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Stripe Is the New PayPal

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#271

Post by PeterisP »

AC__ wrote: post #119
jakob223 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you expect to replace it?

I expect Bitcoin will be global currency.

As shown in practice by adoption of credit cards and other financial products, people (well, most of them - the 'buyers') for most of their daily business do not want irrevocable transactions like bitcoin provides, but transactions that are reversible and can be controlled by legal authorities.

Because fraud matters. Because consumer protection for all kinds of non-delivery, mis-delivery or simple misunderstandings is actually more important for everyday purchases than all the advantages of an independent cryptocurrency. And of course, widespread availability, liquidity and value stability are just non-optional table stakes.

Bitcoin on its own is not competitive as a replacement for the full payment infrastructure. Bitcoin together with a widespread trusted escrow system, reputation system and a (currently unavailable) legal framework could fit the role, but in that "Bitcoin++" the missing parts are larger and more complex than the Bitcoin core implementation.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#273

Post by pbiggar »

cperciva wrote: post #249
damoncali wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of SaaS product has a 2% chargeback rate? That's huge.

That's what I was wondering -- Tarsnap may be an unusual case, but out of over 10000 transactions I've only had one chargeback... and I won that because it was initiated by accident.

Agreed. CircleCI has had one chargeback ever. It was $19 and by a long-term customer who didn't do a chargeback for any other month. We assumed it was an accident, but didn't contest it (not worth it).

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#274

Post by heartbreak »

jjjjjjjjjj wrote: post #212
patcon wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. Critical support failures right in time for Balanced Payment's going under... :/

It was very disappointing when Balanced Payments shut down, because they seemed to be the only online payments company with any ethics or competence. Is there anyone else?

> Is there anyone else?

Surely you jest. There are hundreds of online MSPs out there. Braintree, Authorize.net, etc.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#275

Post by hrbrtglm »

kawsper wrote: post #77
Danski0 wrote: post #60

After using Stripe for our subscription service for over 1year with 100'000euro+ monthly transcation we got a 10day notice that they would shut us down. Also the mail was send late on friday before a long weekend, yeah! =) No warnings, no chance to appeal, no heads up and absolutly no possiblity to call them. Lost around half a million euros before we could get our customers exported to another payment processor. Tha…

Did you break their rules? Their terms say that they can cancel your agreement, but only with a 2 months notice: > We can terminate this agreement for any reason on two months’ notice and immediately in certain circumstances Source: https://stripe.com/gb/terms

Is it against the TOS to route half of the payments to stripe and the other half to another payment processor in order to mitigate the problem of being shut down ?

With paymill looking like a stripe clone, it may be a good solution to split the revenues stream.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#276

Post by jkestner »

dangrossman wrote: post #199
jkestner wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we pay that much again? Assuming risk.

I'm paying 0.15% + $0.26 for those transactions through another MSP. I think many people are paying the 2.9% for the convenience Stripe and PayPal offer over applying for and integrating a merchant account and gateway, not because they're a huge risk and nobody else would take their business at lower rates.

But that doesn't include the credit card association's 2.10% or whatever, does it? Stripe does.

Yes, collapsing the confusing levels of this process is certainly worth something.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#277

Post by pc »

akshatpradhan wrote: post #269
pc wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, we do -- we've hired a few people to help users in #stripe on a full-time basis.

Again, not to be negative, but a complaint about Stripe with 500 up votes and hitting the front page, after having full-time employees in the Stripe channel? Something is not going well with the CX (Customer Experience) if we're seeing this many complaints in the comments section.

I don't believe this person posted in the IRC channel.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#278

Post by codexon »

dangrossman wrote: post #261
codexon wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And unfortunately it is encouraging poor behavior from customers to be able to get things for free. I think everyone can agree that maybe with a 20% chargeback rate, there is something wrong with the business but 1-2% seems possible for a legitimate business. As a credit card user, I don't think it is their job to dictate which businesses are worthy of operating or not. As long as I get my money back when I do a char…

> 1-2% seems possible for a legitimate business Somehow, all the businesses that currently exist and accept credit cards are doing so without more than 1-2% chargeback rates. That's a pretty good indicator that this isn't a problematic level to set the bar at. It's really much higher than you seem to think. 1 in 50 people walking into a store shouldn't have some payment problem so serious they have to go to their ban…

> Somehow, all the businesses that currently exist and accept credit cards are doing so without more than 1-2% chargeback rates.

