Stripe: instant payment processing for developers • Hacker News Board

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#331

Post by jpadilla » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 7:53 PM UTC

Over at Blimp(http://getblimp.com) we decided to go with Stripe for our billing. We asked them nicely for a private beta so we could go ahead and start working. We have already implemented them into our app, very simple, never got in the way, and we are launching on October 10, on time, thanks to them. Stripe is pretty awesome!

I've had to deal with all these issues of Merchant accounts, business bank accounts and what not, and it sucks! Its time consuming, expensive, and a pain in the ass.

I've used Recurly for another project I recently launched, and I kinda liked them, thats of course before using Stripe! What sold Stripe to me was their pricing scheme, very simple, no monthly crap. I'm pretty sure startups struggle at first with monthly fees...

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#332

Post by ThaddeusQuay2 » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 8:00 PM UTC

boucher wrote: post #330

ThaddeusQuay2 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the answers given to my question from several days ago. I appreciate that all of the loopholes need to be covered, using >standard usually< not a big deal. My concern is about extremes, particularly those which come out of malicious intent, perpetrated against me, through no fault of my own. With the way that these "one-sided" agreements are structured, it appears to be quite easy for me to launch an att…

And yet, have you ever heard of this happening? I don't mean to minimize your questions; I think there is some amount of trust involved. We're able to tell the difference between someone running a fraudulent business and someone who is being essentially DOSd. Simply having chargebacks is never going to automatically cause your account to be terminated.

"Simply having chargebacks is never going to automatically cause your account to be terminated."

False: "WePay reserves the right to close or put a hold on any account that has generated a ["a", as in "single"] chargeback." - https://www.wepay.com/about/terms

No one talks about the ugly fine print. It's always "just a formality", until they need to use it against you, and that's exactly the kind of leverage a competitor or an enemy will seek out.

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#333

Post by boucher » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 8:03 PM UTC

ThaddeusQuay2 wrote: post #332

boucher wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, have you ever heard of this happening? I don't mean to minimize your questions; I think there is some amount of trust involved. We're able to tell the difference between someone running a fraudulent business and someone who is being essentially DOSd. Simply having chargebacks is never going to automatically cause your account to be terminated.

"Simply having chargebacks is never going to automatically cause your account to be terminated." False: "WePay reserves the right to close or put a hold on any account that has generated a ["a", as in "single"] chargeback." - https://www.wepay.com/about/terms No one talks about the ugly fine print. It's always "just a formality", until they need to use it against you, and that's exactly the kind of leverage a competi…

Well, to be clear, I'm only speaking about our own service, not WePay. Anyway, I think we've covered the issue here but if you feel like you need further discussion I suggest reaching out to support@stripe.com.

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#334

Post by Hisoka » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 8:09 PM UTC

Just wanted to say you guys were one of the few "startups" I actually gave my email to in the beta page when you announced it. I could care less about the next social app, or next reminder app but as soon as I saw your value proposition, I KNEW I had to be notified when it was out. Thanks for making something that actually solves a crucial problems. This is much much needed, and you guys are definitely on your way to success

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#335

Post by smilliken » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 8:53 PM UTC

We've been using Stripe at MixRank, and refreshing how easy it was to set up. This is how easy accepting payments _should_ be. The team is excellent too; they've been extremely helpful so far.

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#336

Post by superasn » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 9:50 PM UTC

boucher wrote: post #105

lekevicius wrote: post #104

US only. Well, I kind of knew it before even hitting FAQ. A bit of a rant here, but it's crazily difficult to do so many interesting things when you don't live in top-20 country (Lithuania here) Stripe? Nope. BrainTree? Nope. Recurly? Nope. Something else... Likely, Nope. And so, the only way to get paid is to deal with some of the most expensive and oldest gateways and merchant accounts. Oh, and: Hulu? Nope. iTunes?…

We totally get it. We're working on expanding to other countries right now, it's one of our top priorities.

Please think of India when you do. Paypal recently botched big-time in India (search paypal pan card) and there is a big hole that needs to be filled.

We have a volume of about $500k and with Paypal failing us big time, we've ourselves been searching like crazy for the past one week for a good payment processor. Alertpay was looking most promising until I came across this post. Unfortunately, since stripe is US only, so as soon as you start support more countries, we're definitely add you guys to our site too!

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#337

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 10:46 PM UTC

seldo wrote: post #4

swilliams wrote: post #2

"You don't need a merchant account or gateway." That's a killer feature right there. I've been considering using Braintree for a project, but seeing this is really making me reconsider.

As a beta customer, not having to deal with 95% of PCI and merchant accounts etc. really made a huge difference to how fast we got going.

[deleted]

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#338

Post by chexton » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 11:12 PM UTC

pmikal wrote: post #226

white_devil wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something just occurred to me. FastSpring, which is a US company, can actually work with non-US companies just fine. Why is that? Also, at some point I asked them why they could, and BrainTree couldn't, and they said they can't really think of a reason why. So.. What exactly is the deal? I'm dying to know.

Most merchant acquirers, as well as the US Government, will interpret sections 312 and 326 of the US Patriot Act to require a Social Security Number to positively identify a merchant application and to check the applicant against various financial crimes and terrorist lists. This essentially prohibits non-US companies. There are some exceptions, but this is generally the rule. Many of the card acceptance solutions th…

So Stripe is in fact opening a merchant account fir each user that signs up?

I am curious that a social security number is all that is required...why is it such a pain to get a merchant account with a bank or other acquirer? I am curious how Stripe can make it so simple.

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#339

Post by pc » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 11:47 PM UTC

chexton wrote: post #338

pmikal wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most merchant acquirers, as well as the US Government, will interpret sections 312 and 326 of the US Patriot Act to require a Social Security Number to positively identify a merchant application and to check the applicant against various financial crimes and terrorist lists. This essentially prohibits non-US companies. There are some exceptions, but this is generally the rule. Many of the card acceptance solutions th…

So Stripe is in fact opening a merchant account fir each user that signs up? I am curious that a social security number is all that is required...why is it such a pain to get a merchant account with a bank or other acquirer? I am curious how Stripe can make it so simple.

There are two big reasons as to why it's so painful elsewhere. One is underwriting: people want to know a lot about your business so they can figure out if you're likely to be fraudulent (or expensively incompetent). They typically do this by taking a shotgun approach to information requirements.

The second reason is that it's "standard", and everybody copies the "standard" without much consideration. The companies providing merchant accounts are usually not technology companies, and historically haven't had thought much about product.

We like to think that we can do much better than traditional companies on both counts.

Re: Stripe: instant payment processing for developers

#340

Post by ericd » Sat, Oct 01, 2011, 12:01 AM UTC

saikat wrote: post #272

ericd wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These little touches are awesome. With Auth.net it seems I ran into a character limit with my (not very long) company name, and the beginning was truncated - TopHat became Phat... I tried to get it changed once upon a time, but I gave up due to the pain. The old 1 month payout schedule was one of the few things holding me back from switching, but now that's it's more frequent, count me in! One question, can one charg…

You can charge from multiple URLs, but all your data will show up together as if it were for one account. If you want to have multiple accounts for different websites, your best bet currently is to just sign up multiple times (we're working on having subaccounts).

Great, that's fine for my purposes. Thanks!