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Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

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Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#141

Post by mkagenius »

pc wrote: post #134
rconti wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate like I'm 5? Just very high level for those of us who only know "they charge a flat fee and a percent which makes microtransactions hard". What are the strategies/thoughts in the industry? Holding and batching payments on a per-user basis? Trying to get agreements so you can batch payments on a per-processor or per-network agreement? Hourly? Daily? Weekly?

> Just very high level for those of us who only know "they charge a flat fee and a percent which makes microtransactions hard". That's pretty much the story :-). And so the questions are then whether we subsidize the transactions, batch them (as you say, though that makes refunds and statement descriptors tricky), get card networks to change their policies, or somehow shift how the payments are made (e.g. encouraging…

> batch them (as you say, though that makes refunds and statement descriptors tricky)

Maybe batch them per user per website, that will solve statement descriptors a bit

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#142

Post by csdreamer7 »

nickjj wrote: post #69
fbelzile wrote: post #55

I'm very happy with Stripe and for their success, but I plan on switching all my payments to go through PayPal again. I did some math and PayPal offers a better deal for Canadian businesses after Stripe bumps me off of their grandfathered conversion fees in a couple months. I love the slick interface, but it's simply not worth the thousands per year I'll be saving with the switch. For me the main selling point for an…

Are you planning to go through PayPal directly or Braintree? One thing I notice is, I get much less fraudulent payments through PayPal, and when I do get them it's handled automatically (and most of the time they end up being not fraud because PayPal investigated it and released the funds). 100% hands free, $0 in fees. With Stripe, not only do I get more fraudulent payments but you need to pay $15 as a dispute fee th…

Would you mind sharing your percentage of fraud with the two services? (I assume you are using Braintree.)

Honestly, you are the first person to make a good case on using PayPal over Stripe. Especially with the arbitrary horror stories I hear about PayPal all the time.

> It's a shame Stripe doesn't offer the Radar service (helps detect and prevent fraud) with custom rules as part of their normal service. You can only get it if you pay insurance fees, which are added fees on top of the normal amount.

I agree. This should be standard.

> Combine that with the new Stripe SCA compatible APIs and sketchy docs

Would you please describe what is sketchy? Their docs seem pretty good... but I am now just hearing about SCA.

https://stripe.com/guides/strong-customer-authentication

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#143

Post by graeme »

caleb1666 wrote: post #98
fbelzile wrote: post #55

I'm very happy with Stripe and for their success, but I plan on switching all my payments to go through PayPal again. I did some math and PayPal offers a better deal for Canadian businesses after Stripe bumps me off of their grandfathered conversion fees in a couple months. I love the slick interface, but it's simply not worth the thousands per year I'll be saving with the switch. For me the main selling point for an…

No, you're not. I was very happy with Stripe for a few years. As my business grew and I looked at where I could cut costs, I asked around and Braintree's model was going to save me 1% per transaction. At my volume that was going to add up to thousands of dollars in savings a month over Stripe. I went back to Stripe to see if they'd be willing to match Braintree's pricing, because I was happy with them over the years…

This is at larger volumes right? Base level of both seems to be 2.9% + 30 cents

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#144

Post by amgreg »

pc wrote: post #11
GhostVII wrote: post #3

This is not a new valuation, is an extension of their series G from last year which also had a 35B valuation.

That's right; this isn't new. We just decided that it was prudent to extend the round a little given the economic uncertainty.

Interesting — did you just extend the round at the same price and identical terms?

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#145

Post by nodesocket »

pc wrote: post #75

Stripe cofounder here. This isn't really new -- it's an extension of our last round ( https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/fintech-start-up-stripe-notc... ). That said, we've seen a big spike in signups over the past few weeks. If any HN readers have integrated recently and have feedback, we're always eager to hear it. Feel free to email me at patrick@stripe.com and I'll route to the right team(s). As always, thank you to…

It's probably wishful thinking, but times like these would be super valuable and helpful if Stripe showed their daily processing volume and perhaps general aggregate statistics and graphs (per country). I know it's probably intellectual property and secret sauce, but imagine:

"Since US Covid shutdown (as of March 13th) Stripe US processing volume is up X% or $Y billion."

