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Stripe: Platform of Platforms

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Re: Stripe: Platform of Platforms

#21

Post by anon589 »

silvestrov wrote: post #18
anon589 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s going to be some reckoning in the payments industry in general, though, in the next 5-10 years. Covid has forced more businesses to go cashless and pay the 3% payment transaction toll, which is a hidden tax we all pay. Could easily see post-recovery legislation scrutinizing payment players who’ve all seen their stock skyrocket this year, similar to what happened after the GFC with the Durbin Amendment…

For countries which have good customer protection ( ), use of credit cards online can be reduced to just a transfer between 2 bank accounts. That should be a lot cheaper than current fees, especially for large amounts, as you cut out a lot of expensive middlemen. It will be interesting to see if Stripe or Apple does this first. It seems like 2 opposing fights are going on: 1) Mastercard and VISA tries to be the only…

the Fed Reserve has been working on FedNow real time payments for a few years now.

That could be a great achievement for replacing ACH and debit.

Re: Stripe: Platform of Platforms

#22

Post by anonymouse008 »

tuna-piano wrote: post #16
anonymouse008 wrote: post #2

Wow - I wonder if this is how Bezos felt when he said (paraphrasing) he feared the internet was taking off without him? Stripe Capital is their iPhone moment -- they've learned much from the software payments market, setting up an 'import Financial Foundation,' and now can use their novel data stream to effectively transform business cash flow financing. Capital will be a a beautiful take on an old way of financing (…

Is it really a novel data stream? I believe you can already purchase billions of anonymized credit card transactions... https://datarade.ai/data-products/us-consumer-card-payments

Yes, and I know of startups using data like this to find financial influencers that if customer A makes a purchase / visits a store, customer B, C, and D will show up in 3 months. Same goes for Square -- but for some reason, the emphasis on these integrations seems to be lacking... I've interacted with both and Stripe seems to 'get' this integration value.

For them, the hardest part was getting the data, then maintaining the relationship to keep access. Stripe has a 0 cost data stream (which is a slightly different definition I guess for novel data stream) - it's novel in that it's kind of like the Rockefeller 'what's this stuff we dump into the river? oh gasoline?' type of novelty.

Also, the metadata that sits on top of all of this - which products are selling, what's the product life cycle of company A in similarity to company B, makes this so much more potent than just the CC data itself. Stripe understands your business better than you do.

Re: Stripe: Platform of Platforms

#23

Post by anon589 »

cowhorse1122 wrote: post #19
anon589 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s going to be some reckoning in the payments industry in general, though, in the next 5-10 years. Covid has forced more businesses to go cashless and pay the 3% payment transaction toll, which is a hidden tax we all pay. Could easily see post-recovery legislation scrutinizing payment players who’ve all seen their stock skyrocket this year, similar to what happened after the GFC with the Durbin Amendment…

Roughly 1.8% of a credit transaction fee goes to the bank that issued the card. About 15-30 bps go to the card networks, much higher for cross-border. Acquirer and PSP fees are minimal in comparison. Legislation would be more effective in lowering overall merchant cost by targeting banks and networks.

It’s probably less now though because we’ve seen a macro shift to debit from credit this year, which are cheaper to process and have much lower interchange fees, so processors that charge a fixed fee are keeping more of every transaction.

Re: Stripe: Platform of Platforms

#24

Post by boberoni »

anon589 wrote: post #14
boberoni wrote: post #10

> Stripe is enabling standardized access to global banking capabilities via APIs... The API is Stripe's core competency, and they've been excelling at it for a long time. I think one thing that Stripe does very well is allow developers to focus on developing. Setting up a business relationship with financial institutions is cumbersome and the legal details can be daunting. While their engineering reputation is high q…

I think there’s going to be some reckoning in the payments industry in general, though, in the next 5-10 years. Covid has forced more businesses to go cashless and pay the 3% payment transaction toll, which is a hidden tax we all pay. Could easily see post-recovery legislation scrutinizing payment players who’ve all seen their stock skyrocket this year, similar to what happened after the GFC with the Durbin Amendment…

Good points. I had to do some research on the Durbin Amendment [1]. It seems to be a legal cap on debit card swipe fees, which saved money for merchants.

I could see a scenario where Stripe is currently capturing market share with a 2.9% + $0.30 fee, and then starts increasing this fee once it has a monopoly.

