Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

stripe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 369 posts

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#4

Post by seldo »

swilliams wrote: post #2

"You don't need a merchant account or gateway." That's a killer feature right there. I've been considering using Braintree for a project, but seeing this is really making me reconsider.

As a beta customer, not having to deal with 95% of PCI and merchant accounts etc. really made a huge difference to how fast we got going.

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#5

Post by markbao »

Stripe pretty much takes payment processing kicking and screaming into 2011. Merchant accounts are a serious drag. I've opened a few and they've been nothing but headaches (especially if you're young—nobody trusts you.) Couple that with getting a gateway account, dealing with credit checks, monthly fees, monthly minimums, slow people in the payments industry, PCI compliance...

Stripe takes payments and put them behind a simple API. No crappiness and 1099 rules of PayPal. No more reconsidering the meaning of life like back when I had a merchant account. The only downside I see is the 7-day rolling batch (deposit to bank), versus the nightly batch from the merchant account, though I assume that is for fraud protection.

Maybe if you're charging millions of dollars, you should use a regular merchant account. If you aren't, I'm telling you now: don't even bother with a merchant account. Just use Stripe.

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#6

Post by physcab »

Stripe is a game changer. I've been using it for a few months and honestly its the best API I've ever used. The documentation is clear and concise. Its customized to your account so you can literally copy and paste and see the result. Just like it says, it gets out of your way. I was up and running and accepting recurring payments in less than an hour or so. I actually began to think of larger "swing for the fence" type of ideas that I would have never considered if I were stuck to using Paypal because it was so painless. Looking forward to them eating every other payment processor's lunch.

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#7

Post by marcamillion »

Been a beta user for a while, and I love their Ruby API. I used to use Braintree...while they were a good merchant account provider - it was overkill for what I needed.

I much prefer only paying when I make money. I don't NEED a merchant account. I just need to be able to collect money from my customers in an automated way. Stripe makes that relatively easy.

Their API has a quick feedback loop, where you can execute a transaction from the command-line very quickly (for Ruby anyway...I imagine it would be the same for other languages).

Their support is also awesome - could be because they only had beta users. But either way, awesome service so far and much better to deal with than a 'traditional' payment solution for those webappers out there (in my experience).

Not affiliated with the company in anyway, other than a customer.

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#9

Post by wylie »

In Patrick Collison's presentation at Startup Bootcamp last weekend, he really brought home the social impact that a payment processing company can have in the third world. Even though it's US only for now, this team has huge goals and the experience and vision to back it up.

Their goal is to abstract away the complexity of payments, especially internationally. I wish them luck, and can't wait to use it.

Post reply on HN