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Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

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

#291

Post by kerkeslager »

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…

From the user's perspective:

A few (maybe 5 or 6?) years back I suddenly stopped being able to add or withdraw money through PayPal, with a completely vague description. Multiple hours on support documents and attempting to contact support (which is a problem in itself) and the problem was not resolved. I wasn't that invested in buying what I was trying to buy, so I eventually gave up. I've tried again a few times over the years, with no success.

When I see PayPal on a site nowadays and either no other options or I don't trust them to process the card themselves, I just leave. If this is the sort of effect that could harm your business it may be worth it to pay for a payment processor that works for all your users.

I also have a $0.49 balance in PayPal which I can't withdraw. I don't care, but if it were a larger amount I probably would.

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

#292

Post by kwchang »

dannyw wrote: post #204
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…

Patrick, we switched away from Stripe because your risk management systems kept declining valid cards in certain low-GDP countries, and there was no way to override. We are one of the larger SaaS companies and as a personal lover of Stripe, it was surprising to me that you couldn’t customise these systems, esp at our volume. We switched to Ayden and saw very significant revenue increases in those countries; because v…

Hi dannyw, I'm a PM on the team that works on acceptance rates and fraud at Stripe. Would you be open to chatting more about your experience? I'd really appreciate it so that we could look into this and improve it. My email is: kathy@stripe.com

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

#293

Post by stripeUSD »

huhtenberg wrote: post #94
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…

Stripe not allowing to withdraw onto USD accounts not located in the US is an absolutely MASSIVE gripe with the service. We operate internally in USD - we sell in USD, we pay in USD, so we end up being shafted with not one, but two pointless FX conversions. And that's without going into minor stuff like the headaches with refunds done at rates, extra accounting overheads, etc.

This x100. We’re based in the UK but most of our customers are in the US so we bill in USD.

The most annoying thing is that US customers pay additional fees because we’re based in the UK, and our UK customers pay extra fees because we’re billing in dollars.

Stripe customer support very responsive, but they’ve told us the only way to fix it is to open a bank account in the US - which would mean we pay tax in the UK and US. We tried opening a USD bank account in the UK, but Stripe told us after we’d done it that they couldn’t send money to it. Maddening problem with an otherwise brilliant service.

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

#294

Post by sealthedeal »

pc wrote: post #146
plantain wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whe…

You should consider chatting with us @routefusion :)

developer.routefusion.co

we will solve all of those nasty FX problems your customers are having. Already doing it for a few other e-comm platforms that link into Stripe.

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

#295

Post by sealthedeal »

econcon wrote: post #194
pc wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whe…

Isn't FX a done deal based on how TransferWise is able to do it. Maybe you guys can collaborate with them and make payouts in any currency possible atleast in countries where there are no Forex restrictions like Hong Kong.

TW is not an ideal solution.

I am biased, but IMHO using a service like Routefusion solves all of these problems. Companies like Elliot use our API's to settle CC transactions that are in different countries. You hook your Stripe account in and then they re-patriate the money to wherever it needs to go.

Check us out! developer.routefusion.co

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

#296

Post by kenpratt »

fbelzile wrote: post #245
swat535 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you saving fees on paypal ? Looking at https://www.paypal.com/ca/for-you/fees It looks like the fees are exactly the same as Stripe, what am I missing ? Can you elaborate ? Are you a charitable organization?

A majority of my sales are from US customers buying in USD. 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)

If you're a Canadian merchant, you can add a USD bank account to avoid the 2% currency conversion fee. This bank account can either be with a Canadian bank, or a US bank.

Source: I work at Stripe, but in addition to that, previously started a Canadian company using Stripe, and like you did mostly payments to US customers in USD. I had deposits directly into both a USD bank account held at a Canadian bank as well as a USD bank account held at a US bank, and did not pay the 2% conversion fee. I actually never received CAD directly at all.

More details: https://stripe.com/docs/payouts

But yes, other than certain exceptions such as this one, getting payouts in non-local currencies on Stripe is limited, and we're working on improving that.

(edit: This assumes you have expenses in USD, or a cheap way to convert USD to CAD, to avoid a ~2% fee from your bank on the conversion. Personally I've used Interactive Brokers which charges 0.002% for USD/CAD conversions.)

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

#297

Post by pendingHN »

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…

I'll send an email later as well, but I just wanted to raise that we are very concerned about our ability to continue integrating with Stripe. We've loved using Stripe for years, but given all of the uncertainty surrounding the tipsi-stripe project and the lack of an official stripe solution for React-Native, we're questioning how wise it is to be dependant on Stripe. I've seen others speaking to your staff on twitter and github about this, so I don't think we're alone.

There must be hundreds (thousands?) of apps using this integration and all of them have been stuck in limbo for many months now. We would like to enable SCA, but the beta version of this project doesn't seem to have documentation beyond a few comments in github issues here and there, and the discord is almost solely populated by people asking how to use the beta and no one can answer them.

I think whichever of the major payment platforms extends a hand out to the React-Native community first, with a confident, well documented official project, will be celebrated and would cement themselves as THE payment platform for people using React-Native.

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

#298

Post by sealthedeal »

huhtenberg wrote: post #94
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…

Stripe not allowing to withdraw onto USD accounts not located in the US is an absolutely MASSIVE gripe with the service. We operate internally in USD - we sell in USD, we pay in USD, so we end up being shafted with not one, but two pointless FX conversions. And that's without going into minor stuff like the headaches with refunds done at rates, extra accounting overheads, etc.

This is where partnering with a company like Routefusion comes in handy. We would help you repatriate those funds, and move it back to your country of choice at .5% currency exchange :)

check us out developer@routefusion.co, and feel free to email me at colton@routefusion.co if you have any questions!

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

#299

Post by sophiesak »

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…

Hi there! I'm a product manager on our payment methods team at Stripe. We're working on a beta to bring EU payment methods to Australian-domiciled customers. They're both cheaper than cards, and have significant conversion uplift. Mind emailing me at sophies@stripe.com?

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

#300

Post by sealthedeal »

littlethings wrote: post #184

Stripe user here (Stripe Singapore) since 2016 and processed a loooot of money which was a life-changing thing for me and many other people. Patrick, I appreciate how supportive you are here so I hope you don't mind this turning into Q&A/support type of topic :D 1) Do you plan to lower the currency conversion fees for Singapore? We charge customers in USD but we are forced to convert to SGD and conversion fees adds u…

You could leverage a partnership with @routefusion to solve this. We would help you move that money back to SGD super quickly, and at a great price. We are actually in partnership with company in SG called CardUp, if you have ever heard of them :)

Shoot me an email if you would like to chat more!

colton@routefusion.co developer.routefusion.co

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