Citation needed.

https://www.quora.com/Online-Payment-Gateways-and-Processing...

"Amount over $2400-$2500 mark suddenly experiences a surge and it is almost 3.0% to 3.5%"

I have personally had times where my chargeback rate has been above 2%.

Being able to accept credit cards is more of a right rather than a privilege given how much of a monopoly they have and it is virtually impossible to accept payments online through any other means.

I take it you are in favor of credit card companies being able to block payments to arbitrary entities such as wikileaks?

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#279

Post by dangrossman »

jkestner wrote: post #276
dangrossman wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm paying 0.15% + $0.26 for those transactions through another MSP. I think many people are paying the 2.9% for the convenience Stripe and PayPal offer over applying for and integrating a merchant account and gateway, not because they're a huge risk and nobody else would take their business at lower rates.

But that doesn't include the credit card association's 2.10% or whatever, does it? Stripe does. Yes, collapsing the confusing levels of this process is certainly worth something.

No, it does include that fee. That 0.05% + $0.21 I referenced is the interchange fee charged by Visa. That fee was capped at that low level by the Durbin Amendment of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in 2010. Stripe's pricing has been 95%+ markup when it comes to debit/check cards since then. Other card types don't have such an enormous fee spread, but unless all your customers are paying with corporate cards and AmEx, 2.9% flat rate is a real nice margin.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#280

Post by Danski0 »

dangrossman wrote: post #214
Danski0 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a SaaS subscription with mostly companies as customers. We didn't brake any ToS, Stripe refered to a high chargeback rate (1-2%) and that was it. Something about SaaS being high risk and getting close to 2% chargeback could loose Stripe their contracts with MC/VISA. In reality no fucking risk as we had a 100% refund policy, no questions asked, no time limit.

This is confusing, so apologies if I'm misreading. Your policies are irrelevant if you're getting chargebacks despite them. Stripe was not lying: they are mandated by Visa/MC and whatever processors they work with to keep their chargeback ratio lower than that. If large customers like you can't keep your ratio below ~1%, then they have to drop you to preserve their own business. Having a high chargeback rate is itsel…

People missunderstand me a bit, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I liked stripe and still use it for some sites. I have no problem that our 1%+ chargeback was an issue for Stripe who have to keep Bank/VISA/MC happy. Also, it's ok that they didn't want us as a customer. Stripe has as much right as any other business to choose their rules and customers. I just told our story as a complement to the creator of this thread for other users of Stripe to know what could happen. Stripe is not a golden bullet for credit cards online as often told in the tech community.

Now, what did bother me enough to comment at all?: 1. We always send in detailed papperwork for each chargeback. Never heard back for any of these during our time as a customer. Not once! 2. We never got any indication that we were getting close to some limit resulting in being cut off, just the email saying byebye in 10days (or whatever it was, maybe 7?) just as everyone in the office went on a 4 day holiday (bad luck I guess). 10 days is not even close to enough to set up with a new processor for SaaS-products if you need an import of old customers and have any to speak of amount of charges going on. It triggers a lot of extra papper work. 3. Payment processors claim SaaS is high risk as there is no product for proof of delivery. Stripe has all our money for months and a full refund policy makes it low risk in my eyes. We pay extra for this hassle anyway. If they say it's a risk, ok, Stripe knows better I hope. We had very long going ID identification so fraud was never the issue, just people trying to get money back and ashamed of asking it from us directly. 4. Stripe dealing with 1mil+ euro yearly of our money and refusing to speak on the phone even regarding major issues. Emails with "tough" questions always disappeared into thin air. It feels weird to not being able to contact someone that have your balls this way.

PS: Our "high" 1-2% chargeback spiked sometimes as customers that had made 10+ transactions during a year could start a chargeback for all transactions. Never spiked above 2%. Also, the product attracted many lazy and not-so-tech-savy-people, very far from the typical tarsnap user (which I'm a long term user of). Not defending our chargeback-rate, just that we know why as we phone up each user after a chargeback to get an understanding.

Long comment, hopefully it clears out my thoughts for those interested.

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