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Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

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Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#171
post #97

Not good. Stripe makes restrictions that PayPal allows (cannabis adjacent, adult adjacent) that Stripe blocks. Many vendors will be negatively impacted by Stripes morality police and selective application of their policies.

Stripe can be ridiculously restrictive. A few years ago at a psychiatric company that (among other things) offered therapy, TMS, and also esketamine/IV ketamine that was only offered in office, prescribed by a psychiatrist that has determined it is a medically prudent treatment, and closely monitored. They also offered some seminars during the year that other doctors could pay to attend that counts towards their CE credits per year.

We wanted to use Stripe to process credit card payments from doctors who would attend our conferences. Stripe flagged our account for review because they saw "ketamine" on the website. After an investigation, they closed our account because they said they can't allow us to sell ketamine online. I tried, multiple times, to explain that we don't do that and that it would be massively illegal for us to do that. For a month I tried to talk to them, but they wouldn't budge. They would not move away from the idea we were trying to sell ketamine online. They were convinced a 20 year old psychiatry business in 4 states and tens of thousands of patients a year with doctors who were recognized as leaders in their fields wanted to sell illegal drugs online.

We signed up for Paypal and never had an issue.

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#172
post #9

Paypal is quite popular in Germany but with Wero that popularity will decrease significantly. I expect that all around the Europe.

PayPal Germany is a different beast. Germans are the only country that majorly doesn't rely on Credit Cards when doing online payment.

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many bank and bank-adjacent companies who contractually enforce morals standards. It doesn't matter if the underlying reason for the morality is profit maximization, the effect is the same. You seem to care more about the aesthetics of the sentence than the meaning behind it. We know that a company is not a person. It doesn't have a consciousness. It doesn't have a singular morality to work with. It borrows…

> You seem to care more about the aesthetics of the sentence than the meaning behind it. Excuse me for interpreting the comment as written, but either way, the comment only makes sense if you believe that Stripe is going to take over paypal and shutoff profitable lines of businesses based on moral principles - otherwise, what's the problem? If you actually understand that this is all about money, then it's obvious th…

As written Stripe has "morality police" - do you think that is a real thing?

We all know it's a risk thing; we all know it's a money thing.

And from experience I think it will happen. It will match Stripes current behavior pattern - regardless if their motive is money or morals. In fact, I think it will happen because it's obvious it is about money.

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#174

I will support this idea if they allow changing your PayPal handle! When they first introduced that feature, PayPal made it seem more frivolous than a username. In fact I don't even think they called it a username at the time. I decided to use it for a side project that didn't work out, then came to discover that the handle had become my permanent username for my personal account with no way to change it whatsoever.…

What's so important about retaining your existing account? Remove payment methods, change the account email address, then close the account and open a new one.

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#175

PayPal user for 20+ years and it is time to end that dross

For better or worse, PayPal is the only service that works for my business, and it has worked flawlessly for upwards of 2 decades. I casually look for alternatives to PP once every couple of years.

My business ships a physical product, and has a completely passive web page. It's about as bland as boring as it gets. My page has a "buy" button with a link to PayPal. Then you complete your transaction within PP's site. That way, I don't need to maintain a server anywhere, write any code, or be responsible for handling your private information.

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#176

What I find interesting about this isn’t acquiring the flow from PayPal but the fact that PayPal has a bank charter and stripe doesn’t (not a real one, all that Georgia bank stuff is shenanigans). Properly structured this gives stripe a lot of interesting opportunities that they’ve had to delegate to partners and that dilutes not just their margins in the fee stack but restricts the types of transactions and merchant…

There are much cheaper ways to acquire a bank charter though?

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#177
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that PayPal does serve them (first hand knowledge). I'm sure that Stripe selectively restricts them (first hand knowledge). I do believe that Stripe will execute they same Stripe pattern in the merged company which will reduce choices in the market for businesses.

> I'm sure that PayPal does serve them (first hand knowledge). I'm sure that Stripe selectively restricts them (first hand knowledge). Correct. But do you understand why that is? What is the theory of mind you have that makes you believe Stripe would come in and shutting off paying customers? > I do believe that Stripe will execute they same Stripe pattern in the merged company which will reduce choices in the market…

Stripe only accepts the ones where there is cross-over and relationships between high-level employees and investors.

They restrict the ones that are smaller and independent.

I think that Stripe will shut off paying customers BECAUSE I HAVE SEEN THEM DO IT. That is what first hand knowledge is.

The thing that really doesn't make sense is that Stripe selectively applies their written terms of service and policies. Do you understand that?

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#178

If I worked for PayPal right now I'd be printing résumés. Stripe recently laid off 300 of their IT people. To paraphrase Petey Greene, I wouldn't trust them to wash my car.

why should i disprefer rails with lower fees and fewer employees?

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#179
post #171
post #97

Not good. Stripe makes restrictions that PayPal allows (cannabis adjacent, adult adjacent) that Stripe blocks. Many vendors will be negatively impacted by Stripes morality police and selective application of their policies.

Stripe can be ridiculously restrictive. A few years ago at a psychiatric company that (among other things) offered therapy, TMS, and also esketamine/IV ketamine that was only offered in office, prescribed by a psychiatrist that has determined it is a medically prudent treatment, and closely monitored. They also offered some seminars during the year that other doctors could pay to attend that counts towards their CE c…

And yet some on this thread seem to think Stripe wouldn't shut off valid, law abiding paying customers.

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#180
post #65

I'm not sure I like this idea. Braintree is a legit competitor to Stripe. I'm guessing they have some informal agreement to keep transaction fees about the same but if they become 1 company, what's to stop Stripe from raising fees even more? I'm not a fan of either to be honest, PayPal once told me I was wrong with something related to taxes and a bunch of different reps told me what I was saying and reported was imp…

Braintree was a legit competitor, last time I checked they won't even onboard you if you don't have an established business grossing over 100k/yr.

I remember about 10 years ago I switched our billing / subscription code from paypal to braintree. Braintree was better than paypal but that wasnt saying much. Then paypal bought Braintree and started fucking around with it, asking for conference calls because they wanted us off one of their old flows so they could get us on webhooks that preformed worse and were a pain to implement.

Anyway we switched to stripe. Don't love stripe and they take a big cut but I hate paypal.

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