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Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

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

#441

Post by darkarmani »

GarrisonPrime wrote: post #422
pianoben wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never argue that the founders are not acting wisely - they've got no moral imperative to go public. As you say, there's far cheaper capital on offer. Rather, it's a systemic failing. They would pay an undeniable cost by going the IPO route, but it would be to the benefit of their employees and the public at large. Private markets being so flush with cash while regular folks are strapped, on the other hand, is…

>...we should be re-purposing those dollars for societal benefit. _There_ is the moral failing. To see such a dangerous, totalitarian ideology expressed so casually is terrifying.

> To see such a dangerous, totalitarian ideology expressed so casually is terrifying.

Totalitarian? Does the economy exist to serve man or itself? There should be nothing scary about suggesting that the current framework doesn't serve society as well as it could.

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

#442

Post by malandrew »

notJim wrote: post #346
stass wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to see how local people influencing local politics is a bad thing. Would you prefer for remote corporations to control local politics?

No, I'd just prefer we're equally critical of wealthy and corporate interests controlling our politics, regardless of where they live.

I wish we were equally critical of everyone controlling our politics regardless of wealth and location. No one's preferred policy positions are above criticism.

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

#443

Post by eximius »

GarrisonPrime wrote: post #422
pianoben wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never argue that the founders are not acting wisely - they've got no moral imperative to go public. As you say, there's far cheaper capital on offer. Rather, it's a systemic failing. They would pay an undeniable cost by going the IPO route, but it would be to the benefit of their employees and the public at large. Private markets being so flush with cash while regular folks are strapped, on the other hand, is…

>...we should be re-purposing those dollars for societal benefit. _There_ is the moral failing. To see such a dangerous, totalitarian ideology expressed so casually is terrifying.

Taxes are not totalitarian, which was the implication.

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

#444

Post by lxgr »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #243
gingerlime wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Germany and my company is based here. We tried SEPA but it’s a PITA to charge customers with it. Especially B2C which we are. Customers can arbitrarily chargeback even after several days. Not only that, they can ask for a refund, get the refund and then charge back. So we end up paying them! And there’s no way to prevent it. At least that’s the way it was a few years ago when stripe sepa was still beta. The…

Minor terminology nitpicking: SEPA is just "Single Euro Payments Area", you're speaking about SEPA direct debit specifically. 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 recal…

> 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

That's unfortunately not true. There is no recourse to direct debit returns; there is no dispute resolution process or anything like that. The presence or absence of a mandate only impacts the timeframe for returns to be files, as far as I understand.

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

#445

Post by ryaniscool »

anonanon43 wrote: post #170
ryaniscool wrote: post #50

Stripe has great and interesting products but this valuation seems very high. They are competing with companies like Global Payments and First Data but they aren't disrupting them. First Data has a lower market cap than this with $9B in annual revenue and $1B in annual profit.

I'm aware of a large org actively moving the bulk of $3bn in volume from FiServ (formerly First Data) to Stripe. Stripe's valuation is higher because of their trajectory. FiServ isn't innovating- at all. Just more attempts at lipstick on the pig.

$3bn in volume equates to around $90M (~3% of volume) in fees. Not an insignificant amount of money but when your revenue is approaching $10B, it doesn't move the needle.

Also, this money is divided up among all the players. This includes the network (Visa, Mastercard, etc.), the Bank (every credit card has an issuing bank), and the acquirer (Stripe).

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

#446

Post by the-real-jap »

stevoski wrote: post #288
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…

Hey Patrick, It would be great if Stripe Checkout included VAT-related features: * Detect country and - if needed - add appropriate VAT * Allow customer to add a valid VAT number, so that when appropriate tax is not charged * Offer clear reporting on what VAT has been collected for each jurisdiction I realise this is a big, big can of worms. But that’s why we use Stripe, right? For help handling that big can of worms…

My company uses Chargebee as the subscription management layer (between stripe and our systems; they perform charging, billing and dunning for us, and also offer us a slick interface to hand out rebates and the like); they are able to at least determine the correct VAT amount for European customers (based on IP/asking the user). It's not free though, but I'm happy we are able to focus on our product instead of those things.

