Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen • Hacker News Board

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#191

Post by gib444 » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 11:41 AM UTC

roryirvine wrote: post #180

gib444 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a company that’s basically like “Stripe but British-owned”? British payment processors usually sell out / get taken over by US firms Checkout.com isn't terribly British just headquartered there (Swiss guy founded it in Singapore, tons of foreign investors). They opened a SF office last year, after a big US push prior, so if their financials stay adequate I imagine it'll be another that sells out to the US

Worldpay was the biggest by far, but it never really shook off its legacy image (it had its origins in a couple of 1980s-era payment gateways). Stripe had overtaken it by the mid 2010s, and it has since been dismembered and partially rebuilt by (American) private equity. The UK tends to punch well above its weight in FinTech, but PSPs are high-volume and very low margin so not really an attractive proposition unless…

Yeah agree with the legacy image of Worldpay. The payment page is straight out of the early 00s. N.B. though, the Government does/did use Worldpay

Started in 1997, got bought out by a US company in 2018. RIP.

The founder, Nick Ogden claims "His career began when he pioneered ecommerce in 1994, inventing the first online shop, the Wine Warehouse." [0] Big if true! UK has a long, rich history of inventions.

[0] https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/nick-ogden-founding-father...

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#192

Post by promiseofbeans » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 11:47 AM UTC

halapro wrote: post #154

taffydavid wrote: post #152

It hurts a little that stripe is an American company since it was founded by two Irish brothers. It could have been an EU company to begin with

People don't make a company. Stripe exists as is because it's not a EU company.

Quite to the contrary: all a company is (at least as originally conceptualised) is the formalisation of a group of people, usually working together towards a shared goal. It’s in the name - just like you have a troupe of actors, you may have a company of engineers and accountants (though to keep in the vein of live stage production, you also have a theatre company).

This is why we tend to use collective pronouns when referring to a company - Meta just announced that they are planing share dilution (though to weaken my own case, one can also use singular nouns, likely due to the increased modern perception of a company as a single entity due to the increased anonymity afforded by the internet)

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#193

Post by harvey9 » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 11:56 AM UTC

matt-p wrote: post #81

arjie wrote: post #6

Surprisingly small contract. It's interesting to see that a full government contract for a payment provider is a fraction of a US mid-size company's cloud bill. I am constantly surprised by things like this. Here's another: there are more foreigners in Taiwan (total pop. 25 m) than in China (total pop. 1.4 b).

Interchange average in the UK was about 0.2% last time I looked (which was a few years ago), it't not much anyway. Also the government doesn't really do card transactions. I imagine this is for fairly rare things like renewing your passport, booking a driving test or buying a title copy. Oh and visa fees maybe? Small beer anyway, it's not like people are paying taxes via card.

Road fund licence aka car tax is probably the most common thing that lots of people pay for regularly.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#194

Post by ralferoo » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 11:59 AM UTC

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #157

martinald wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that? People definitely pay taxes by card. But regardless this contract is _not_ for HMRC payments, its for gov.uk pay which is basically a centralised service that other services can use.

GOV.UK pay has done £9.2B in payments in the last decade, with an average of £67 https://www.payments.service.gov.uk/performance/ A very crude calculation for £1B a year in payments (thats probably too low) would mean a payment to Ayden (contract is upto £25M over 3 years) of 0.8%

Most of the things I pay on the government website (except vehicle tax renewal), so basically tax, I've been pushed towards a one-off direct debit each time instead of a card payment.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#195

Post by ralferoo » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 12:03 PM UTC

DaSHacka wrote: post #82

matt-p wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are also being subsidised by debit card users.

How many people are actually buying things on a Debit card? I imagine not a lot

I buy flights on credit card, and other one-off purchases like house and car insurance, and often my Costco purchases (because the credit card lives in a different wallet where I normally keep my membership card).

My day-to-day wallet just contains a debit card so that gets used for almost everything else.

