Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Can payment processors like Stripe and their fees be avoided?

news.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 72 posts

Re: Ask HN: Can payment processors like Stripe and their fees be avoided?

#21
post #8

You could accept Bitcoin as payment though your accountant may then find taxes frightening. It's not practical really no. There are ways (the way people did it before stripe). But it's much more painful and buerocratic. Stripe is quite friendly compared to the old way.

Doesn't Bitcoin have transaction fees ?

It does, but in the not so distant future most smaller transactions will be on its 2nd layer wallets (lightning). Close to no fees and close to instant. Its steadily growing.

Re: Ask HN: Can payment processors like Stripe and their fees be avoided?

#22
post #18
post #5

Yes, make your customers mail you a check or cash /s

In the UK if you really didn’t want to use a processor you could ask people to bank transfer you cash (free for both parties with Faster Payments) or send cheques, although most banks are phasing them out. There are definitely web stores which have this as an option and I’ve seen it in NZ too. The downside is manual labour and a transfer speed of O(minutes). I used to help run a summer camp in Europe and we always to…

I was somewhat joking but my company takes checks too - some clients can only pay via check or wire with PO. But we insist on annual subscription simply because processing checks on monthly will be too much overhead not to mention delays.

Re: Ask HN: Can payment processors like Stripe and their fees be avoided?

#23
post #20
post #4

How do you expect to get paid? That is a serious question, by the way. In general, let's say that you want to use credit card. That pretty much put you at the mercy of Visa & Mastercard. They charge you fees, and the cost of managing the interaction with them is significant. You can accept wire transfers, but note that this probably means quite a bit of dealing with the backend financial stuff (user paid, but didn't…

I think this raises really great points - but I think there is one additional major question too which is "what scale are you dealing at?". If you are handling billions of dollars in sales, then yes, rolling your own payment infrastructure will probably be worthwhile, but at that scale you will also be getting a very different commercial offer from the payment gateways anyway. If you 'only' have a million dollars in…

And 3) If you have a small number of transactions bank transfers should work just fine.

Re: Ask HN: Can payment processors like Stripe and their fees be avoided?

#24
Don’t crypto exchanges use payment processors to transfer cash to bank account? I’m unsure about it though.

Likely only option is pickup and delivery with cash payment or keep crypto only never cash out. I don’t think the latter is convenient though.

Re: Ask HN: Can payment processors like Stripe and their fees be avoided?

#25
post #9

Take payment in crypto. Something like BCH if you want to minimize network fees. Programmatically move your funds to an exchange and convert to USD using your exchange’s API if you don’t want to hold crypto. Easy weekend project.

In the US (and many other countries) as soon as the cryptocurrency is “under your control” tax issues hit. Because of this the taxation and accounting for these transactions is ridiculous:

- Get BTC from customer with X value in USD at time of sale

- Trade to USD with Y value at time of trade

- Track AND report gain/loss between X and Y values

…so in addition to all of the accounting and reporting overhead you get the added benefit of never really knowing what you’re selling anything for in your local currency.

Unless you’re a cryptocurrency maximalist or selling to a cryptocurrency audience this just doesn’t make any sense.

Re: Ask HN: Can payment processors like Stripe and their fees be avoided?

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Currency/btc conversion fees are more expensive than any transaction fee. Not sure what exchange you're using, but 0.1% on market trades is pretty common. That's very low compared to most fees.

You are misunderstanding the op. He wants a payment processor for merchants, eg. bitpay. 1% transaction fee Exchanges then have a: - 0,1 % withdrawal fee - Unknown/hidden? currency conversion fee. I would think there is a fee here, but i didn't find it documented. Additionally, exchanges like Binance are banned in many places ( because of tether fraud). Coinbase would be one of the only exchanges to consider as a bus…

And this has all been solved with the USDC stablecoin sitting on cryptocurrencies like Stellar. Just use that.

Job done.

Downvoters: So you are saying businesses can't use it?

Re: Ask HN: Can payment processors like Stripe and their fees be avoided?

#27
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misunderstanding the op. He wants a payment processor for merchants, eg. bitpay. 1% transaction fee Exchanges then have a: - 0,1 % withdrawal fee - Unknown/hidden? currency conversion fee. I would think there is a fee here, but i didn't find it documented. Additionally, exchanges like Binance are banned in many places ( because of tether fraud). Coinbase would be one of the only exchanges to consider as a bus…

And this has all been solved with the USDC stablecoin sitting on cryptocurrencies like Stellar. Just use that. Job done. Downvoters: So you are saying businesses can't use it?

USDC != USD.

Pegged to it doesn't mean it's the same.

While USDC is backed by Coinbase and more trustworthy than Tether. A lot of it is still going to uncharted territory.

Re: Ask HN: Can payment processors like Stripe and their fees be avoided?

#28
In my country (Montenegro), at least one logistic company supports cash on delivery for physical goods shipped within the country. Specifically, a buyer orders something, a seller ships the package, the logistic company delivers package + papers, takes cash + buyer’s signature, pays the seller.

I never sold things that way, but I bought stuff couple of times paying cash.

Re: Ask HN: Can payment processors like Stripe and their fees be avoided?

#29
post #4

How do you expect to get paid? That is a serious question, by the way. In general, let's say that you want to use credit card. That pretty much put you at the mercy of Visa & Mastercard. They charge you fees, and the cost of managing the interaction with them is significant. You can accept wire transfers, but note that this probably means quite a bit of dealing with the backend financial stuff (user paid, but didn't…

>A truly underrated value you get is the fact that payment processors deals with all those issues around taxes, VAT, etc.

I signed up for Stripe thinking it was the case but it turns out they don't handle VAT and taxes and I have to find something else (looking into Paddle and I would be grateful for suggestions and ideas). How are people here dealing with VAT and taxes for their SaaS in 2021. Company is in France, Europe. Clients could be anywhere.

I wanted a one stop shop and thought Stripe did that.

Post reply on HN