31–40 of 275 posts
Some more context: this has been around for a couple years (for only new Stripe users). Payments are costing more to process. Card network fees have been gradually increasing over the years. Stripe has kept this at bay for its longtime users for as long as we could, even as it's been getting more expensive. But with the water rising across the whole pond, we sadly have to start charging for some of these things.
They are doing a Paypal. How long have they been doing this? Louis Rossmann won't be happy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1WPDVjXDj0
That's what "doing a PayPal" means to me.
But this fee increase? I'm actually grandfathered in so it doesn't apply to me, but if it did, it would amount to a 0.6% price increase in my typical monthly Stripe fees. So for example, if I paid $1000/mo in Stripe fees before this change, it would be $1006/mo now.
I have used stripe for years, but they are a company that has continued to make things worse with every update, versus AWS which has my trust they won't increase rates. If AWS ever offered a true competitor, we would switch.
They invest in publishing books, but they still miss basic features like a way to test credit cards in the production system for QA purposes. It's an easily solved problem (let you generate one time fake card numbers programmatically that stripe "pretends" to charge). I have been trying to test checkout flows with them for years and their official stance is "don't test production checkout flows", which is insane.
I hope stripe changes it's ways here, but they have been a large disappointment over the last 4 years or so after a solid start.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are payments costing more? Isn't technology lowering costs more and more for these companies? Is this just execs needing another summer home so they raise the prices to whatever they like?
Actually - it's mostly because of cost / benefit shifting. A card can attract USERS by increasing the rewards it offers -> and charging MERCHANTS for the reward. So visa infinite cards might charge a much higher swipe fee to a merchant, and then make available cash back + first party car insurance + lots of bennies to the holders of these "elite" cards. They justify this to merchants by claiming that these "elite" us…
So in this case it’s better for the user but worse for the person paying.
Just the opposite of enterprise software sells.
My expectation has long been for Stripe to bring in more and higher fees. They offer a lot of top shelf free tooling that either brings their models into your code or moves the bookkeeping up to their system entirely, ex subscriptions. Smart companies have their own bookkeeping system in house and thus can potentially negotiate better terms with Stripe, assuming they are big enough Stripe cares to retain them. Plenty…
The lock-in features you describe are Stripe doing development work for your business.
With an addictive substance, the addiction gains control orthogonally to the 'benefit' it provides. When Stripe writes your recurring billing and bookkeeping system, they're straight up doing your work for you. Thats the desired effect– not a side-effect!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are payments costing more? Isn't technology lowering costs more and more for these companies? Is this just execs needing another summer home so they raise the prices to whatever they like?
Actually - it's mostly because of cost / benefit shifting. A card can attract USERS by increasing the rewards it offers -> and charging MERCHANTS for the reward. So visa infinite cards might charge a much higher swipe fee to a merchant, and then make available cash back + first party car insurance + lots of bennies to the holders of these "elite" cards. They justify this to merchants by claiming that these "elite" us…
Kroger stopped supporting Visa cards for a minute and I realized that's literally all I carry.
Some more context: this has been around for a couple years (for only new Stripe users). Payments are costing more to process. Card network fees have been gradually increasing over the years. Stripe has kept this at bay for its longtime users for as long as we could, even as it's been getting more expensive. But with the water rising across the whole pond, we sadly have to start charging for some of these things.
Don't those fees get refunded to Stripe in case of a refund, though? If so, I'd imagine it's more fair to refund them completely, and instead increase the base fee for payments.
Some more context: this has been around for a couple years (for only new Stripe users). Payments are costing more to process. Card network fees have been gradually increasing over the years. Stripe has kept this at bay for its longtime users for as long as we could, even as it's been getting more expensive. But with the water rising across the whole pond, we sadly have to start charging for some of these things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are payments costing more? Isn't technology lowering costs more and more for these companies? Is this just execs needing another summer home so they raise the prices to whatever they like?
Actually - it's mostly because of cost / benefit shifting. A card can attract USERS by increasing the rewards it offers -> and charging MERCHANTS for the reward. So visa infinite cards might charge a much higher swipe fee to a merchant, and then make available cash back + first party car insurance + lots of bennies to the holders of these "elite" cards. They justify this to merchants by claiming that these "elite" us…
With companies like Spreedly to provide almost-Stripe-quality APIs and PCI-compliant card vaulting at only a flat cost, and a massive amount of "merchant account providers" a quick Google away that can hook into Authorize.net and then into Spreedly, you can end up at 1.75% or less depending on your industry, and the flexibility to dynamically route transactions to merchant accounts (including Stripe itself) based on anything from geography to your own notion of fraud/return risk.
Stripe has far and away the best developer and administrator experience in the industry - it surprises and delights. But this doesn't make it the right solution for all businesses. Its genius was that it entered the zeitgeist as such.