Internet transactions are usually done using Revolut because then I can use a disposable card number.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#196

Post by sublimefire » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 12:15 PM UTC

taffydavid wrote: post #152

It hurts a little that stripe is an American company since it was founded by two Irish brothers. It could have been an EU company to begin with

Stripe is dual headquartered in the US and in Ireland afaik. They tried to avoid having just a satellite in Irl, which other companies do but which makes it harder to take decisions independently.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#197

Post by pembrook » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 12:16 PM UTC

mathgeek wrote: post #179

pembrook wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will blame the EU’s nightmarish fragmentation and regulatory headaches (all true)…but ultimately all factors ladder up to one thing: the availability of risk capital to invest in new ventures. When Stripe was founded Venture Capital in Europe was even more nonexistent than it is today. Regardless of the regulation, if the EU dumped 2X as much risk capital into payments startups at the same time the U.S. did, S…

> Spain also stayed out of both wars but had a domestic Civil War in the 30s, which had the same net effect of destroying their prospects. The Spanish Civil War was arguably just a proxy opening of WW2 between the USSR and Germany. Doesn’t change your point, just came to mind while reading your comment.

Very true, I preemptively assumed someone would reply 'What about Spain?' but then whether you consider the civil war part of WW2 or not is irrelevant given it had the same effect.

Ultimately, a company like Stripe sits on top of a fragile patchwork of societal/technological abstractions that are a byproduct of generations of compounded wealth.

Humans battling in the marketplace builds this compounded value, humans battling in warfare destroys it and makes you start from zero.

Just as the industrial revolution started decades before humans began leaving the farm en masse, the digital revolution started decades before anyone had a personal computer on their desk.

Europe was busy rebuilding firebombed cities and industrial capacity, while Americans were free to birth the next layer of abstraction post-WW2 (the digital one). This early lead compounded. Moral of story: don't get in wars on your soil.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#198

Post by sublimefire » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 12:21 PM UTC

bArray wrote: post #181

> Adyen will take over GOV.UK Pay card payments for local authorities, police forces and armed forces units from Stripe, as well as pay by bank services, under a three-year contract worth up to £25.3 million. I would prefer they take this money and either build a payment processor or use an existing UK company. The UK government is addicted to offshoring all contracts it can, and then is surprised when the cheapest p…

If you ever worked with any of the UK gov or agencies you’d understand why it happens. Despite having its own IT in every agency those same agencies buy externally because “it is too difficult”. IT is entangled beyond belief and some of the knowledge is institutionalised. Existing contracts do not make it easier either. Any high ranking clerk is afraid of any risk associated as well. Not to mention the procurement process is hard and lengthy.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#199

Post by sublimefire » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 12:30 PM UTC

TRiG_Ireland wrote: post #83

johannes1234321 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with bank transfers today is that the SEPA system is robust and established, but got no web compatible API. But there are two projects (why one, if you can have two!?), one being Wero by different banks, the other being the Digital Euro by the European central bank. If either finds good adaption (Wero is rolling out slowly and for quite a bunch of banks every customer already got a Wero account automaticall…

I'm Irish, but I've built a website for an Australian client and they integrated something which did that. In the checkout, you could choose to pay with a system which would log you into your bank's website, where you could approve a payment, then return to the site on which you'd made your purchase, where it would instantly be marked as paid. I think that it may have taken a few days for the money to actually arrive…

This stuff is very popular in the Baltics, there are many payment options and banks provide the necessary connections to be able to complete payments for the users using 2fa auth. Not to mention crypto. e.g. check out varle.lt as an example of an online retailer, the options are sort of normal and expected.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#200

Post by Tinkeringz » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 12:48 PM UTC

properbrew wrote: post #159

edoceo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With CC or bank transfer?

Paying UK corporation tax can be done with a personal credit card.

Isn’t it illegal to pay a corporate entities tax with a personal card?

If it isnt it would be one hell if a headache with reimbursement and the accounting and reporting around it.