This is completely off topic for the business model, but how do you like the orange Embody chair in the last picture? It looks like the fabric is getting dyed from jeans, but other than that, how is the actual chair?
I absolutely love mine. Love it. Had one for about 2 years and it fits like no other chair I've tried. Only problem is that I have to remember to keep a towel on it when I'm not here because one of our cats loves it. That's unnecessary hassle for what is essentially a work tool, but if I didn't the seat would be clawed up within months.
You should look into Moneris (RBC+BMO venture). Sane API, good support, decent fee structure. http://www.moneris.com/
Moneris is a huge pain and hassle for a small tech business.
Really, why? My experience is the exact opposite. I run two startups in Toronto, both use Moneris, no problems. I had cards processing within a day or two.
I wish you could too! What's stopping you right now?
There's undoubtably tons of red tape for them to navigate whenever they enter a new territory. See the linked article for the hassle they had in the States. They also tried setting up in Ireland originally but some Irish banker pretty much laughed them out of the room by the sound of things when they had a meeting. Is there any wonder why the US is a more fertile environment for entrepreneurship?
Given what Irish bankers did to the country, I wouldn't give much credence to their opinion. Unfortunately they still pull the strings and have incredible political clout. I'm not even Irish (though I lived there a few years) and it makes me sick thinking what the banks did, and then to foist it off onto the Irish taxpayers. Ireland's loss is the US' gain!
Please come to Australia! I can't confirm or deny I'm working on a direct competitor. Am I serious? Or joking, just to light a fire under you? Please hurry! :)
Seconded! The Australian market is ripe for a company like Stripe. People are just now getting happy with buying things online, so hurry!
I have always attributed PayPal's problems to having to perform fraud prevention on a massive scale. That's where I understand most of the initial difficulty comes from in getting a PayPal account setup: they have to weed out scams and money laundering. Same with the horror stories I read: most of those people have circumstances that would also preclude them from a standard merchant account. So is Stripe doing fraud…
It's probably too soon to tell what's going on.
They are still relatively young and it will take a few more years for the vectors of PayPal's fraud troubles to target them.
I think right now Stripe is primarily know in the HN-type circles, not the eBay-type circles. Hence the good times they are experiencing.
No we won't freeze, close, or withdraw money from people's accounts. Once it's open, it's open. Once the money is cleared, it doesn't go back. This is an ironclad promise we can make to users because of the unique way we process payments. Right now the model for peer-to-peer transactions is that after one party gets paid the other waits for his merchandise or services to be delivered (eWork projects). We solved this…
Is "we" PayGuard? And are you saying you won't "freeze, close or withdraw", or that you can't ? One is a promise. The other is a fact. See Colin Percival's post on the distinction: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-w... It's also not clear to me how what you describe prevents scams and money laundering. Note that in the case of money laundering, it's the same party on both sides of the transa…
You are absolutely correct, it is a promise. But it is also a guarantee. There are regulations regarding money laundering that we will have to comply with of course. Users are required to fill out certain forms if the the amount of a transaction exceed 3,000 for individuals and 20,000 for businesses. And these are not just "per transaction", it is per month. As with scams our system is specifically designed to prevent users from falling into the trap scam sellers or buyers. Of course it will never be absolutely fool-proof, but it does significantly reduce the incentive for fraudulent activities on both sides. Unfortunately, I cannot give out too much detail on how we do it. We are launching our beta system sometime around March and you will be more than welcome to try it out as a beta tester.
If only they would come to Europe (or any European alternative would rise and stand up against Paypal). They're an amazing and promising startup and I do hope they succeed soon in expanding across the ocean.
We're working on doing exactly this.
I would love to know expected timeframe. Being in Europe and not part of EU (yet), handling payments is a major pain. Waiting for years to be able to complete charge on my own site instead of redirecting to a payment processing company.
All that easy analytics and A/B testing opportunities....
Can someone explain how stripe/square can get around the merchant account requirement?
They are a third party payments aggregator (TPPA), just like PayPal when it started. They make it possible for merchants to accept credit card and bank transfers without the need to setup a merchant account with a bank or card association. The aggregator provides the means for facilitating payment from the consumer. The merchant is paid by the aggregator.