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Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

support.stripe.com

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Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#141

Post by roel_v »

Ekaros wrote: post #119
superzamp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with SEPA payment, is that it's great for the merchant and a net loss for the user, especially individual consumers. From a UX perspective today, it will always be more cumbersome to initiate a SEPA transfer to the merchant. Some integrations offer a semblance of interactivity with your banking app in an attempt to streamline it, but nothing beats the simplicity entering your cards details or just showing…

In Finland with my fairly large bank the barrier is pretty much same if the card isn't already saved. Actually SEPA is easier as I only need to log in and confirm instead of having to provide CC details and log in to confirm the transfer.

Yeah this. SEPA (e.g. what is known in the Netherlands as Ideal) is easier than entering cc numbers. Unlock phone, open app, scan qr code, enter pin on phone, click OK. Much nicer and faster than entering 16 + 3 numbers, and don't even get me started on 3DSecure or whatever it's called bullshit.

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#142

Post by ThePhysicist »

superzamp wrote: post #33
01acheru wrote: post #2

Something needs to change in the digital payments sector. 1.5% is ok-ish but 3.25% to accept foreign cards in the EU is a lot of money! I understand that costs are higher when using credit cards because of the credit part that introduces risk, but in my case for example I have a debit card that runs also over Mastercard, so either I have the money or I don't. Why should a merchant be charged the same fee of using a r…

The problem with SEPA payment, is that it's great for the merchant and a net loss for the user, especially individual consumers. From a UX perspective today, it will always be more cumbersome to initiate a SEPA transfer to the merchant. Some integrations offer a semblance of interactivity with your banking app in an attempt to streamline it, but nothing beats the simplicity entering your cards details or just showing…

SEPA Direct Debit has pretty good UX, I find. Just enter the bank account number, accept terms, done. In theory it's a bit more complicated as for B2C you're supposed to collect a real signature (which no one does) and for B2B there are additional rules (which most merchants also ignore), but in practice it works reasonably well. B2B SEPA direct debit is also much better for the merchant as money that has been successfully transferred cannot be refunded, unlike credit card payments where you can get chargebacks for 120 days...

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#143

Post by atomicnumber3 »

blackhaz wrote: post #134

This ain't as bad as international PayPal... We (EU company) have clients paying from abroad via PayPal. I can't figure out what to do with this. We're being hit with 4.7% PayPal international fee, then ~ 3.75% fee to convert USD to our local currency to withdraw to our bank account. (PayPal won't let us withdraw USD.) Then another 2-3% to convert it back to USD in our bank to pay our supplier in USD. Imagine the tot…

I think the crux of it is that in many places in the world, credit cards are seen less like "temporary float" (like they are in the US) and more like "you pay for everything with a short term loan"?

So CCs are a lot less common. Bank cards (debit) are a lot more common. But (and feel free to correct me on this) I think their fraud handling story is still not as good as the story on credit cards.

So PayPal is seen as not-debt and also provides more fraud protection. And somehow despite their absurdly bad rap elsewhere, people look favorably upon the PayPal brand. And so here we are.

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#145

Post by capableweb »

carlosjobim wrote: post #120
quelltext wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not anymore (in Europe at least) from the article.

In the communiqué from Stripe, they state that any such fee will be repaid if you win the dispute. https://support.stripe.com/questions/pricing-updates-for-bus...

From the very page you linked:

> Dispute fees (also known as chargebacks) will increase from €15 to €20. Due to costs for managing dispute evidence submissions, we'll no longer refund this fee if the customer's bank resolves the dispute in your favor.

It used to be that you got the fee refunded if it got resolved in your favor, but after the changes go into effect (10 April 2023), it won't be like that anymore.

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#146

Post by Ekaros »

roel_v wrote: post #141
Ekaros wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Finland with my fairly large bank the barrier is pretty much same if the card isn't already saved. Actually SEPA is easier as I only need to log in and confirm instead of having to provide CC details and log in to confirm the transfer.

Yeah this. SEPA (e.g. what is known in the Netherlands as Ideal) is easier than entering cc numbers. Unlock phone, open app, scan qr code, enter pin on phone, click OK. Much nicer and faster than entering 16 + 3 numbers, and don't even get me started on 3DSecure or whatever it's called bullshit.

