Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stripe refunds: fees from the original charge are not returned

stripe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 275 posts

Re: Stripe refunds: fees from the original charge are not returned

#41

Post by Matheus28 »

scarface74 wrote: post #37
Matheus28 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why? Some businesses and types of businesses have higher returns.

From what I understood:

The interchange fees aren't going up because of higher rates of returns. They're going up to pay for credit card rewards.

Stripe is keeping these fees when a purchase is returned simply to increase their overall profit.

Why punish businesses that have higher rates of returns if that is not the cause of the higher fees?

Re: Stripe refunds: fees from the original charge are not returned

#43

Post by ubercow13 »

HeyImAlex wrote: post #36
privateSFacct wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Pretty evil! I imagine the card companies have an explicit rule that, in order to accept their cards, a merchant can't charge their users any extra fee? I wonder if some regulation were created that bans rules like that from existence whether this would change tomorrow. Kroger stopped supporting Visa cards for a minute and I realized that's literally all I carry.

The opposite law already exists in the EU - merchants aren't allowed to charge users extra for card purchases

Re: Stripe refunds: fees from the original charge are not returned

#45

Post by ceejayoz »

Trias11 wrote: post #27

With more competition coming into marketplace the costs of transactions inevitably goes down. Charging more for transactions (in either direction) has nothing to do with "payments are costing more to process" lie. This has everything to do with hook-and-charge business approach relying on majority of customers swallowing the arbitrary higher costs because it's more hassles to switch provider, especially for non-techn…

> With more competition coming into marketplace the costs of transactions inevitably goes down.

There's intense competition for credit card customers that's driving transaction rates up in the US. Higher-end cards (Visa Infinite, Mastercard World Elite, Amex Platinum, etc.) offer a plethora of perks that are largely paid for by higher interchange rates on those cards.

Re: Stripe refunds: fees from the original charge are not returned

#46

Post by londons_explore »

HeyImAlex wrote: post #36
privateSFacct wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Pretty evil! I imagine the card companies have an explicit rule that, in order to accept their cards, a merchant can't charge their users any extra fee? I wonder if some regulation were created that bans rules like that from existence whether this would change tomorrow. Kroger stopped supporting Visa cards for a minute and I realized that's literally all I carry.

The EU sets limits on card interchange fees.

Suddenly all "reward cards" lost most of their rewards...

Re: Stripe refunds: fees from the original charge are not returned

#47

Post by polemic »

mchusma wrote: post #33

Note: this is different than Braintree and Amazon payments, which either refund in full or simply charge only the $0.30 fee. Stripe is now at or near the most expensive here relative to the competition. The idea that they have been doing customers a favor is not accurate. 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…

> ..don't test production checkout flows..

That's good advice.

Payment providers have test gateways and cards for you to test your code against. While it might be a minor convenience for you to have 'fake' cards in their production system, the only thing they have to gain is a potentially serious fraud loophole (at best), or an expensive footgun for you.

Don't "test" checkout flows in production unless you're using real credit cards :D

Re: Stripe refunds: fees from the original charge are not returned

#48

Post by rblatz »

polemic wrote: post #47
mchusma wrote: post #33

Note: this is different than Braintree and Amazon payments, which either refund in full or simply charge only the $0.30 fee. Stripe is now at or near the most expensive here relative to the competition. The idea that they have been doing customers a favor is not accurate. 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…

> ..don't test production checkout flows.. That's good advice. Payment providers have test gateways and cards for you to test your code against. While it might be a minor convenience for you to have 'fake' cards in their production system, the only thing they have to gain is a potentially serious fraud loophole (at best), or an expensive footgun for you. Don't "test" checkout flows in production unless you're using r…

Agreed, test environments exist for a reason, if you don’t trust your test environment to accurately replicate prod then you need to clean that up.

Re: Stripe refunds: fees from the original charge are not returned

#49

Post by crazygringo »

officeplant wrote: post #39
privateSFacct wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Meanwhile it's become the new hot thing locally (Southern USA) to charge credit and debit card users a "convenience fee" sometimes as high as 35 cents a transaction. Everyone went from offering discounts to cash users to simply charging card users more.

Interestingly, in 2013 both credit card minimums (up to a maximum of $10) and surcharges (up to a maximum of 4%) became legally federally, although there are 10 states that still prohibit surcharges (including New York, California, and Texas).

So seems like $0.35 is allowable on any transaction of $8.75 or more.

[1] https://www.thebalance.com/credit-card-surcharges-315423

Re: Stripe refunds: fees from the original charge are not returned

#50

Post by edwinwee »

rblatz wrote: post #48
polemic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ..don't test production checkout flows.. That's good advice. Payment providers have test gateways and cards for you to test your code against. While it might be a minor convenience for you to have 'fake' cards in their production system, the only thing they have to gain is a potentially serious fraud loophole (at best), or an expensive footgun for you. Don't "test" checkout flows in production unless you're using r…

Agreed, test environments exist for a reason, if you don’t trust your test environment to accurately replicate prod then you need to clean that up.

Yes, testing in production can be dangerous and Stripe purposefully designed as many testing scenarios we could think of to avoid that (https://stripe.com/docs/testing).
Post reply on HN