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Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

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Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#61

Post by tallytarik »

ddorian43 wrote: post #28
pifm_guy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal does the same... For non-us citizens, USD's either incur a conversation fee to another currency, or an international withdrawal fee. There is no way to get money out without paying one or other fee.

Can't find this on fees page https://www.paypal.com/al/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees . Which detail is it?

For Australia it’s on this page under Withdrawals Out of PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/au/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees

Coincidentally they added the 3% withdrawal fee soon after Wise became a popular bank account option. PayPal was a great choice until then!

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#62

Post by martinald »

pjan wrote: post #34
sleepyhead wrote: post #3

"Businesses in the EEA who are paying out in USD to a US-domiciled bank account will now incur a 1% fee, with a minimum fee of US$2.50 per payout." This is absurd. A 1% fee to transfer USD to a USD bank account? The alternative is to charge in another currency - which Stripe will put a 2% currency fee on. This is already on top of their expensive transaction costs. Will actively look for alternatives now.

As far as I understand, you can payout in USD on a EEA domiciled account, and you won’t be incurring any fees. It’s the crossborder settlement which they charge for, which I don’t think is crazy, as it just reflects the underlying costs Stripe must be incurring themselves. As someone who ran a business in multiple countries, the bank always charged similar fees for these transfers between accounts. Stripe letting me…

1% is enormous for this. I think the cost of a SWIFT transfer is maybe $3 to them, regardless of amount. If you're doing $100k/month of USD sales and payout once a week, it is a huge markup.

They are clearly losing money on their (really expensive) forex fees so are trying to recoup this by this payment.

There is no intrinsic reason I see why the fees are so high for this.

Edit to add: they actually use ACH for US bank USD payouts, so even less cost than SWIFT.

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#63

Post by amelius »

pjc50 wrote: post #50
amelius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there open source libraries available that abstract away the payment processor?

The processor saves you significant effort for card transactions by simplifying your merchant relationship with the card processor. Technically, you can just talk directly to them over their API: https://developer.mastercard.com/apis

This is no longer true if you want to talk to 5 different processors, or want to swap one out for another easily.

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#64

Post by [deleted] »

capableweb wrote: post #21
mytailorisrich wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the impact of not disputing chargebacks? If I'm going to be charged 20 euros whether I succeed or not then for small disputes I may not bother spending the time to submit evidence anymore... Edit: I see that they have a Chargeback Protection product with costs 0.4% per transaction in which case they " cover the disputed amount and waive any dispute fees without needing to submit any evidence " (another comment…

The fee gets taken regardless. Also, too many disputes (guessing overturned disputes are calculated differently than uphold ones) can lead to further fines: > If the dispute activity for your business exceeds the thresholds set by the networks for a prolonged period of time (usually multiple months), you might be subject to fines. https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/measuring

[deleted]

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#65

Post by petercooper »

At first I thought, "well, inflation is affecting everyone." Then I realized if prices are going up due to inflation, Stripe's collected fees go up anyway. So now they're benefitting to the second degree with a higher percentage of already inflating revenues ;-) We'll put up our prices more to counteract it, and on it goes.

It's not a terrible deal even at this level. We routinely see 4-5% creamed off the top of wire transfers we receive from the US through exchange rate variations, random bank fees, etc. It's the cost of doing global business for us.

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#67

Post by tallytarik »

pjc50 wrote: post #54
02thoeva wrote: post #49

"UK businesses who are paying out in USD to a US-domiciled bank account will now incur a 1% fee, with a minimum fee of US$2.50." So if we get paid out a USD payment, into a USD account. We get charged just because we're registered in the UK? That's a huge impact on our business.

Presumably you've got a UK bank account, so you can just use that and take on the currency risk and transaction fees of Wise or similar?

If you have a USD-denominated bank account, based in UK or elsewhere, you’ll be hit with the 1% fee.

If you have a bank account in another currency, you’ll be charged a 2% currency conversion fee from USD to your currency.

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#68

Post by rvz »

okokwhatever wrote: post #9

Here we go. Stripe going down the way ↘

Did HNers here not realize that Stripe is slowly becoming like PayPal, given the customer support stories of random locked funds and accounts for months?

The alternative has always been to use multiple gateways.

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#69

Post by carlosjobim »

01acheru wrote: post #20
pifm_guy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the chicken and egg problem... If you started a new card provider today, you'd need to get consumers onboard, banks onboard, merchants onboard, and every card machine in the world replaced to accept your new card type. The closest we get to that is loyalty cards and gift cards that only work in one shop. Some of those have managed to be compatible with a few shops, but nowhere near what would be needed for a con…

I totally understand you and you are perfectly right IMHO. This is why I don't understand why isn't there a payment standard, we are in 2023 already, the economic burden of keeping fattening those "old-school" card networks is absurd, it is billions and billions of dollars each year. Lobbying is the only reason I see that keeps a payment standard from being implemented.

There is no standard because there are different currencies in different empires and different rulers of those empires. Asking why there isn't a unified standard is the same as asking why there isn't a one world government.

The economic burden of the "old-school" payment networks Visa and Mastercard is very low for both merchants and customers for what these networks provide. The economic burden and other burdens of a one world government would be immense in comparison.

Please remember that most people use other methods to transact larger amounts, so the fees are mostly for the convenience of small remote transactions.

Re: Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April

#70

Post by nik736 »

pjan wrote: post #47
capableweb wrote: post #4

Some European alternatives you might be able to find/negotiate better fees with: - mollie (Netherlands) - adyen (Netherlands) - Klarna (Sweden) - Paylike (Denmark) - Mangopay (Luxembourg) - Quickpay (Denmark) (added in edit) The ones I've tried of those, have an OK development experience, maybe not as polished as Stripe, but much better than the alternatives that were around before Stripe (huge hassle back then). Ide…

> Ideally, you'll support at least two providers you can switch between, if you can afford the development of supporting two It is however not that simple if you want to remember your customers payment information, and don’t want any PCI-DSS liability or obligations. You’ll need a card vaulting solution in the middle, which comes as additional burden (and cost!) on top of the other payment provider integration. There…

Do you have any suggestion for "card vaulting providers"? This is interesting actually, store cards without PCI-DSS obligations and use those cards with the payment provider that makes the most sense at that point in time.
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