For me, click pay, click bank, enter username+password, enter 1-time code, verify the details, get sms with second 1-time code and enter that. Done.

I hate trying to remember my cc number, expiration date, and CVS... And then doing that exact same thing above.

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#147

Post by mardifoufs »

anovikov wrote: post #60
capableweb wrote: post #4

Some European alternatives you might be able to find/negotiate better fees with: - mollie (Netherlands) - adyen (Netherlands) - Klarna (Sweden) - Paylike (Denmark) - Mangopay (Luxembourg) - Quickpay (Denmark) (added in edit) The ones I've tried of those, have an OK development experience, maybe not as polished as Stripe, but much better than the alternatives that were around before Stripe (huge hassle back then). Ide…

Names of the last 2 and maybe 3 sound very Russian to me. Are they just registered there, but really these are Russian own businesses?

That's almost "1950s red scare" level of paranoia

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#148

Post by Silhouette »

jasonlotito wrote: post #123
capableweb wrote: post #4

Some European alternatives you might be able to find/negotiate better fees with: - mollie (Netherlands) - adyen (Netherlands) - Klarna (Sweden) - Paylike (Denmark) - Mangopay (Luxembourg) - Quickpay (Denmark) (added in edit) The ones I've tried of those, have an OK development experience, maybe not as polished as Stripe, but much better than the alternatives that were around before Stripe (huge hassle back then). Ide…

> This strikes me as weird. User buys something from me, regrets it and issues a chargeback, dispute gets started and bank says I did nothing wrong, so the charge still sticks, but Stripe gets to keep the fee for handling the dispute? It's about risk. This requires time and effort to reconcile. Someone has to do something. The fee covers this. Does it suck? For you, sure. For the customer? No. It's peace of mind. It'…

Seriously, this is payment processing 101.

It is still weird and one-sided. Merchants are still being abused and in some cases that still causes them serious harm through no fault of their own. Unregulated chargebacks should still be legislated out of existence - preferably along with the whole anachronistic card payments system. It is still insane that so much everyday commerce relies on such an antiquated, dangerous, inefficient system in the 21st century.

So it's entirely reasonable for someone who isn't intimately familiar with how all of this actually works to be surprised by the situation and think it's broken. Because it is. It's not really Stripe's fault here though.

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#149

Post by sirsinsalot »

Silhouette wrote: post #148
jasonlotito wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This strikes me as weird. User buys something from me, regrets it and issues a chargeback, dispute gets started and bank says I did nothing wrong, so the charge still sticks, but Stripe gets to keep the fee for handling the dispute? It's about risk. This requires time and effort to reconcile. Someone has to do something. The fee covers this. Does it suck? For you, sure. For the customer? No. It's peace of mind. It'…

Seriously, this is payment processing 101. It is still weird and one-sided. Merchants are still being abused and in some cases that still causes them serious harm through no fault of their own. Unregulated chargebacks should still be legislated out of existence - preferably along with the whole anachronistic card payments system. It is still insane that so much everyday commerce relies on such an antiquated, dangerou…

It's clearly efficient at making the right people a lot of money.

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#150

Post by Silhouette »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #127
smca wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All disputes. The purpose of the card networks' monitoring programs is to encourage businesses to prevent disputes from occurring in the first place. Some more on this here: https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/monitoring-programs/faqs

OK, thanks. So my initial point stands, then, since there is no impact apart from losing every time.

Your initial point seems sensible to me. We set a policy years ago that we ignore chargebacks other than accounting for them correctly. We have a very low rate of disputes and in our experience it sucks up a silly amount of time to deal with the few we do get (far more than recovering a typical B2C transaction in our industry is worth). There is no guarantee that you'll succeed and get any money back at all even if the dispute is blatant abuse and entirely without merit. And since now you're going to get hit with the fee in any case and you're going to get the black mark with the card networks in any case it doesn't make any sense for us to spend time and effort dealing with them. We just have to take the occasional hit as a cost of doing business that obviously shouldn't exist but does because cards.
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