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135 new currencies at Stripe

stripe.com

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Re: 135 new currencies at Stripe

#71
post #68

Holy shamoly! This is incredible! I'm actually checking to make sure it's not Apr 1. I'm beyond-amazed at the sheer breadth of this list. I mean, PayPal itself only supports 20-odd currencies, I think. I mean, the Brazilian Real? Literally almost no payment processors support that. And believe me, I've looked for them. This is amazing news. (As a side question, if anybody from Stripe is listening here: how exactly is…

Well PayFlow says it supports 190 markets (does that mean currencies?) https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/payflow-faq

They list the currencies at the end of that page; there are only 22 there.

Re: 135 new currencies at Stripe

#73
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What countries would you like to see supported? (You can sign up in a number of European countries today: https://stripe.com/global. )

What countries would you like to see supported? How about all of EU countries?

That's the plan.

Re: 135 new currencies at Stripe

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a certain extent, doesn't this weaken the case for Bitcoin? One of Bitcoin's big selling points is "seamless international commerce". If a company (ie, Stripe) makes it painless to let customers pay in whatever currency they have, doesn't that advantage for Bitcoin go away?

Bitcoin has different selling points, one of them is independence of Stripe, PayPal and other intermediaries that are either too costly for some, or disallow certain transactions, or cause chargebacks, or not allowed in your country. Another selling point is that BTC you can own while USD/EUR/RUR/CNY you cannot. Fiat currencies are always under control of the banking system and ultimately at the mercy of the central…

> You can hold physical gold, but it's not portable

Depends how rich you are. UK median annual income works out about 1 kg of gold, which is perfectly portable.

(Of course, the authorities might regard you with suspicion for carrying that much gold, but that's another issue.)

Re: 135 new currencies at Stripe

#75
post #56
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 GBP in the API =~ $1. (The motivation behind always using the smallest denomination is to dissuade people from performing floating point math.) The smallest unit is pretty clear in most "normal" currencies, but you're right that Bitcoin kinda throws things off...

How do users or front-end developers know how to display 1 "usd" as 0.01 USD but 1 "inr" as 1 INR? I haven't seen an API for getting the display factors.

Our users are generally picking prices themselves (rather than having to render arbitrary currency/amount pairs), and so they tend to be aware of these subtleties, but we perhaps should start recommending good currency display libraries. (Or even including something in the official Stripe libraries.)

Re: 135 new currencies at Stripe

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has different selling points, one of them is independence of Stripe, PayPal and other intermediaries that are either too costly for some, or disallow certain transactions, or cause chargebacks, or not allowed in your country. Another selling point is that BTC you can own while USD/EUR/RUR/CNY you cannot. Fiat currencies are always under control of the banking system and ultimately at the mercy of the central…

> You can hold physical gold, but it's not portable Depends how rich you are. UK median annual income works out about 1 kg of gold, which is perfectly portable. (Of course, the authorities might regard you with suspicion for carrying that much gold, but that's another issue.)

If everyone tried to convert their savings into gold, gold would be quite a bit more expensive (and thus lighter).

Re: 135 new currencies at Stripe

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a certain extent, doesn't this weaken the case for Bitcoin? One of Bitcoin's big selling points is "seamless international commerce". If a company (ie, Stripe) makes it painless to let customers pay in whatever currency they have, doesn't that advantage for Bitcoin go away?

I was thinking the opposite. Doesn't Bitcoin weaken the case for stripe?

Why not both?

Re: 135 new currencies at Stripe

#78
post #14

No crypto currencies yet...

To a certain extent, doesn't this weaken the case for Bitcoin? One of Bitcoin's big selling points is "seamless international commerce". If a company (ie, Stripe) makes it painless to let customers pay in whatever currency they have, doesn't that advantage for Bitcoin go away?

If by painless, you mean "2% conversion fees", then yes.

Re: 135 new currencies at Stripe

#80
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For myself, Poland. I've also had clients in Italy and the Czech Republic make similar noises (although, I must confess, I know comparatively little about their local alternatives).

Ok, good to know -- thanks!

Could you please make a blog post about the difficulties involved in serving new countries? Obviously it's related to bullshit regulations, artificial barriers to entry and so on, but it would be lovely to know any specifics.
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