Live data from Hacker News

Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

support.stripe.com

131–140 of 237 posts

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#131
Assuming this is related to Stripe trying to decrease the effect of the next funding devaluation. [0]

Hard to imagine they are still in a cashflow burn despite being around for so long and seemingly capturing a large marketshare of payments. Perhaps its primarily for insiders to take money off the table before an IPO lockup, with a not-so-great 6 month post IPO forecast?

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/fintech-stripe-tried-to-ra...

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#132
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU introduced price caps on interchange in 2015 capping interchange on credit cards at 0.3% and debit cards at 0.2%. That’s almost an order-of-magnitude lower than interchange fees in the US, which are usually around the 1%-2% level. This is big part of the reason you don’t see high value reward cards or cashback program in the EU. There simply isn’t the interchange revenue to fund them, which is good thing, beca…

How do credit cards provide 60 day interest free loan with only 0.3% charge to the merchants? I can see low interchange rates for debit cards like the US the interchange for debit card for major banks is capped at 0.05%.

By charging exorbitant interest for folks who don't pay off their balance in full.

Which kind of reminds me of SaaS products that offer a free tier to sell you on the premium subscriptions

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#133
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU introduced price caps on interchange in 2015 capping interchange on credit cards at 0.3% and debit cards at 0.2%. That’s almost an order-of-magnitude lower than interchange fees in the US, which are usually around the 1%-2% level. This is big part of the reason you don’t see high value reward cards or cashback program in the EU. There simply isn’t the interchange revenue to fund them, which is good thing, beca…

Debit card fees in the US have been capped at $0.22 + 0.05% for more than a decade.

Only for large banks. Search “ durbin exempt interchange”.

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#134
post #129
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do credit cards provide 60 day interest free loan with only 0.3% charge to the merchants They don't. They're rare, only do 30 days, and are often paid (you pay monthly/yearly for the pleasure).

30 day billing cycle with 30 days to pay. Between 30 days and 60 days before payment.

Not how they work in EU countries i know of (France and Bulgaria). You have a 30 days billing period, and then around a week to pay.

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#135

the beginning of the end of stripe. Instead of attracting more customers and building the ground for a healthy startup ecosystem, stripe chose the shortsighted 'let's just charge more'. this immediately makes other alternatives like adyen more attractive...bad move and I don't get how patrick collison who roams around here let this happen. the 2.9%+0.25 was already allowing for healthy margins, and was higher than co…

Is Aden the only competitor here?

Square is as well. I think there are several players which is good because if you design your payment systems to support multiple integrations you can switch between them without a ton of friction (source: last company switched a few times based on the terms they negotiated).

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#136

I have been pondering transaction costs lately. Seems like this is an area where intervention could have massive impact: these costs are effectively a tax that incurs deadweight loss so according to prevailing economic theory if we can reduce it the whole economy should be catalysed. IIUC governments already introduce price caps for certain elements of this market but I think we could be doing more? Like mandating in…

I assumed it was mostly to pay for chargebacks and fraud. What I think is crazy is basically anything On a $1 itunes song it would have been an >30% cut, you can forget about selling any small digital thing worth less than that.

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#137

> premium cards [are] commercial, corporate, or business cards issued by Visa and Mastercard [and attract more expensive fees, even compared to Amex] Does anyone know more about that? Why are they more expensive? Is there a different underlying cost structure, or simply price discrimination by some intermediary? There's more information on "premium cards" here[0], but it doesn't explain the price difference or why a…

Because they give more benefits (insurance, lounge access, cashback etc...) and someone has to pay for this (i.e. the merchants). For example R̶e̶v̶o̶l̶u̶t̶ ̶M̶e̶t̶a̶l̶ premium cards and corporate cards which offers benefits such as lounge access to pay-to-use lounges, travel insurance, cashback etc.. are mostly designed by the schemes in parternship with the issuing banks. Also note that mostly in the US and Europe…

> Because they give more benefits (insurance, lounge access, cashback etc...) and someone has to pay for this

The company (or cardholder) pays for this - corporate cards and the like aren't free, they come with an annual fee. So it's not all on the merchant.

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#138

I have been pondering transaction costs lately. Seems like this is an area where intervention could have massive impact: these costs are effectively a tax that incurs deadweight loss so according to prevailing economic theory if we can reduce it the whole economy should be catalysed. IIUC governments already introduce price caps for certain elements of this market but I think we could be doing more? Like mandating in…

The EU introduced price caps on interchange in 2015 capping interchange on credit cards at 0.3% and debit cards at 0.2%. That’s almost an order-of-magnitude lower than interchange fees in the US, which are usually around the 1%-2% level. This is big part of the reason you don’t see high value reward cards or cashback program in the EU. There simply isn’t the interchange revenue to fund them, which is good thing, beca…

"because high interchange + cashback creates a nasty regressive tax"

There's an interchange surcharge for rewards cards. Stripe bundles this all together to make the pricing simpler.. but most merchants use traditional merchant accounts, and they are charged based on the type of card used.

Edit: For example, here's visa's interchange fees: https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/vis...

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#139
post #136

I have been pondering transaction costs lately. Seems like this is an area where intervention could have massive impact: these costs are effectively a tax that incurs deadweight loss so according to prevailing economic theory if we can reduce it the whole economy should be catalysed. IIUC governments already introduce price caps for certain elements of this market but I think we could be doing more? Like mandating in…

I assumed it was mostly to pay for chargebacks and fraud. What I think is crazy is basically anything On a $1 itunes song it would have been an >30% cut, you can forget about selling any small digital thing worth less than that.

on the contrary, smaller transaction amounts are prone to MORE chargebacks because they are attractive targets for card testers

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#140
post #136

I have been pondering transaction costs lately. Seems like this is an area where intervention could have massive impact: these costs are effectively a tax that incurs deadweight loss so according to prevailing economic theory if we can reduce it the whole economy should be catalysed. IIUC governments already introduce price caps for certain elements of this market but I think we could be doing more? Like mandating in…

I assumed it was mostly to pay for chargebacks and fraud. What I think is crazy is basically anything On a $1 itunes song it would have been an >30% cut, you can forget about selling any small digital thing worth less than that.

Why wouldn't small items have chargeback costs? Do credit cards ban chargebacks for them? If someone buys something cheap, it doesn't come, and the credit card company refuses to allow a chargeback, that's going to make some customers mad.
Post reply on HN