Stripe Identity • Hacker News Board

Re: Stripe Identity

#251

Post by ankurpatel » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #246

ankurpatel wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tech stack has something to do with it. Stripe has such high velocity because of Ruby on Rails.

lol! When are we as a community going to move past treating frameworks/languages/tools as a silver bullet? Frameworks don't make teams better; good management, technical leadership, and great infrastructure does.

You are right but frameworks help with long term maintainability of code and also being able to build out features quickly which is what the comment was referring to originally. If they use Go lang of some other tech stack without framework it can help them achieve their goal but not at the same speed.

Re: Stripe Identity

#252

Post by tyingq » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

ngoel36 wrote: post #2

I've never seen a company release incredible products with as high velocity as Stripe has over the last few years. Truly incredible. $1.50/user may sound outrageously expensive at first, but having seen all the engineering power it takes to build something like this at Uber...it's a totally fair price.

That it's flat, and not a percentage, is a welcome surprise.

Re: Stripe Identity

#253

Post by privatdozent » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

ngoel36 wrote: post #2

I've never seen a company release incredible products with as high velocity as Stripe has over the last few years. Truly incredible. $1.50/user may sound outrageously expensive at first, but having seen all the engineering power it takes to build something like this at Uber...it's a totally fair price.

Any news on IPO plans?

Re: Stripe Identity

#254

Post by oefrha » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

rejectedandsad wrote: post #106

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #34

Does Stripe intend to make a giant online database of international identity documents? Why should we trust Stripe to secure these? It could be Equifax levels of problematic if there would be a intrusion, but I also can't tell how Stripe plans to use this information.

Stripe hires elite Stanford grads unlike Equifax is the simplest answer they probably wouldn’t say publicly. But the pedigree and engineering talent is miles better.

Being a Stanford grad myself, I wouldn’t put too much trust into Stanford grads, or grads.

Re: Stripe Identity

#255

Post by arcturus17 » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #54

ngoel36 wrote: post #2

I've never seen a company release incredible products with as high velocity as Stripe has over the last few years. Truly incredible. $1.50/user may sound outrageously expensive at first, but having seen all the engineering power it takes to build something like this at Uber...it's a totally fair price.

Just what I was thinking. Can Stripe hurry up and go public so I can buy some shares?

You can buy it by proxy through funds or similar.

I've been eyeing Scottish Mortgage which despite the name is actually a high-tech fund packaged as a stock publicly traded in the London Stock Exchange. They hold Stripe among many other interesting investments.

Re: Stripe Identity

#256

Post by michaelt » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #242

whimsicalism wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not offering a service for $, why do you need to verify identity? What is the usecase? This strikes me as classic HN bikeshedding.

Spam and other malicious behaviour. It's time consuming for mods to block spammers. Instagram also don't charge users and yet they verify identity.

Stripe's website shows users scanning their government ID documents and taking selfies.

Using that as a means to block spammers would be.... unusual.

Re: Stripe Identity

#257

Post by scrollaway » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

gpm wrote: post #201

floatingatoll wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the data cached locally in your app?

That's still storing the data. Nothing says that the user typically lets this sort of information stay on their phone.

Difference being you're still in full control of that data, can delete it at any time, and Airbnb the company doesn't have direct access to it.

Re: Stripe Identity

#258

Post by tracedddd » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

edwinwee wrote: post #104

tracedddd wrote: post #80

I really despise this trend of uploading your ID and a selfie for verification. I know it makes sense in some legal frameworks, but beyond that I find it invasive and risky (and rude.)

It’s not really a “trend”—if you think about it, ID verification is already required when checking into hotels, buying alcohol, or when visiting a bank teller. As more commerce moves online, Stripe Identity was built to significantly reduce the number of organizations and humans that would touch your ID—in a faster, secure way that’s hosted by Stripe ( https://support.stripe.com/questions/common-questions-about-... )…

Just last month I had a DJ company ask for an ID and selfie for a $200 software purchase.

Maybe these things are designed for KYC’ing crypto and buying alcohol but it’s definitely a trend to apply this process broadly. All for the fear of generally preventing everyday fraud, piracy, and maybe just collecting data for some nebulous future use. Of course they rarely do the actual basics and apply any thought to not treating your real customers like criminals.

I don’t doubt Stripe can make the process better and do it in a good way, but can Stripe minimize what this process is even applied to in the first place and avoid manufactured consent.

Re: Stripe Identity

#259

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

Panther34543 wrote: post #219

marvin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with Stripe's situation, but there are non-public markets available for this kind of stock sale. You just can't buy from them unless you're already rich. I'd guess that long-term employees do have an amount of flexibility in that regard.

Unfortunately many companies have clauses in their options grants that prohibit employees from selling shares to any investor not approved by the company board (e.g. EquityZen).

[deleted]

Re: Stripe Identity

#260

Post by arcturus17 » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #242

whimsicalism wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not offering a service for $, why do you need to verify identity? What is the usecase? This strikes me as classic HN bikeshedding.

Spam and other malicious behaviour. It's time consuming for mods to block spammers. Instagram also don't charge users and yet they verify identity.

Instagram may be verifying identity now (I didn't know... letting FB scan my id would be one of the last things I would want), but I'm pretty sure they reached a massive scale without such a measure.