Live data from Hacker News

Stripe Is the New PayPal

news.ycombinator.com

101–110 of 329 posts

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#101
All of these payments services are going to die within 5 years anyway. Before people get all pissy and down vote this assertion let me you remind you that a massive(and growing) portion of the world has become completely disillusioned with the global fiat currency system(or perhaps just enlightened as to how it works?), regardless, its days are numbered. I am not however entirely convinced that cryptocurrencies, namely bitcoin, aren't in fact a creation of global financiers anticipating rejection of the fiat currency model, but fuck it we'll see.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've run into this as well. It's absurd that a company of their size has no support ticketing system. There have been occasions when we've had to rely on personal relationships with staff at Stripe to simply get an email response to our account questions. Engineering support is great and responsive through IRC but, stripe engineering staff there just shrug if you ask a business question.

Their engineering support is incredible, and their API is well-documented and so easy to integrate. It is hard to believe that they can't spend a little more time focusing on customer support, especially as they continue to add new features and countries the problem is only going to increase. At least adding a public-facing ticketing system would pull some pressure off. I don't necessarily mind waiting for support, i…

If I were doing a high number of transactions and relying on Stripe to provide all my CC processing, I would gladly pay an extra $25-50 a month to have priority support in instances where there may be fraud. Shoot, even at a couple hundred in transactions each month I would gladly pay for priority support. I would rather have a $25 expense each month than risk business loss due to real or suspected fraud. Shoot at some level I might even consider an extra nickel per charge to have a dedicated account manager who was always there for me and knew my business inside and out.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#103
post #47

-- PSA regarding Credit Card Validation -- Last year I was testing Stripe integration. I tried using my own credit card with a fake name. Surprise, it went through. I emailed Stripe support. After half a dozen emails discussing CC authorization I learned that Stripe does not and can not validate Name & Address on credit card. Stripe told me that Credit Card companies do not disclose this data to Payment Processors li…

> Last year I was testing Stripe integration. I tried using my own credit card with a fake name. This sounds like a great way to get your account shut down. They provide test/mock APIs for a reason.

I'm willing to wager that a huge number of Credit Card transactions are submitted with names that don't match the credit card. In 10+ years and hundreds (thousands?) of transactions, I've never submitted a credit card transaction that matched the name on my card (which has my full name, and I just use my first and last name in the fields) - I've never been rejected.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#104
post #89

Can we please all take a look at disapointeddev's account and use just a little bit of salt here? Just one grain maybe? His account was obviously activated for the purpose of submitting this post and he has provided NO follow up comments at this time. His post has been up for an hour. I'm not saying anything about the validity of his claim, but we obviously need more information. Please check back and wait for him to…

As I said, I will be writing a more lengthy blog post about this. The only reason I posted this on HN is because I want Stripe to give me attention and solve the problem. I love Stripe's API which is why I want them to solve the issue.

Also, I made a new account for my privacy.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#105

-- PSA regarding Credit Card Validation -- Last year I was testing Stripe integration. I tried using my own credit card with a fake name. Surprise, it went through. I emailed Stripe support. After half a dozen emails discussing CC authorization I learned that Stripe does not and can not validate Name & Address on credit card. Stripe told me that Credit Card companies do not disclose this data to Payment Processors li…

Virtually all card issuers support AVS (Address Verification System) in US, UK and Canada. In other countries, it's less reliable. AVS checks only the numeric portion of the street address and postal code, and returns a code indicating whether AVS is supported and whether one or both of the numbers match the ones on file with the card issuer. Stripe supports AVS the same as other processors. Whether you choose to rej…

Also, depending on your processor the business' rates may vary depending on how much extra information they provide to help combat fraud. Ex: If you only give credit card info you might be in the highest bracket. If you also give zip code, you'll get dropped down to the next, etc.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#106

Someone else posted last night (I'm on my phone or I would search for the post) about Stripe support. Looking at their Twitter stream it appears they are having a very difficult time managing their support infrastructure and do not have a trouble ticket system. I love Stripe's API and have helped several clients integrate it, but as the developer-friendly, anti-PayPal processor they were once known for, this developm…

They do have a user ticketing system (Uservoice), there is just no user facing view of it.

When you send an email to support@stripe.com (or any of the public email addresses they put on blog posts), it goes to Uservoice. Then it gets triaged, depending on the severity of the ticket, if it falls into account or developer related support it gets assigned into a queue (at times it gets put in the wrong queue and then has to get reassigned). But long story short there is a system.

Phone support is also being worked on were told.

That said I do love Stripe but I do agree that support needs to be fixed, though I may have a bias as I see a much higher percentage of upset users than most.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their engineering support is incredible, and their API is well-documented and so easy to integrate. It is hard to believe that they can't spend a little more time focusing on customer support, especially as they continue to add new features and countries the problem is only going to increase. At least adding a public-facing ticketing system would pull some pressure off. I don't necessarily mind waiting for support, i…

I think one thing that is not well understood is that Stripe has a "Freemium" model. Prior to Stripe nearly all other payment processors required a minimum monthly fee. Stripe's lack of any minimum monthly fee is something that makes it very attractive and undoubtedly helped partly fuel their rapid growth. It's a great example of how you can leverage VC funding to build a business. Having said that it must mean a sta…

I'd argue the processing fees do not make it freemium.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#108
post #101

All of these payments services are going to die within 5 years anyway. Before people get all pissy and down vote this assertion let me you remind you that a massive(and growing) portion of the world has become completely disillusioned with the global fiat currency system(or perhaps just enlightened as to how it works?), regardless, its days are numbered. I am not however entirely convinced that cryptocurrencies, name…

This holds about as much water as a colander. Show me a survey show this supposed massive disillusionment with fiat currency.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#109
I use the MinFraud service from MaxMind to try to avoid unauthorized transactions. Using Braintree, I first do an Authorization, if that goes through, I send details to MinFraud. If that passes a threshold, then I submit the payment for settlement. If not, I void the transaction.

This process has helped to avoid all kinds of scammers using my website to try to validate stolen credit card details.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#110
post #66

If every time a company popular on HN did something that one HN user found inexplicable we had a top-of-the-front-page story about it, the front page would be nothing but complaints. An "Ask HN" would make more sense, since that would (a) generate information instead of just broadcasting a complaint, and (b) reveal whether there was a trend behind it. I flagged this story, and hope other people will too.

With all due respect, take a quick look through the replies, there are a lot of "I experienced this too" comments. If you go further and search HN you'll see that this tends to be a common problem with Stripe support. I think that this type of post is fine for HN. It's a YCombinator backed company, with the founders and most of the team commonly browsing the site and people here are usually able to point you in the r…

It's a YCombinator backed company, with the founders and most of the team commonly browsing the site and people here are usually able to point you in the right direction.

That's understandable.. but this isn't a support forum, and people would stop visiting if it became one.

Post reply on HN