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TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

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Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#451

Post by whatisweb3 »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #449
whatisweb3 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Pay $1 to a single private company" is not the same as "pay $1 toward every circulating token in the network." If you consider this a tax, it is a tax distributed to all current and future holders of the currency, including the user doing the transaction. If "changing of the guard" means replacing VISA with thousands of VISAs in a decentralized network, where any non-VISA can become yet another VISA through permissi…

> If you consider this a tax, it is a tax distributed to all current and future holders of the currency, including the user doing the transaction. Yes. A tax on every transaction apportioned by wealth to current holders (not to future holders because they will receive fewer tokens from constant input). A regressive tax. > If "changing of the guard" means replacing VISA with thousands of VISAs in a decentralized netwo…

Ethereum, like USD but unlike Bitcoin, does not have a fixed supply cap. The protocol 'prints' new currency every minute. The EIP 1559 document even made this point clear: Ethereum no longer has a strictly deflationary or inflationary design - it depends on the current block space demand and issuance rate. At the moment there is more Eth being issued than burned, so it is inflationary[1].

> rules being set ... by wealth

I'm not sure where you got that. Depending on what you mean, in PoS some rules are set by node operators - software that can be run by anybody for free - and the hard rules of the protocol are set by social consensus.

I think this discussion also misses the forest for the trees: Eth tokens are not coupled to dollar wealth. Ethers are not "up-only" and they do not need to be for the network to function. A boom or bust in the price of Eth does not change the price of DAI or USDC, and pegged stablecoin tokens is what users would be transacting with if we are entertaining the idea of a crypto alternative to VISA.

[1] https://watchtheburn.com/insights

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#452

Post by joshmanders »

flak48 wrote: post #437
joshmanders wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let me get this straight, you're siding in favor of Stripe not doing what Stripe signed up for by becoming a payment processor, is that correct?

Not correct, OP entered into an agreement with Stripe where Stripe would process payments received for the sale of cell phones (and not automobiles).

The item is irrelevant, everything OP said is something Stripe has to take on for every transaction. It's literally the definition of a payment processor.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#453

Post by redeeman »

armatav wrote: post #409
redeeman wrote: post #79

This "rant" is in general, and not related to OPs case I would strongly recommend to not rely on stripe, their service level has become a joke. I get it, they have a nice API, their system is technically nice in many ways, and they are (or atleast were ~5 years ago) way easier to deal with for developers than the "old" players on the market. but they are kinda like google, their support is pretty much non existent wh…

Yeah be that as it may - it's still the easiest option that actually works. And honestly I feel like Stripe actually responds to support tickets that are related to the integrations side in like half an hour.

until it doesnt work. Yeah, they may well be fast in the support of what essentially is a sales support.

Talking to insurance companies is also extremely pleasant, almost giving a vibe of talking to yes-men and shoeshine boys... until its time to make a claim :)

I feel confident most strip customers never have issues, but when you do, you are screwed. They simply do not care at all, they even feel perfectly justified simply not responding for months

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#454

Post by shepardrtc »

jjoonathan wrote: post #294
shepardrtc wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this negativity is uncalled for. They said that they do their best, sometimes there are mistakes on their end that they try to fix, and sometimes the person complaining is lying or leaving out details that would explain the situation. If you've ever dealt with people, you would know that they often "forget" things or downplay things that would make them look bad.

I think this criticism is called for. The customer tried asking them nicely and it sounds like they did not try very hard to fix it -- which is an experience I can empathize with 100 times over. If you've ever dealt with companies, you know that they often have policies and procedures that intentionally screw customers and they only back off if it blows up publicly. Because they can. Our accountability mechanisms suc…

I don't think you - or many of the people commenting here - read through the thread. The customer personally sold a "cheap" van and accepted a credit card as a payment, which is super, super sketchy. Of course Stripe flagged it. They were smart to do so.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#455

Post by pier25 »

quelltext wrote: post #336
pier25 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a hobby project of mine I use Gumroad. The integration on my website is bad... But payments and payouts have been solid so far.

https://help.gumroad.com/article/260-your-payout-settings-pa... Gumroad itself uses Stripe, it seems so if Stripe decides to hold funds it's likely Gumroad will just forward that experience to you.

