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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

#211

Post by mehhh »

throw554 wrote: post #204
mehhh wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twilio almost certainly has a different agreement with Stripe than is standard, and Stripe commonly bans Telecom related services: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20012656 The Ubiqiti forums are also littered with ISPs that signed up with Stripe (since Ubiquiti integrates with them) used it for a few months w/o chargebacks or any fraud, but got an email one day saying they were not allowed to use Stripe. Appeals…

What business are you in? That's true that ISPs and WISPs can't really use Stripe (many use Adyen), but pure-VOIP companies offering hosted PBX and such are welcome at Stripe based on feedback I received from several people who work at Stripe. SignalWire too should be able to use Stripe.

Here is Nitzan of Future Nine (a pure-VoIP company) stating that Stripe does not service VoIP providers: https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r29552956-

When I asked Stripe Support about servicing VoIP companies last year they referred me to the prohibited businesses section and said:

"Historically we have seen that the telecommunications industry is one with too high of a likelihood of customer chargebacks. These need not necessarily be chargebacks in fact; the likelihood of potential chargebacks is also a deciding factor in our deliberations."

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

#212

Post by nickpp »

edwinwee wrote: post #156
Teichopsia wrote: post #146

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?

Where do you live? Our roadmap—literally—is quickly expanding to many more countries (we just launched in 8 new countries last week). And this new funding round will be put to use for that. :)

Romania is waiting for Stripe too! Guys, please. What is the hold-up?! It's all EU anyway...

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

#213

Post by nickpp »

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…

I think the international expansion is still your weakest point. We've been waiting for Stripe in Romania for years now, and it's an EU country...

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

#214

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#215

Post by GeneralTspoon »

edwinwee wrote: post #142
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 Chro…

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

But isn't that what you just described? Saving your payment details to Stripe (as opposed to just entering your card details like a standard payment processor). Stripe is now essentially a wallet where you store your payment details.

Was it a necessary change to push users out to Stripe to save their payment info? What differentiates that from what was there previously. Was it that the CC info was stored per-domain, rather than per customer across all sites?

To be clear, I think it could be an improvement for a lot of cases - just potentially not mine in particular!

> Checkout was designed to be the fastest way to accept payments, and I think it's now faster

Here's a pretty common scenario that definitely just got more complex to implement: dynamic pricing + instant fulfilment (i.e. selling digital goods online).

So that instantly rules out the "No server-side code" approach. Here's what had to be done in the old version:

1. Import checkout.js

2. User clicks pay + fills out details on Merchant site

3. Merchant js makes a call to Merchant server with Stripe token

4. Merchant server calls Stripe to charge the token

Now:

1. Import checkout.js

2. User clicks pay

3. User has to wait for loading spinner while a Stripe session is generated on the Merchant backend and passed to checkout.js

4. User is pushed out to Stripe website to pay + fills out details

5. Stripe backend calls Merchant webhook

6. Customer redirected to Merchant

7. Merchant server must check with Stripe to see if session was completed and customer has successful purchase.

Overall - that's a more complicated flow for the Merchant to implement, with more room for things to go wrong.

And it's not technically true that the flow will always be faster for users - if the customer had CC details saved in the old version, the flow would have been faster for them (less async calls + no redirect to Stripe).

For a certain segment of Merchant, I think there are definite improvements - but for the one-person operation selling software - PayPal is now the easer to implement option.

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

#216

Post by speedplane »

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…

> Thanks to everyone here who took a chance on us in the beginning ...

Stripe is one of the few successful silicon valley companies that provided a service of real value, with enormous efficiency gains, upfront pricing, and don't screw over people as part of their business model. They may have "disrupted" the online payments market in SV parlance, but they didn't actually disrupt anything, they found a nascent but fast-growing market (online payments), and built a product targeted just for it.

Mastercard and Visa are each worth 10X as much as Stripe. Stripe is one of the few unicorn companies that's probably under-hyped.

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

#217

Post by speedplane »

ravenstine wrote: post #82
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…

Besides your product, I thank you all at Stripe for setting an example of what real API/SDK documentation is.

> I thank you all at Stripe for setting an example of what real API/SDK documentation is.

It's not just their documentation, Stripe's versioning, backwards compatibility support, and fast improvements probably make it the single best API I've ever worked with.

I have new projects that use the latest and greatest Stripe API and features, but also older projects that use their 5 year old APIs, and both work without a hitch.

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

#218

Post by speedplane »

hiharryhere wrote: post #199
pitchups wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kudos to Stripe on an amazing journey! Interesting to revisit the original HN submission of Stripe's launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883

Incredibly the API links from 2011 still work. Just followed one mentioned in that old discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3054726

> Incredibly the API links from 2011 still work.

Developers rightly praise Stripe's API documentation, but their approach to versioning and backwards compatibility is a gold standard that is not sung enough. What other fast-moving startup that constantly tweaks and changes their APIs also provide backwards compatibility with their earliest versions?

Stripe understands that handling payments is critical, scary, and hard to get right. When a company builds a payment solution that works, there is strong resistance to mess with it. The fact that Stripe is so backwards compatible means that they do not have to.

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

#219

Post by speedplane »

stickfigure wrote: post #197
taurath wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the basis upon which I form my opinion as to what "good docs" look like. It makes you incredibly spoiled when trying to use some of Stripe's competitors.

I've integrated 8+ payments APIs over my career. IMO, Stripe's "secret sauce" is the quality of the API and the documentation. It's so compelling that I repeatedly choose Stripe over other payments systems that offer network effects like PayPal and Amazon. I sometimes get asked by customers if we take PayPal. I tell them truthfully "no, it's just too much trouble". It doesn't seem like "better developer experience" i…

> I repeatedly choose Stripe over other payments systems that offer network effects like PayPal and Amazon.

For one of the first SaSS products I ever worked on, I (naively) chose Amazon payments. Within six months, Amazon introduced backwards incompatible changes. Six months later, they did it again. For another project I started 5 years ago, I used Stripe. We're still using the same 5 year old API and it works perfectly, even though Stripe has added new features and bells and whistles in their newer versions. Their commitment to backwards compatibility is probably the best I've seen of any fast moving API.

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

#220

Post by reacweb »

ravenstine wrote: post #82
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…

Besides your product, I thank you all at Stripe for setting an example of what real API/SDK documentation is.

And thank you also for your CTFs. I almost finished CTF 2 (I had the 3/4 of last password) and I learned a lot during this CTF. I am very proud of my T-Shirt.
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