What's so great about Stripe? What does it do that other payment processors don't? I don't get it.
Stripe launches German beta
41–50 of 167 posts
Re: Stripe launches German beta
#42Re: Stripe launches German beta
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in an office in Berlin as I type this. Every person around me has a credit card. Every German I personally know, including my destitute student friends, have credit cards. It's not like online retail isn't a huge business here, and credit cards are the easiest payment method available, due to the incredibly restrictive nature of German banks. A lot of startups here have been screaming for this day.
Direct debit is just as easy. Two numbers to enter.
I prefer not handling my bank account details for anything to anyone
A credit card can be cancelled and purchases disputed.
Re: Stripe launches German beta
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi, I asked them few questions and they seemed quite professional. Very German, asking for lots of paper, but that kind of make me feel safer. And let's stop with this clone thing. If we are a community striving for execution, we should not be so annoying when people simply take ideas from somebody else and start executing.
I have no problem with cloning, everybody does it if we're being honest. It's just that I'm not sure it's a good idea to give your business data to people whose main business model it is to look for the best ideas/markets/businesses and then to copy them. To me, there seems to be a pretty obvious conflict of interest that might work against you.
[deleted]
Re: Stripe launches German beta
#45Sadly Germans hate credit cards.
I'm in an office in Berlin as I type this. Every person around me has a credit card. Every German I personally know, including my destitute student friends, have credit cards. It's not like online retail isn't a huge business here, and credit cards are the easiest payment method available, due to the incredibly restrictive nature of German banks. A lot of startups here have been screaming for this day.
Too bad most stores have never heard about this "credit card thing", some will grudgingly accept EC (the german debit card)
Re: Stripe launches German beta
#46Sadly Germans hate credit cards.
I'm in an office in Berlin as I type this. Every person around me has a credit card. Every German I personally know, including my destitute student friends, have credit cards. It's not like online retail isn't a huge business here, and credit cards are the easiest payment method available, due to the incredibly restrictive nature of German banks. A lot of startups here have been screaming for this day.
Credit card ownership in Germany was around 33% in 2011 [1].
The problem that credit cards have in Germany is that they have to compete with ELV (and soon SEPA Direct Debit, I suspect), which from a consumer's perspective (though not from a seller's) is the superior payment system (ease of chargebacks, plus the up to 150 Euro that you may have to eat if your credit card details are stolen, plus the historical tendency of the courts to side with banks over consumers in the case of card theft [2]).
[1] http://www.bundesbank.de/Redaktion/EN/Downloads/Publications...
[2] The law has recently been changed to no longer make a prima facie assumption that you mishandled your PIN if your card was used fraudulently, but you may still have a lot of hassle to go through.
Re: Stripe launches German beta
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Credit card usage is somewhat lower in Germany (though by a smaller margin than people think), and we considered holding off 'till we had a better answer to this. But we thought about it more, and talked to a bunch of German companies, and realized that a lot of German users want to sell to a global market in the very same way that, say, an American company would -- there isn't necessarily a tight coupling between th…
I just signed up for PayMill yesterday, but didn't send them the paperwork yet. I might as well sign up for Stripe then.
Same here, the paperwork will be left undone as it looks...!
Re: Stripe launches German beta
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? I'm certain they hate the notion of credit too which has long been attributed to their post-war mindset. Are other European notions similarly disposed towards credit (and thus credit cards), too?
Credit card usage isn't low here because Germans hate credit, it's because we simply have had better alternatives for ages. Instead of credit cards people use Electronic cash ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_cash ) in stores which is much cheaper for merchants, so they often don't even accept credit cards because of the fees. Online payments and payments of bills are usually done through direct withdrawals…
" it's because we simply have had better alternatives for ages. Instead of credit cards people use Electronic cash"
Better? It's a debit card. Chip and Pin? Several other countries have it.
It may have smaller fees, still, some merchands only take it from a certain value.
Re: Stripe launches German beta
#49Sadly Germans hate credit cards.
Maybe, but it's certainly not hard to get a credit card in Germany. I moved from The Netherlands to Germany on August 1 and I got a credit card with my bank account at no extra cost. A really big difference here however is that for daily groceries people tend to pay in cash and for lower amounts they'll refuse use of a debit card, while in The Netherlands practically everyone pays with a debit card all the time. It w…
It has to do with privacy. Germans are quite fond of keeping up personal information personal, and they just don't want that bank can keep track of their purchases. That's the main reason why people here prefer cash as a method of payment.
Of course, when paying or order something online, you need to provide your shipping address anyways, so credit cards brings at least a benefit of possible dispute if anything goes wrong.
Re: Stripe launches German beta
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Direct debit is just as easy. Two numbers to enter.
The problem is that you can't synchronously process the payment, which makes the API (and user experience generally) much more complicated.
Do you plan on supporting direct debit in the future or is your focus on expanding to more countries before adding more payment options?