Shopify says remove Stripe billing or get booted from their app store • Hacker News Board

Re: Shopify says remove Stripe billing or get booted from their app store

#151

Post by benzible » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

cannabis_sam wrote: post #147

mchusma wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author misunderstands some of the complaints against Apple. In this case: (1) Apple is effectively a monopoly, much more so than shopify. (2) the author can still sell to customers your SAAS service, just not through the shopify store. (3) I could be wrong but I believe the shopify store brings lots of customers. For most developers on the app store, apple does not bring customers (this is why many people argue t…

> (1) Apple is effectively a monopoly, much more so than shopify I’m just curious, by which metric?

Apple has > 60% market share in the US [1]. 60% is considered by courts to be a barrier to entry for new competitors [2]

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...

[2] https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c10784/c10784.pdf: "60% is a favorite threshold for the courts"

Re: Shopify says remove Stripe billing or get booted from their app store

#152

Post by jeromegv » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #114

imafish wrote: post #40

I am a Shopify partner through 3 years, paying 20% of my revenue to Shopify, and every time I have been in contact with "partner support" it has been, to put it mildly, an underwhelming experience. You have to argue your way through an army of outsourced supporters who are equipped with nothing but the public Shopify docs, until you get to a real employee who concludes it with a "sorry, but we can't help". Some of my…

> If you're not American, you will be forced to hand over 3% of your 80% revenue cut to PayPal. That's wild considering they're headquarters is in Ottawa, Canada.

If you look through the history of Shopify, majority of their features are launched US first and sometimes never make it back to Canada. They also only bill in USD for their service and don't allow Canadian merchants to pay in Canadian dollars... and yes this is a Canadian company. They know where their biggest market is and Canadian market is often way down the priority list.

Re: Shopify says remove Stripe billing or get booted from their app store

#153

Post by btown » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

mchusma wrote: post #141

lxe wrote: post #12

Not a surprising practice, but: > Pretty ironic too when you've got Shopify's CEO tweeting about the unfair 30% cut Apple wants: https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1362411841943711744 That's pretty hypocritical

The author misunderstands some of the complaints against Apple. In this case: (1) Apple is effectively a monopoly, much more so than shopify. (2) the author can still sell to customers your SAAS service, just not through the shopify store. (3) I could be wrong but I believe the shopify store brings lots of customers. For most developers on the app store, apple does not bring customers (this is why many people argue t…

We don't know this specific scenario, but it's highly likely that the application in question directly reads or writes non-public data on their clients' storefront operations and accounting. In that case, there's very much a sense of lock-in. Shopify does not have an open API where anyone can access data given an OAuth token; it will not let this app use their API unless it complies with their terms. See: https://shopify.dev/concepts/apps#public-apps

In comparison to Apple, phone user : Shopify merchant :: app developer : this SaaS business. If I as a consumer think that Apple policies are too stringent, I can pay money to buy an Android phone. But the cost to me as a merchant of switching from Shopify to a custom site where I can choose who connects over API, once my business is underway and has built a brand identity, is absolutely prohibitive.

App approval processes are app approval processes, plain and simple. And if you make revenue share a precondition of using your APIs, you don't have open APIs.

Re: Shopify says remove Stripe billing or get booted from their app store

#154

Post by ravenstine » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #97

lxe wrote: post #12

Not a surprising practice, but: > Pretty ironic too when you've got Shopify's CEO tweeting about the unfair 30% cut Apple wants: https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1362411841943711744 That's pretty hypocritical

I have noticed a pattern these days - people publicly criticise certain behaviours and then they do exactly what they criticise. They think that majority of people won't actually verify that and such message will embed a positive impression about that person. Then you have people rather lie to themselves rather than accept that they were wrong, so if they later find out that those people actually were doing what they…

> They think that majority of people won't actually verify that and such message will embed a positive impression about that person.

That's pretty accurate, though. 80% of people are too distracted or lack the intellectual rigor to put two and two together, or even care about doing so.

Re: Shopify says remove Stripe billing or get booted from their app store

#155

Post by jeromegv » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

system2 wrote: post #20

teen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

plugins, fulfillment, order tracking, the UI. it does way more than billing.

Any of those could be arranged with woocommerce / magento / shipstation.

If your SAAS wants to integrate with Shopify (which owns a majority of the market for SMBs e-com websites), telling your customers to switch to magento is a no-go.

Re: Shopify says remove Stripe billing or get booted from their app store

#156

Post by boringg » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

If I understand this correctly: this OP partner app (not merchant/store) has been evading the Rev Share agreement with Shopify and is complaining because they got caught and are having to pay back their due? And then they are trying to jump on the furor of Apples 30% rev share agreement to get support from other developers - when the cases are completely different?

To me it sounds like this App developer is trying to have their cake and eat it too. FWIW - I am typically on the small developer side of things but this seems like a case of a bad actor trying to couch it in other complaints...

Re: Shopify says remove Stripe billing or get booted from their app store

#157

Post by boringg » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

schappim wrote: post #27

lpmusix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, they hold seller's data hostage?

Shopify resellers (affiliates), not merchants.

Which makes sense - don't sell data to the shady intermediaries keep it with the merchants. Merchants should own their client list not some developer intermediary who is trying to make money on that data.

Re: Shopify says remove Stripe billing or get booted from their app store

#158

Post by smaryjerry » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

mariust wrote: post #72

Why is it ok in software to pay a 20% - 30% commission? Imagine if your car dealer would ask an extra 30% Ok, ok I get it, it's not a physical product but still people get paid to work on it and develop it, and there are income taxes and all that, but really 20-30%?!?! If you sell a product chances are your profit margin is 20-30% and that it's good, but here in software we have to do a cut for 20-30%, well again 10%…

It’s not cheap sending a few bytes through the internet. It takes... uh... some storage and bandwidth on the order of several dollars to have a website simply show your app.. yea.. this is what happens when marketplaces have monopolies, even if they are essentially self imposed monopolies by the customers simply being to lazy to search for things elsewhere.

Re: Shopify says remove Stripe billing or get booted from their app store

#159

Post by MrTortoise » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

boringg wrote: post #156

If I understand this correctly: this OP partner app (not merchant/store) has been evading the Rev Share agreement with Shopify and is complaining because they got caught and are having to pay back their due? And then they are trying to jump on the furor of Apples 30% rev share agreement to get support from other developers - when the cases are completely different? To me it sounds like this App developer is trying to…

tbh i read it more as yet another example of a platform trying to restrict the rigths of its customers to do every other aspect of their business in the way they choose.

I take your point - and its probably true. BUT when I use what is essentially a glorified website builder to build a site they don't get to tell me who i can put my money through or dictate anything about how i run my business beyond hosting and the builder.

The reality is that it is even more reasons for a business to not build a business that is dependant upon another in this way.

Re: Shopify says remove Stripe billing or get booted from their app store

#160

Post by johnbrodie » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

hermanradtke wrote: post #144

victorNicollet wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Shopify terms state that if your application accesses the Shopify API and is used by two or more merchants, then you have to give 20% to Shopify. Do you have any references on there being an exception for apps not installed through the store ? I would be very interested.

You make a private app for each customer.

This has been _specifically_ called out in Shopify's recent emails to partners. If the private apps are essentially all the same, it's considered abusing private apps and they may come down on you at some point. Private apps, in Shopify's eyes, are for something like a consultant whom is building one-off apps for clients, not as a way to avoid the store.