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

#447

Post by pianoben »

GarrisonPrime wrote: post #422
pianoben wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never argue that the founders are not acting wisely - they've got no moral imperative to go public. As you say, there's far cheaper capital on offer. Rather, it's a systemic failing. They would pay an undeniable cost by going the IPO route, but it would be to the benefit of their employees and the public at large. Private markets being so flush with cash while regular folks are strapped, on the other hand, is…

>...we should be re-purposing those dollars for societal benefit. _There_ is the moral failing. To see such a dangerous, totalitarian ideology expressed so casually is terrifying.

I'm sorry to have terrified you. Here's what I mean by that, and what I think should change.

Companies boast of record profits, buy back stock constantly, and pay next to nothing in taxes. Meanwhile, even with the ACA Americans scrimp and save, paying outrageous amounts for paltry healthcare that most of the First World would find totally inadequate. Education is chronically underfunded and over-regulated. Student debt is a ticking time bomb.

All of these problems could be resolved in an instant, had we the political will to solve them. Is it totalitarian to wish for a modern single-payer health system? Is it totalitarian to want my children to have access to a good education like I had in the 80s? Is it wrong to ask those who benefit most from society, to pay their fair share? I don't think so. Neither of us want boots on the ground, so to speak.

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

#448

Post by BoorishBears »

larossmann wrote: post #378
thoraway1010 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refund rates that fall substantially above 5% are almost always tied to business quality - and those business SHOULD pay. Seriously, if you are refunding 20% of your business you need to look carefully at how you acquire business - stripe is not driving folks away from doing stuff online - you may be. Stripe has made the right call here - though the silent and vast majority won't have anything to complain about so wo…

>Refund rates that fall substantially above 5% are almost always tied to business quality - and those business SHOULD pay. Seriously, if you are refunding 20% of your business you need to look carefully at how you acquire business - stripe is not driving folks away from doing stuff online - you may be. Do you know how often I have people buy something and then call me only to let me know they may have bought the wron…

> If you ISL6258AHRTZ & ISL6259AHRTZ, your refunds are likely not due to "business quality."

> They reflect reality in a world where most people aren't savants with random long strings of seemingly meaningless letters/numbers that make up product codes for chipsets.

If you're selling products to people who aren't intimate enough with the product to tell them apart, and not doing a good enough job of guiding them before they put down their hard earned money, you're failing your customers. So it is very tied to business quality.

You should have warnings, or clear break downs of product descriptions they can use to confirm.

-

A refund is not free for the user either, now they have to go and get a refund, hope they caught it quick enough for shipping, maybe ship it back.

So there is, almost by definition, no situation where you have a high refund rate, and aren't making your customers suffer, and that's not how a quality business is run

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

#449

Post by ttoinou »

kmoriarty wrote: post #394
ttoinou wrote: post #90

I wished I could use Stripe but when selling worldwide you need to send the V.A.T. / G.S.T. to each country and US state you're dealing with. With customers all around the globe it means something like minimum 50 tax invoices to fill and send for me

Hey! I'm a PM at Stripe working on solving VAT/GST/sales tax pain points for our users. Would be great to connect and hear more about what you're looking for. Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like your main pain point is around specifically handling the collection, and then remittance and filing of tax for all countries/jurisdictions you have nexus in? Or is it actually the difficulty with issuing cus…

Email sent !

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

#450

Post by edwinwee »

consultSKI wrote: post #287
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…

love stripe, but you have a death spiral in your process. I tried to reactivate my account. no longer have the old domain. so I can't contact support because I can't log in. it takes WEEKS to get paid with a new account. after more than five years [on and off] with you, I would have hoped for a better process. #justSayin since you asked. p.s. i emailed this too.

Hm, sorry about this. Could you forward that email to me at edwin@stripe.com and I see what's going on?
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