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Stripe increasing "instant payout" fees by 50%

support.stripe.com

61–70 of 109 posts

Re: Stripe increasing "instant payout" fees by 50%

#61
post #49

What would be the reason for them to boost this fee right now? Is it just a pure profit play? That is, they think they can extract more cash from the people who are reliable instant-payout users (rather than losing them to standard payouts)? Does this portend anything for the company, in the way that not backfilling positions means that layoffs may be imminent? Or perhaps a corporate transaction like an IPO?

For any payment processor part of the fees you pay go to offsetting fraud (it is a cost just like servers or people). Instant payout is much riskier because if a bad actor is using Stripe to cash out stolen credit cards they have less time for the banks to detect and report it before the money is gone. As a result it has a higher cost to the company.

Genuine question: Is fraud actually something that costs Stripe money when it comes to payouts?

The reason credit card fraud for charges costs money to processors is because of charge backs. I believe charge back fees originate from the card networks themselves (Visa, MasterCard, etc). These processors also enforce a variety of limits when it comes to chargebacks for each merchant. This means if you're the layer between the merchant and the network, the merchants generally will rely on you to pre-emptively detect fraud. Those systems all cost money too.

As far as I know when it comes to payout rails such as ACH, real time payments (RTP), Zelle, I don't believe the payment processor holds any liability for fraudulent transactions. In other words, if a fraudulent payout occurs through stripe via RTP then The Clearing House banks aren't going to come after stripe for the money. They'll tell the end user "whoops, should've taken better care of your digital info. Bye!"

source: Worked at a payment processor and worked on payout rails and integrating with banks. Also do work now as an end user of a different payment processor that does charging, payouts, etc.

Re: Stripe increasing "instant payout" fees by 50%

#62
post #49

What would be the reason for them to boost this fee right now? Is it just a pure profit play? That is, they think they can extract more cash from the people who are reliable instant-payout users (rather than losing them to standard payouts)? Does this portend anything for the company, in the way that not backfilling positions means that layoffs may be imminent? Or perhaps a corporate transaction like an IPO?

For any payment processor part of the fees you pay go to offsetting fraud (it is a cost just like servers or people). Instant payout is much riskier because if a bad actor is using Stripe to cash out stolen credit cards they have less time for the banks to detect and report it before the money is gone. As a result it has a higher cost to the company.

Yeah I'm wondering why it's happening now. Is there an indication that fraud is going up, and that's why they're raising the fee? Given the percentage increase, it would have to be a pretty dramatic increase.

Re: Stripe increasing "instant payout" fees by 50%

#63
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any payment processor part of the fees you pay go to offsetting fraud (it is a cost just like servers or people). Instant payout is much riskier because if a bad actor is using Stripe to cash out stolen credit cards they have less time for the banks to detect and report it before the money is gone. As a result it has a higher cost to the company.

Genuine question: Is fraud actually something that costs Stripe money when it comes to payouts? The reason credit card fraud for charges costs money to processors is because of charge backs. I believe charge back fees originate from the card networks themselves (Visa, MasterCard, etc). These processors also enforce a variety of limits when it comes to chargebacks for each merchant. This means if you're the layer betw…

It's not that simple. Charge backs are a game of hot potato originating at the card issuing bank and making its way back to the merchant.

If Stripe instantly pays out funds to a merchant and there is a charge back, they have to claw that money back. This is normally done by drafting the funds from the deposit account, but if that is empty Stripe (or whatever processor) eats it and it becomes a collections issue.

Processors normally handle this by holding funds on suspicious transactions for 180 days (the max chargeback window). What is suspicious? For most processors it is literally whatever adds up to a [fraud rate]% of your volume over a 180 day window. Stripe doesn't do this because they are "the friendly processor" so they just take a bigger slice and cover losses out of that.

source: I spend a non-trivial amount of time monitoring threat actors and figuring out exactly how they are doing bad stuff, which means understanding the risk/abuse side of the house

Re: Stripe increasing "instant payout" fees by 50%

#64
post #4

Why is this such an important news? Do people regularly use instant pay out? I would think that it's mostly for emergency situations. Normal payout is still free.

Genuine question. In what way free? Stripe still takes their fees? Or is there a way to avoid fees when sending an invoice to a client?

Re: Stripe increasing "instant payout" fees by 50%

#65
post #4

Why is this such an important news? Do people regularly use instant pay out? I would think that it's mostly for emergency situations. Normal payout is still free.

In some industries, for example where tipping is important, getting payouts at or almost at the speed of sales is often a differentiating factor.

Re: Stripe increasing "instant payout" fees by 50%

#66
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any payment processor part of the fees you pay go to offsetting fraud (it is a cost just like servers or people). Instant payout is much riskier because if a bad actor is using Stripe to cash out stolen credit cards they have less time for the banks to detect and report it before the money is gone. As a result it has a higher cost to the company.

Yeah I'm wondering why it's happening now . Is there an indication that fraud is going up, and that's why they're raising the fee? Given the percentage increase, it would have to be a pretty dramatic increase.

I think “quarterly profits” is a perfectly acceptable answer to the question “why now.”

Re: Stripe increasing "instant payout" fees by 50%

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm wondering why it's happening now . Is there an indication that fraud is going up, and that's why they're raising the fee? Given the percentage increase, it would have to be a pretty dramatic increase.

I think “quarterly profits” is a perfectly acceptable answer to the question “why now.”

Did they IPO when I wasn't looking? That is, what's different about this quarter versus last quarter? If the answer is "things are going worse this quarter than last quarter" then that's the nugget I was looking for/wondering about.

Re: Stripe increasing "instant payout" fees by 50%

#68
post #4

Why is this such an important news? Do people regularly use instant pay out? I would think that it's mostly for emergency situations. Normal payout is still free.

I'd guess advertisers might like this feature as they could do:

- Buy ads targeting your page selling stuff (for example a course) - Generate revenue - Instant payout - Repeat

In this flow you don't need to wait 1 month for a payout so you are not limited doing this once a month, you can do this for example 12 times a month therefore generating much more revenue.

Re: Stripe increasing "instant payout" fees by 50%

#69

Stripe will nickel and dime you to death. The last time I created an invoice manually it tried to upsell me on a far more expensive plan just so I can group things on an invoice. Even worse, adding a recurring product to a quote results in an upsell. It’s honestly embarrassing. Feature-gating things with 0 marginal cost feels desperate.

welcome to every business in america.
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