed fee, dynamic loan term -- is is an interesting way to make it hard to compare against other lenders, which typical express their fees through APRs. The term of the loan is variable, and depends on daily sales, but assuming you have a high volume of sales and take out a small loan, the effective APR is going to be through the roof! For instance, supp…

Are factors ever a good deal?

Re: Stripe Capital

#55

Post by [deleted] »

harshadante wrote: post #27
qrazhan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Square and PayPal both have similar offerings, which piece here do you feel is innovative? (disclosure: I work at Square, but not on Capital.)

Harsha from Stripe Capital here. A ton of entities supply capital to businesses today -- it's one of the largest markets in the world. We aren't trying to beat anyone else. We're just responding to the need we heard from Stripe users for a product like this. I think how we do it (in terms of how we model the risk profiles of nascent, capital-light internet business; how we present it to customers; etc.) is all pretty…

[deleted]

Re: Stripe Capital

#56

Post by adventured »

dahdum wrote: post #21
atourgates wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the amount of junkmail I get offering my small business loans, I have a hard time believing the "filling a niche no-one else is offering" narrative. We get about 2x mailers per week from AMEX alone offering business loans of up to $500k, not to mention the many other offers we get less frequently. I like Stripe and think the offer a great product, but I don't think they're doing this because no-one else will…

This does seem to be exactly like PayPal Working Capital, down to the application and fee structure.

I'm guessing that what Stripe is really bringing to the table here, is what they so often do: considerable simplification of annoying, often slow, red-tape-heavy processes.

Their entire existence has been built on that. They look for the burr in the saddle. If PayPal had not been so incompetent with their API, Stripe probably wouldn't have had enough of an angle in the beginning to gain broad traction among developers.

Re: Stripe Capital

#57

Post by mNovak »

adamqureshi wrote: post #31

Stripe offered my 1 man shop a cash advance. $12,500 $1,250 Fixed fee then 10% of sales withheld. $18,500. $1,850 Fixed Fee. 14% of sales withheld. $25,000.00 $2,500 fixed fee. 20% of sales withheld. terms: No lengthy application: You’re pre-qualified for your advance—no time-consuming application process required. No hidden fees: We charge one fixed fee for the advance—there are no interest charges or late fees. Pay…

The important question here is what are your average monthly sales? (e.g. what is the expected term and thus APR of the loan?)

Re: Stripe Capital

#59

Post by pc »

jawns wrote: post #25

The way Stripe Capital has structured repayment of the loan -- fixed fee, dynamic loan term -- is is an interesting way to make it hard to compare against other lenders, which typical express their fees through APRs. The term of the loan is variable, and depends on daily sales, but assuming you have a high volume of sales and take out a small loan, the effective APR is going to be through the roof! For instance, supp…

[Stripe cofounder.]

> But one thing strikes me as odd about this whole arrangement. The better a business performs, the quicker it is able to repay the loan, and the higher its effective APR becomes! It's essentially a prepayment penalty in disguise. So you'd better make sure the loan doesn't help your business too much, or you'll end up getting hosed by the loan fee.

Yes, this is right -- if your business suddenly starts doing a lot better, your effective APR will be higher.

What we heard overwhelmingly from customers, though, is that the downside risk of credit obligations they can't meet (liquidity problems are asymmetrically damaging!) substantially outweighs the theoretical "risk" of a higher effective APR caused by significant outperformance in the business. (Stated differently, we're taking the risk of your business underperforming, in return for you paying us back somewhat faster -- but still at a capped rate -- if things go better than you expect.)

I think the model we have makes more sense for most businesses. But there's no dogma; we'll certainly revisit this over time if we find that a lot of customers seek a different risk profile.

Re: Stripe Capital

#60

Post by adventured »

amirhirsch wrote: post #47
jawns wrote: post #25

The way Stripe Capital has structured repayment of the loan -- fixed fee, dynamic loan term -- is is an interesting way to make it hard to compare against other lenders, which typical express their fees through APRs. The term of the loan is variable, and depends on daily sales, but assuming you have a high volume of sales and take out a small loan, the effective APR is going to be through the roof! For instance, supp…

If it seems like you were paying it back too quickly you should switch most of your sales to another payment provider like PayPal or Square to throttle your Stripe revenue lowering your effective APR until it's compatible with a bank line-of-credit.

They surely have built-in terms covering that premise.

Otherwise you could switch 99% of your payment processing off of Stripe and pay them a trickle of your sales over a decade.

For example, I wouldn't be surprised if they legally tie repayment to your actual business sales (or any sales conducted through a qualified payment processor, comparable to Stripe; some legal structure that catches this), not just your Stripe sales. In the pitch they only mention repayment directly coming out of your Stripe sales, because that simplifies the pitch. Otherwise it exposes them to an extremely obvious angle for being taken to the cleaners both by scammers and plain desperate business operators.

They lend a business $100,000. That business immediately switches 99% of their processing to someone else. Repayment occurs at a comical rate - forever. There's no chance they left themselves open to something so obvious, it'd never get past even a mediocre lawyer.

Edit: what you would do is build a requirement into the loan contract that you must pay out of all sales conducted by your business and or all sales handled by any payment processor (I'd go with all sales, if I were Stripe), not just sales that go through Stripe.

A slight variation of that, would be that Stripe is granted the legal right to audit your business first, in the event of a certain % drop in sales / repayment. The second step, if they catch you evading them in the audit, is that the contract stipulates they have the right to collect from all business sales. The point of this step-based process, is to avoid constantly throwing a serious flag at operators on modest drops in sales. So if sales - repayment - drops by a modest N%, they do nothing initially, perhaps send a friendly message to check in; if sales (supposedly) drop dramatically (either short-term or longer-term), they ramp up their approach accordingly including becoming more aggressive in talking to you and possibly including an audit (business review) request. Keep avoiding them, it becomes a serious legal matter, as it would with any major creditor.

In any large scale financing business like this, the creditor must be very well equipped to pursue legal remedies against the borrower. You can bet that Stripe has built in an angle to pursue attempts to evade them, in small ways and up to entirely ghosting them on the loan.

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