Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

231–240 of 263 posts

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

#231
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m going to ask a favor on behalf of a multi billion dollar industry: please figure out how to service cannabis companies. I build cannabis tech. Its reall stressful when doing over $1 million in sales in a month and it’s literally all freaking cash and we have to spend hours even with a counting machine counting $20 bills. Please tell me what your plan is to support legal cannabis. Thanks

Federal legislation is required.

Not true.

Take for example all thecredit unions in OR, CO, CA

Like north bay credit union in santa rosa.... their requirwments list for opening an account is RIDICULOUS!!

Other companies want either 3% of your deposits or $3,000 a month for a checking account whichever is higher.

Other banks AND companies will cancel your account if you even have the word “canna” in your name.

Ive literally sat there looking at $160,000 in cash with bills needed to be paid and no way to pay the bills...

You know how fun it is to go to seven different post offices with four employees in tow to buy as many money orders as you can so you can pay bills, such as a $25,000 software bill?

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

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

> 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 completely agree - I consider Stripe the gold standard for an API. Best I've ever used.

Now if the fee was under 3% instead of being the very same price as Paypal, that would be a nice welcome bit of competition.

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

#233
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa's underlying fundamentals didn't change due to a recession.

Stripe is also in the payments space. I wouldn't expect Stripe's financials to change any more than Visa's during a recession.

Visa makes a ton of money just off of necessary debit card transactions. As far as I know Stripe doesn't have a whole lot of groceries/gas stations/drug stores/doctors offices/etc as customers.

From what I've seen Stripe mostly has customers that are selling non-essential services and luxury goods. They'd be far more likely to suffer during a recession than Visa. I mean, Visa does around 1,700 transactions per second on average [1] and handled over 2 trillion dollars in a single quarter last year [2]

[1] https://hackernoon.com/the-blockchain-scalability-problem-th...

[2] https://www.digitaltransactions.net/visa-surpasses-2-trillio...

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

#234
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what Stripe's policy is on selling shares on secondary markets, but another reason is that at some point employees need liquidity too.

Look at the valuation increases: Almost 2x year to year for quite a while. I don't expect most people seeing that kind of valuation increases looking to liquidate any part of their position unless they really can't help it. If their fundamentals growth slowed to rates resembling the regular market, then sure, but as is, all a company with that growth rate might need is let tenured employees add, say 5% of their equit…

>Look at the valuation increases: Almost 2x year to year for quite a while. I don't expect most people seeing that kind of valuation increases looking to liquidate any part of their position unless they really can't help it.

I'd rather take 2x whatever today than 0x nothing when the company folds tomorrow/in a month/in 5 years never having gone public.

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

#235
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

This is from 2014. I know several VoIP companies today that are using Stripe successfully.

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

#236
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to mention they are more regulatory compliant Source?

Here's a few: https://www.jotform.com/blog/is-stripe-psd2-compliant/ Linda Scott of Silicon Dales in the U.K. uses Stripe and isn’t surprised that the payment processor is in compliance. “We have found Stripe to be proactive and open around legislative changes.” https://www.paymentssource.com/news/stripes-next-step-is-bui... Stripe hasn't exactly been in the news for lawsuits or controversy, unlike AirBnB.

Not being in the news has nothing to do with being regulatory complaint.

You’ve provided articles that Stripe is compliant, which is fine, but nothing there indicates that Airbnb isn’t compliant.

What regulations specifically is Airbnb breaking that Stripe isn’t?

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

#237

You know you have a killer product when your customers will literally fly half way around the world just to use it. When I started my company (since acquired) in 2012, Stripe was so game changing I flew from Australia to the US to open a bank account so we could use it. While we could incorporate in the US online, we had to turn up in person at a bank to open an account. The only alternatives in Australia at the time…

Chase! It must have been a while ago, because today Chase blocks your account at the mere whiff of anything non-standard going on. And I do mean "anything", being out of the country definitely qualifies. They also shoot first and ask questions later, so your wire transfers will get cancelled or your entire account blocked with incoming transfers bouncing (what is amazing is that the amount that bounces is less $50 that they take for the bouncing service, fun!).

My last wire transfer was "cancelled" by their anti-fraud people, and after calling them and identifying myself extensively, I was told that I am to show up at my local branch with two forms of ID. Yes, the same two forms of ID that they've already seen. Kind of difficult if you are out of the country.

American banks are something else entirely.

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

#238
post #11

Stripe has made transactions for my SaaS business so painless. I recently learned that I have customers with different currencies and it's not even something I had to consider or account for. Yeah their API is a little bit... bloated for simple needs since they're covering for many different use-cases, but their superb documentation, clean dashboard UX, and relatively low fees really make the value offering huge. Ove…

I am considering migrating from Braintree to Stripe.

It does look better, but I find some of the praise a bit too rosy. For example, the whole invoicing setup makes US-specific assumptions which are largely invalid where I operate (EU, specifically Poland), and I wonder if their recurring billing can be used without invoices. Also, there is no SAF-T (JPK FA in Poland) reporting for invoices, which means I can't even legally use their invoicing. Their E-mail templates are not customizable, which in my case makes all of their E-mail functionality useless. Then the PSD2 SCA (3d-Secure) flows seem to be hastily added and there is no good overview in the documentation (Braintree suffers from the same problem).

It still looks like the best option I have, though.

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

#239
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 completely agree - I consider Stripe the gold standard for an API. Best I've ever used.

Now if the fee was under 3% instead of being the very same price as Paypal, that would be a nice welcome bit of competition.

Their newly announced corporate credit card has good benefits (US only): https://stripe.com/en-ca/corporate-card

At least you get some cash back from expenses.

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

#240

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…

> Before stripe, I used paypal and it was sooo painful! Almost no matter what Stripe does from here, that they disrupted the PayPal monster (and the rest), will always reserve them a place in my developer heart. It really was an atrocious experience; there's pre-Stripe and post-Stripe.

I wonder if that's the reason they launched Braintree with a more sane API.

Nevermind, Braintree was acquired by Paypal in 2013.

Post reply on HN