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Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda

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Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda

#51

Post by slice_of_life »

kawsper wrote: post #37
oliwarner wrote: post #15

~3%, dirt cheap?! Why are so many of you so happy to throw so much cash away to process money? I know Stripe is lovely to integrate but as a business you have to shop around. In the UK (and EU) card processing is much cheaper. Stripe is closer to 2% but if you shop around, you'll find somebody who'll offer you 0.8-0.9%, give you free terminals and no monthly contract fees. Edit for those asking: Worldpay and Handepay…

Currently it is legal for companies in the EU to ask the customer to pay the processing fees, some call it surcharging. EU seems to want to get rid of this practice, I wonder if it becomes a company expense, that we will see companies caring more about the processing fees.

I must say that I'm genuinely surprised by this phenomenon.

One would think that it is a business' business to figure out how much to charge a customer. A willing customer will pay, an unwilling one won't. How is it a question of legality?

Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda

#52

Post by lsaferite »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #13
jjeaff wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But are they really paying too much? I can't think of a lot of products out there, especially those that have a recurring subscription, that don't required some sort of database. So you need a server running a database anyway. It seems that the subscription logic would be a very negligible addition to the instance you have to be running anyway. To me it seems like the only sweet spot for lambda on a large scale would…

There are multiple alternatives to running your own DB service, and again, all pay-per-use. In the original article the author suggested on a successful subscription a write to the MailChimp API (because that's the product). In that example, MailChimp is the DB. You don't have to run a copy of a DB locally if you architect things like that. Obviously if the call fails, you need to think about what you fall back to, w…

In this case you should really just dump the subscription on a queue (SQS) and process the payment to mailchimp on a different thread that can deal with errors.

Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda

#53

Post by scandox »

PetahNZ wrote: post #6
mherrmann wrote: post #3

It's unbelievable how easy this is with Stripe in comparison to PayPal. I had to do the latter a week ago and it was horrible [1]. It's no wonder Stripe is so successful. [1]: https://fman.io/blog/paypal-for-saas-99-problems/

Isn't that why they made Braintree

Use Braintree and have to say I like it. Paypal are a tad evil though.

Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda

#54

Post by amelius »

mherrmann wrote: post #3

It's unbelievable how easy this is with Stripe in comparison to PayPal. I had to do the latter a week ago and it was horrible [1]. It's no wonder Stripe is so successful. [1]: https://fman.io/blog/paypal-for-saas-99-problems/

Certainly, it's not rocket science either.

I wonder why we don't see much more competition though.

Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda

#55

Post by martokus »

oliwarner wrote: post #15

~3%, dirt cheap?! Why are so many of you so happy to throw so much cash away to process money? I know Stripe is lovely to integrate but as a business you have to shop around. In the UK (and EU) card processing is much cheaper. Stripe is closer to 2% but if you shop around, you'll find somebody who'll offer you 0.8-0.9%, give you free terminals and no monthly contract fees. Edit for those asking: Worldpay and Handepay…

I will second this. After using Worldpay for 5+ years decided to shop around for better rates - none! Depending on the level of integration you may have some issues during setup but once live it all goes smoothly. And just 10p fixed for processing debit card transactions! Nothing else comes even closer

Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda

#56

Post by kahnpro »

nitam wrote: post #50
kawsper wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently it is legal for companies in the EU to ask the customer to pay the processing fees, some call it surcharging. EU seems to want to get rid of this practice, I wonder if it becomes a company expense, that we will see companies caring more about the processing fees.

how can you get rid of it? I can always increase the price.

I think the point is that, you should increase your prices, instead of showing a lower price and then hitting your users with a "processing fee" during the payment process (whether online or offline).

Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda

#57

Post by alibarber »

hiciu wrote: post #40
oliwarner wrote: post #15

~3%, dirt cheap?! Why are so many of you so happy to throw so much cash away to process money? I know Stripe is lovely to integrate but as a business you have to shop around. In the UK (and EU) card processing is much cheaper. Stripe is closer to 2% but if you shop around, you'll find somebody who'll offer you 0.8-0.9%, give you free terminals and no monthly contract fees. Edit for those asking: Worldpay and Handepay…

re worldpay - they may be cheap, but you get what you pay for. Their backend still does not support SNI for payment callbacks. I had to debug once my client's integration with their hosted payment form (the one under https://mms.cardsaveonlinepayments.com ) - and during debugging I have seen things like this: http://hiciu.org/2016-02-06-010735_1920x1043_scrot.png http://hiciu.org/2016-02-06-010743_1920x1043_scrot.png…

Ahhh - this brings back memories. On a more significant note, our student association was able to get a merchant account up and running with them with _significantly_ less work than trying to re-enable our PayPal account after we hit their 'verification ceiling', and the fees worked out vastly cheaper although we did opt for a fixed monthly payment + lower per transaction cost. This was some years ago (in the UK) but I really second the argument that much cheaper rates can be had by simply shopping around (of course like any business/financial decision you'll want to factor in dev time / service levels etc etc) and getting a real merchant account isn't really that difficult.

Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda

#58

Post by pc86 »

pbowyer wrote: post #18
oliwarner wrote: post #15

~3%, dirt cheap?! Why are so many of you so happy to throw so much cash away to process money? I know Stripe is lovely to integrate but as a business you have to shop around. In the UK (and EU) card processing is much cheaper. Stripe is closer to 2% but if you shop around, you'll find somebody who'll offer you 0.8-0.9%, give you free terminals and no monthly contract fees. Edit for those asking: Worldpay and Handepay…

Is that for offline processing in a lowest risk industry? Curious as never seen a client get such a rate. Esp once acquirer fees for online payments are factored in (UK experience only)

I've never seen rates that low for recurring payments. Swiped cards in a brick-and-mortar, sure. The kind that batch nightly. But not for a SaaS where someone types in a card and you keep charging it for the next 36 months.

Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda

#59

Post by maxmcd »

slice_of_life wrote: post #51
kawsper wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently it is legal for companies in the EU to ask the customer to pay the processing fees, some call it surcharging. EU seems to want to get rid of this practice, I wonder if it becomes a company expense, that we will see companies caring more about the processing fees.

I must say that I'm genuinely surprised by this phenomenon. One would think that it is a business' business to figure out how much to charge a customer. A willing customer will pay, an unwilling one won't. How is it a question of legality?

I believe in the united states it is simply against the terms of service of the card provider. I imagine the law isn't "allowing" customers to pay processing fees, it's simply preventing the provider from setting those terms.

Re: Cheap Recurring Payments with Stripe and AWS Lambda

#60

Post by toomuchtodo »

maxmcd wrote: post #59
slice_of_life wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must say that I'm genuinely surprised by this phenomenon. One would think that it is a business' business to figure out how much to charge a customer. A willing customer will pay, an unwilling one won't. How is it a question of legality?

I believe in the united states it is simply against the terms of service of the card provider. I imagine the law isn't "allowing" customers to pay processing fees, it's simply preventing the provider from setting those terms.

No longer true. Merchants can charge CC users in the US a surcharge.
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