Yeah but AFAIK it's only for payouts and not for charging to the end customer.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#456

Post by treszkai »

SyneRyder wrote: post #276
leoff wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I see Stripe's apology here it will not be enough for me I'm actually just starting a business using Stripe for handling payments, and this makes me very concerned. Is there an alternative service one could use? Is there a way not to give these shady companies power to steal all my money?

You should always, always, have multiple ways to accept payments. Don't rely on one provider, even if they're the greatest processor in the world. Never have a single point of failure for your business.

I'm not an entrepreneur but this approach sounds way too safe to be competitive. IMHO if you're starting a 2-person company then yeah, be bold enough to rely on a single payment provider, and maybe consider redundancy when you have already have a working business with massive reputation.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#457

Post by SyneRyder »

treszkai wrote: post #456
SyneRyder wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should always, always, have multiple ways to accept payments. Don't rely on one provider, even if they're the greatest processor in the world. Never have a single point of failure for your business.

I'm not an entrepreneur but this approach sounds way too safe to be competitive. IMHO if you're starting a 2-person company then yeah, be bold enough to rely on a single payment provider, and maybe consider redundancy when you have already have a working business with massive reputation.

Single person company here. It's not hard to do, maybe an extra PHP class that abstracts details of different providers, and a separate class implementation on each provider. But you're right that you wouldn't do it for launch day.

It comes in really, really handy when your tiny 1-person company outlives your giant multinational payment provider. Happened to me a few times now, I'm on to my 3rd (4th?) provider in 20 years. There's a tendency for Borg-like consolidation in the payments industry (eg Avangate acquired 2Checkout, then were bought by Verifone). Anyone who lived through the Digital River era will know what I mean.

If you haven't done that code abstraction, imagine that you're suddenly unable to take any payments or make any sales and you are unable to do so until you rewrite all your payment processing code. That can be a long outage.

Having a backup is also useful when a customer's card gets declined by an overly zealous fraud screen at one provider. You can give that customer a "promocode" that changes the logic of your checkout flow and redirects processing to a different payment processor.

And having different processors active also lets you add different payment options (eg maybe your primary processor doesn't support Alipay or Pay With Amazon). But in practice that turned out not to be a good reason for me, Paypal/Visa/MC/Amex/Optima covered almost 100% of customers anyway. For the tiny handful that use checks I can handle that manually.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#458

Post by mobiclick »

carom wrote: post #405
rshm wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the OP/your alternative? Reach out to local credit unions or even smallish bank. They usually are middleman to firstdata, chase paymentech etc. But you get a dedicated account rep at cost of nominal monthly fee. Rates usually are competitive often lower than what stripe and paypal offers.

Implement it all yourself and have the UI be awful is not a good solution. Stripe takes about 1 day to set up. Getting a meeting with an interested bank or credit union could easily take 1 month.

I'd take a shitty ui over a shiny ui backed by an unpredictable algorithm any day.

That people would prioritize ui and initial setup costs over payment processing reliability is insane to me.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#459

Post by selfhoster11 »

lawgimenez wrote: post #167
selfhoster11 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is not a public space. It's not indexed by search engines.

What’s wrong with using email or Intercom?

Nothing. It would be preferable to Discord, in fact.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#460

Post by nunez »

cdmoyer wrote: post #271

The OP later clarified that it wasn't a normal transaction. They sold a "cheap company van" using their stripe business account. That seems like a huge liability, since a used car seems extremely likely to cause a chargeback. I don't think dealerships would accept a credit card payment (other than deposit) for this reason. https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/wa1zob/dont_...

and this right here is why I avoid larger subreddits. the truth is always buried underneath hundreds of poorly thought out knee jerk responses
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