However, Stripe Payments isn't a loss leader that's focused on growth. I would hypothesize that Stripe Payments is profitable [2] and that the 2.9% + $0.30 fee isn't a huge sacrifice. If this is true, I don't see the incentive for a monopolistic Stripe to raise the fee.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durbin_amendment [2]: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/stripe%3A-the-internets-most...

Re: Stripe: Platform of Platforms

#25

Post by dylan604 »

cowhorse1122 wrote: post #19
anon589 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s going to be some reckoning in the payments industry in general, though, in the next 5-10 years. Covid has forced more businesses to go cashless and pay the 3% payment transaction toll, which is a hidden tax we all pay. Could easily see post-recovery legislation scrutinizing payment players who’ve all seen their stock skyrocket this year, similar to what happened after the GFC with the Durbin Amendment…

Roughly 1.8% of a credit transaction fee goes to the bank that issued the card. About 15-30 bps go to the card networks, much higher for cross-border. Acquirer and PSP fees are minimal in comparison. Legislation would be more effective in lowering overall merchant cost by targeting banks and networks.

>About 15-30 bps go to the card networks

Sorry, I'm not familiar with 'bps' in this context. Techie me read that with no pause as 15-30 bits per second, and then had to slow down as that did not make sense within context.

Re: Stripe: Platform of Platforms

#26

Post by nrmitchi »

napoleond wrote: post #12
anonymouse008 wrote: post #2

Wow - I wonder if this is how Bezos felt when he said (paraphrasing) he feared the internet was taking off without him? Stripe Capital is their iPhone moment -- they've learned much from the software payments market, setting up an 'import Financial Foundation,' and now can use their novel data stream to effectively transform business cash flow financing. Capital will be a a beautiful take on an old way of financing (…

(Disclaimer: I work at Stripe, but commenting purely in my personal capacity.) > I wish I could buy stock. Something I wish I'd internalized much earlier in my life: if you're a programmer or otherwise have skills relevant to a startup (many HN participants fit this bill!) then you do have access to stock in companies like Stripe. In exchange for your time and expertise, they will pay you in both stock and cash. My c…

> you do have access to stock in companies like Stripe. In exchange for your time and expertise, they will pay you in both stock and cash.

That's not really a fair comparison. There are two huge differences between that and "buying stock".

1. You don't have to jump through arbitrary interview hoops in order to buy stock. I personally had a horrible initial interview experience with Stripe (I 100% don't believe Stripe's process is bad, but my experience was poor). This shouldn't prevent me from buying stock

2. This method of acquiring stock leaves you putting all of your eggs in one basket. You can only work for and get stock from a single company at a time, and you have to dedicate at least a full year to that one option.

Re: Stripe: Platform of Platforms

#27

Post by stephenhuey »

dylan604 wrote: post #25
cowhorse1122 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly 1.8% of a credit transaction fee goes to the bank that issued the card. About 15-30 bps go to the card networks, much higher for cross-border. Acquirer and PSP fees are minimal in comparison. Legislation would be more effective in lowering overall merchant cost by targeting banks and networks.

>About 15-30 bps go to the card networks Sorry, I'm not familiar with 'bps' in this context. Techie me read that with no pause as 15-30 bits per second, and then had to slow down as that did not make sense within context.

BPS = basis points

A basis point is a hundredth of one percent:

0.0001

Re: Stripe: Platform of Platforms

#29

Post by dylan604 »

throwawaysea wrote: post #15

Stripe, like PayPal, is becoming too fundamental as a layer of our financial infrastructure. One issue I have with them is that they take an aggressive approach to censorship and deplatforming, encoding their political biases into their offerings instead of taking a hands-off pro-free-speech approach. There are many examples of them banning users or organizations who are not aligned with their progressive world view.…

You have examples of this? Are you saying they lean left or right? You have the axe to grind, so I feel like the burden of proof is on you. Your down votes makes me feel like I'm not the only one thinking this way, but without evidence to back up your claims... Your throwaway account is also very chickenshit-esque.

Re: Stripe: Platform of Platforms

#30

Post by zie »

throwawaysea wrote: post #15

Stripe, like PayPal, is becoming too fundamental as a layer of our financial infrastructure. One issue I have with them is that they take an aggressive approach to censorship and deplatforming, encoding their political biases into their offerings instead of taking a hands-off pro-free-speech approach. There are many examples of them banning users or organizations who are not aligned with their progressive world view.…

Banks tend to be just as picky. Seeing as Stripe needs continuing love from banks, they are probably contractually obligated to be equally picky.

This is a banking and regulation issue probably and not a Stripe or Paypal specific issue.

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