This general information would provide great context to the health of the US economy and e-commerce. I know other companies such as payroll processing (ADP) release numbers and the stock market uses those as an input to the health of the economy.

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#146

Post by pc »

plantain wrote: post #136
pc wrote: post #75

Stripe cofounder here. This isn't really new -- it's an extension of our last round ( https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/fintech-start-up-stripe-notc... ). That said, we've seen a big spike in signups over the past few weeks. If any HN readers have integrated recently and have feedback, we're always eager to hear it. Feel free to email me at patrick@stripe.com and I'll route to the right team(s). As always, thank you to…

My top issues running my business on Stripe: 1) Many countries still only allow depositing a single currency (i.e. Aus/AUD), doubling the cost of transaction due to the currency conversion, even tripling when we have to convert it back to pay our bills. I always get told either "soon", or "not possible due to the law", despite competitors doing it. 2) If we were an EU company, we'd get charged 1.4%+25c on transaction…

Great feedback... thank you. In case it's useful, some context on them:

On (1), we started an FX team this year. (There are a lot of legal complexities here around how the funds move, who has title to what at which moment, and so on.) But we're investing significantly in improving it and it should get better soon. On (2), the core issue is card network pricing rules -- by design, they discriminate on the basis of where the business is located. We happily extend EU fees to all EU legal entities, however, and would be happy to work with you to set that up. On (3), refunds aren't free for Stripe, and we were previously in a position where businesses with a lot of refunds were being subsidized by those who didn't. We want to give this margin away more sensibly.

Still, all the issues you bring up are real and I'd like us to find better solutions.

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#148

Post by adrr »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #119
adrr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s larger than Adyen who has a arguably a better platform and bigger customers like eBay and Microsoft. Stripe has Shopify but with their misstep of not refunding processing fees on returns, that’s going away quickly as merchants pressure Shopify.

Stripe's forward looking goals seem to be mostly about expanding and changing the nature of online commerce, rather than capturing the existing payment processing market. I agree it'd be dumb for them to expect to grow based solely on stealing customers from existing processors.

Can you expand on changing the nature of online commerce? I don't see that they are in any position to do so. P2P payments is dominated by Venmo/Paypal, mobile is going to be Apple Pay/Google Pay. Their best chance was partnering with Shopify which is the second largest e-commerce site/platform by GMV. With that position, they could go after affirm/after pay on the consumer lending side of things. I assume Shopify will do this soon since they already offer merchant lending.

They can go after the PaymentTechs and Worldpays of the world but that is just a race to the bottom on processing fees. Another problem with going after those companies, they can easily drop the processing fees to near zero since PaymentTech is owned by Chase and Worldpay by Vantiv/FIS. Adyen is going to dominate the omnichannel retailers since their solution is best.

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#149

Post by jacquesm »

caleb1666 wrote: post #98
fbelzile wrote: post #55

I'm very happy with Stripe and for their success, but I plan on switching all my payments to go through PayPal again. I did some math and PayPal offers a better deal for Canadian businesses after Stripe bumps me off of their grandfathered conversion fees in a couple months. I love the slick interface, but it's simply not worth the thousands per year I'll be saving with the switch. For me the main selling point for an…

No, you're not. I was very happy with Stripe for a few years. As my business grew and I looked at where I could cut costs, I asked around and Braintree's model was going to save me 1% per transaction. At my volume that was going to add up to thousands of dollars in savings a month over Stripe. I went back to Stripe to see if they'd be willing to match Braintree's pricing, because I was happy with them over the years…

Right up to when your account gets frozen PayPal looks fantastic.

Re: Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

#150

Post by herman_toothrot »

carapace wrote: post #99
nailer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do anything through PayPal do not keep any funds in your PayPal account. The company is well known for seizing funds in their customers account with no recourse.

PayPal owes me $200. I got a letter from the state comptroller saying that paypal had been trying to reach me and my money was about to revert to the state and call this number to get it. So I called the number, and they ask me, "Do you want it in a check or in your paypal account?" Well that account has been frozen for years so I say, "Send me the check." That was a few years ago now and I'm still waiting. Fuck PayP…

Did you try to recover the money through the state? Most states have a site through comptroller/treasury/etc. where you can start a claim process.

(Assuming that paypal reported the uncollected money correctly.)

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