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Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

theregister.com

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Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#31
post #6

Surprisingly small contract. It's interesting to see that a full government contract for a payment provider is a fraction of a US mid-size company's cloud bill. I am constantly surprised by things like this. Here's another: there are more foreigners in Taiwan (total pop. 25 m) than in China (total pop. 1.4 b).

[dead]

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#32

I wish Adyen was as good at marketing and hype as Stripe was. Stripe is really good at making themselves look like a way bigger deal than they are.

No point in marketing when you outright reject customers:

Thank you very much for the comprehensive feedback.

I have taken a look at the information you have provided and unfortunately, at this time, Adyen is only able to support businesses currently transacting more than €5M per year or businesses which are currently supported by a Plugin built by Adyen. The reason for this is so that we are able to provide the right level of support and resources to our merchants at the right stage of their company growth.

If you would like to stay up to date with our payment offering please do sign up to our newsletter here.

In the interim, I want to ensure that you find the right provider, so I would like to direct you about payments. They are specialists in finding the most relevant payment solutions for all business models and I have no doubt they will offer you several great options.

I wish you the best of luck with your business moving forward, and hopefully we can reconnect in the future.

Kind Regards,

Ana Sales Specialist

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#34

I wish Adyen was as good at marketing and hype as Stripe was. Stripe is really good at making themselves look like a way bigger deal than they are.

No point in marketing when you outright reject customers: Thank you very much for the comprehensive feedback. I have taken a look at the information you have provided and unfortunately, at this time, Adyen is only able to support businesses currently transacting more than €5M per year or businesses which are currently supported by a Plugin built by Adyen. The reason for this is so that we are able to provide the righ…

What are these plugins? Could any business choose to use one, or are they highly specialized?

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#35

I wish Adyen was as good at marketing and hype as Stripe was. Stripe is really good at making themselves look like a way bigger deal than they are.

No point in marketing when you outright reject customers: Thank you very much for the comprehensive feedback. I have taken a look at the information you have provided and unfortunately, at this time, Adyen is only able to support businesses currently transacting more than €5M per year or businesses which are currently supported by a Plugin built by Adyen. The reason for this is so that we are able to provide the righ…

At some point you realize that your smallest customers generate the least value but require the most support.

Shedding low value users to others makes you stronger and them weaker.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#36

I wish Adyen was as good at marketing and hype as Stripe was. Stripe is really good at making themselves look like a way bigger deal than they are.

A big reason Stripe got big was because they got their YC cohorts to use it. Payments before that was complicated and even though PayPal existed, most people didn’t know you could process credit cards like Stripe, you don’t need a PayPal account or wallet. It’s why they bought Braintree and that added even more confusion. The lesson is, marketing to developers works. And the best way to market to them to by making th…

Like with everything in business and engineering, there's a tradeoff. My previous employer used Adyen as major payment provider (for quite some time, too). Their cost structure is sensible, the payment methods they support are convenient[ß], and their functionality is reasonably solid even in the edge cases. But everyone who maintained the payment service kept cursing Adyen for their awful APIs. The python runtime powering the old system had to carry an unmaintainable and effectively abandoned library to be able to process the Adyen payment gateway messages.

From what I understand, Stripe's main value proposition was: "how can we make this gnarly, confusing and complicated system an easy-to-use service that does NOT require the end-user to internalise the entire payment provider state transition universe?" That is obviously a valuable service, but is it valuable enough to charge an ongoing rake of nearly 300 basis points?

ß: for some weird reason people still insisted that they absolutely must be able to pay with Paypal. 2+ years of fighting cross-corporate politics + KYB and still having to stomach insanely high commissions left a properly bad taste.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No point in marketing when you outright reject customers: Thank you very much for the comprehensive feedback. I have taken a look at the information you have provided and unfortunately, at this time, Adyen is only able to support businesses currently transacting more than €5M per year or businesses which are currently supported by a Plugin built by Adyen. The reason for this is so that we are able to provide the righ…

What are these plugins? Could any business choose to use one, or are they highly specialized?

It's the list here:

https://docs.adyen.com/plugins#built-by-adyen

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#38

I wish Adyen was as good at marketing and hype as Stripe was. Stripe is really good at making themselves look like a way bigger deal than they are.

No point in marketing when you outright reject customers: Thank you very much for the comprehensive feedback. I have taken a look at the information you have provided and unfortunately, at this time, Adyen is only able to support businesses currently transacting more than €5M per year or businesses which are currently supported by a Plugin built by Adyen. The reason for this is so that we are able to provide the righ…

I wish more companies would try to serve tiny shops at the same time they serve multi million euro companies. The requirements for the two are very different, as is the support and customer care requirement. Integrating directly with Adyen as a small business is like running a kubernetes cluster on AWS to host your blog, except they'll have even less time for customer support to spend on your tickets when things don't go right.

Platforms like Stripe where anyone can sign up at any time drive up prices because the amount of low-profit companies needs to be offset by the companies making more. Great for small startups but a bad deal for major companies.

Stripe has also been criticised for forcing growing companies into enterprise plans the moment they hit certain growth numbers. That's one way to keep the business profitable, but it's not necessary if you only take on businesses that are already profitable enough dedicate a sales team onto.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#39

I wish Adyen was as good at marketing and hype as Stripe was. Stripe is really good at making themselves look like a way bigger deal than they are.

There’s a huge difference for small business owners.

Stripe has a Get started button. You click it, fill out a form, get your site approved in maybe a day, and start making money.

Adyen has a Talk to our team button. You close the tab and never think about it again until you’re making serious money.

---

Edit: that is, of course, by design. Adyen doesn’t want small businesses. From the sibling comment:

> only able to support businesses currently transacting more than €5M per year

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#40

I wish Adyen was as good at marketing and hype as Stripe was. Stripe is really good at making themselves look like a way bigger deal than they are.

There’s a huge difference for small business owners. Stripe has a Get started button. You click it, fill out a form, get your site approved in maybe a day, and start making money. Adyen has a Talk to our team button. You close the tab and never think about it again until you’re making serious money. --- Edit: that is, of course, by design. Adyen doesn’t want small businesses. From the sibling comment: > only able to…

Adyen has resellers. Mollie is one example, they do have. Get Started and no lower limit. These smaller parties rely on the bank license of Adyen
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