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Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

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Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#141

Post by enahs-sf »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #100

Before stripe, I used paypal and it was sooo painful! There are so many terrible APIs out there that waste so much time needlessly. Then I found stripe. What a treat. Everything was documented and the documentation itself was both readable and didn't go in endless circles like the paypal ones. The error messages were helpful. And every api endpoint had an example, which is hugely helpful: HUGELY! All the other API de…

I definitely consider stripe to be the canonical example when it comes to both API and documentation design. Really an excellent benchmark and point of reference for anyone who's making a published API.

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#142

Post by edwinwee »

GeneralTspoon wrote: post #130

I quite like Stripe - but them forcing the recent switch to Checkout V2 has me a bit miffed. Previously it was super simple to add dynamic card payments to a site - just drop the JS in, make a call to your server and then call Stripe from your server. Done. And it's all done in a popup on the same page (so no context switching UX for the user). Now it seems they've killed the simplicity of that in favour of a more Pa…

A wallet isn't the intent. It's almost the opposite!

If you remember the previous version, your customers used their saved card within Checkout. The new version of Checkout lets your customers use whatever payment method is easiest for them, and wherever it is. That's why we're big fans of things like Apple Pay (some have seen a conversion increase of 250%!), local bank payments in Europe, or even saved cards in Chrome (rolling out now).

From its inception, Checkout was designed to be the fastest way to accept payments, and I think it's now faster (and even faster for customers). You can just drop in a single line of code—and that code doesn't have to be server-side. :)

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#143

Post by scrollaway »

GordonS wrote: post #132
nickjj wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... most likely what GP is talking about the new payment intent APIs, even though I don't think there's a real way you could implement them any better given the PSD2 requirements. Yes, definitely this. Payment intents is so much more complicated and convoluted than the previous "Charges" API. Stripe went from one of the easiest bits of my app to develop to one of the most difficult, to the point where I'll admit it…

Yep, I came across the Payment Intents stuff - holy crap, it's complicated , and the documentation actually isn't great - it's good for details of API calls and such, but not for explaining what the hell you actually need to do, and why. I also upgraded our Stripe API version recently, as a result of the new SCA regs - the whole experience was really frustrating! It felt like it should have taken me 4 hours max (test…

> This all seems very un-Stripe like, and TBH has me a little worried.

Well, I brought this up, but for what it's worth, as a user who's been thinking about this for a long time, I don't know how they could have done it any better given the new regulations and good support for payment methods that aren't credit cards.

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#145

Post by alanmeaney »

pc wrote: post #54

[Stripe cofounder] Thanks to everyone here who took a chance on us in the beginning and shared helpful feedback over the years! How to serve startups/developers more effectively at scale is still the main thrust of our product focus. We've fixed and improved a lot of things since we launched here in 2011, but we also still have a lot of work to do. (Both "obvious things we want to fix" and "new functionality we want…

Patrick, how do you approach reconciliation at Stripe?

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#146

Post by Teichopsia »

Stripe is one of many services I would like to use but can't because they simply don't work in my country. I understand it can get somewhat complicated due to legalities I probably don't understand (or maybe the market is too small to even bother). But if your Navy can go through the country I live in, could you folks (in general and not directed at anyone) please try a little harder?

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#147

Post by arcticbull »

pmart123 wrote: post #104
arcticbull wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the parent poster but I don't think that's what they were going after. I think they were asking whether the valuation is fair relative to other companies that are operating in a very similar space with similar ambitions. GS is an investment bank. A fairer comparison would be SQ, PayPal, Adyen or First Data. Square's market cap is $25B today on the public markets with a 2019 estimated net revenue of $4.5B and almo…

Exactly. I've really liked Patrick Collison in interviews and I've long admired their API documentation. Square Capital was first to offer loans to SMBs that amortize over the transactions so Stripe isn't the first mover there. Some bigger companies like eBay and Burberry have chosen Adyen as a payment solution and I think Booking uses Braintree? Are there reasons outside of costs to choose Adyen or Braintree over St…

> Are there reasons outside of costs to choose Adyen or Braintree over Stripe?

IMO costs are the worst reason to pick one of these providers at scale. They're all operating with a very similar cost basis, so you know they can each more or less match eachother, and if you come in with sufficient scale they'll offer custom pricing. Their costs are determined by the payment networks and their ability to mitigate risk and fraud. Stripe got a rep for being willing to match anyone even if they lost money in the process.

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#148

Post by robbiemitchell »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #88
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While those are the "theoretical" reason for IPOs, let's not ignore a primary reason for an IPO, which is to let early investors and employees cash out (though these days many companies, e.g. Slack, are just doing a direct listing instead).

Those people are divesting of risk.

Or seeking liquidity. They can be related but I wouldn't say they're synonymous.

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#149

Post by mehhh »

edwinwee wrote: post #125
mehhh wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe has a slick API, but their banned merchant categories (anything telecom or networking related) have caused trouble for many potential clients, esp. as Ubiquiti integrated them as their first payment processor. The distinction between high risk consumer sales & B2B low risk sales is not drawn by Stripe.

Most of those categories are from financial institutions or card networks. Stripe has been working with them so we can support more businesses, and I know of quite a few networking equipment businesses that run on Stripe today. If you're still seeing any trouble, we'd love to take another look—our support team's at support@stripe.com (and my email's edwin@stripe.com).

Support told me that our business could not continue to use Stripe 2 years ago, we've been with Payment.ninja since (and pay a little under half what we used to pay Stripe).

I took what Stripe Support told us very literally, and we ceased using DigitalOcean and one other service since their only recurring billing options were Stripe.

We don't want to break Stripes ToS or do wrong by our clients, hence our contract-less, B2B only, monthly prepaid business model. Apparently this is too high risk for your company?

Re: Stripe’s new funding round values company at $35B

#150

Post by edwinwee »

Chris_Newton wrote: post #123
nickjj wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... most likely what GP is talking about the new payment intent APIs, even though I don't think there's a real way you could implement them any better given the PSD2 requirements. Yes, definitely this. Payment intents is so much more complicated and convoluted than the previous "Charges" API. Stripe went from one of the easiest bits of my app to develop to one of the most difficult, to the point where I'll admit it…

Upvotes don’t show on HN, so let me first say this is very much like our recent experience. If those from Stripe who are reading this would like a hopefully constructive suggestion, may I suggest here the same thing I suggested to your support team? Right on the front page of your documentation site ( https://stripe.com/docs ) you have a step-by-step walkthrough for setting up a basic subscription the old way. If you…

Thanks for the suggestion—you are right!

We're working on a walkthrough that'll help with this now. Stay tuned.

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