Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

These concerns still apply to direct debits, unfortunately. The reason being that there's barely any authorization for direct debits, you just need the bank account number and name. Isn't the situation somewhat similar to CC transactions without 3D Secure/whatever it's called? I seems to recall reading in my bank's terms that I can chargeback transactions for something crazy like a year. You always need a "mandate" to debit an account and if you get that properly signed by the customer, you should be able to get the bank to reverse the reversal, but I can appreciate the bureaucratic overhead.

I was only offering it as a potential solution if getting people to sign up is genuinely difficult.

The thing with PayPal is: they offer direct debit to customers and I'm assuming that's how most people who would've otherwise used direct debit directly with you ended up paying. It is my understanding that PayPal is also aware of the risks associated with this and offers merchants the option not to accept payments through it. I can't seem to find an article just now, but I remember instances where PayPal told me something along the lines of "this merchant does not accept payments via direct debit, please use a credit card instead". I can only assume this is because they at least partially pass on the risk.

With PayPal, fees are: 3.7% + $0.30 USD

With Stripe, fees are: 2.9% + $0.30 CAD + 0.6% (international card charge) + 2.0% (currency conversion fee)

I'm just now dealing with canceling service with a traditional merchant account (I switched completely over to Stripe back in August), and the experience has been terrible and stupid.

Around 2003 or 2004, I was working on my first startup. I signed up for an authorize.net account through a merchant account called Capital Merchant Systems (later acquired by EVO Payments). At the time, the process required filling out a pile of paperwork, including writing an actual cover letter to get approved.

Things were fine until recent years, business for this particular service had slowly dropped to the point where it was no longer feasible to run through authorize.net. So I decided to finally make the switch over to Stripe (which I'd used for a number of years on another project).

Signing up for Stripe is so painlessly easy, straightforward, and friendly.

After switching my system over, I called and emailed my merchant account to cancel (this was in August). Then I called and emailed again in November. Then I called and emailed again in January.

All the while, they've been withdrawing from my checking account.

Then I emailed again in April, and filed reports with the BBB and FTC. Only then have I heard back from them, and they're claiming my January request is the first request.

So the short of it is, use Stripe. They are amazing, open, and transparent, their API is a joy to work with, and their dashboard is great. I wish Stripe was around 16 years ago when I first got started processing payments.

And DO NOT, under any circumstances, use EVO Payments. Cancelling with them is like cancelling a shitty gym membership - at the end of the day, you'll have to file complaints with every 3-letter organization you can think of, and file transaction disputes to cancel your account.

You are aware that this is possible with credit cards as well, right?