91–100 of 131 posts
Now if only my property manager could get with the beat and take electronic payments ... I still have to bike over to their office and drop off a physical check every month because they don't take anything else.
Can you use bill pay from your bank?
I use Simple bank and they can automatically mail out checks on your behalf, if you set it up.
I never got around getting the true value prop of recurring solutions such as chargebee etc when used on top of stripe. Stripe already provides excellent recurring subscription payments api out of the box, so why use any of these services. Am I missing something ?
The idea is that you are not locked in by one specific payment provider. Stripe is awesome but I only want to use it for processing actual charges. The business logic for subscriptions, invoices etc. should be managed by my own system (chargebee etc) so that I can switch to another provider tomorrow if needed.
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It's not actually illegal in the US to pass the processing fee to the customer, it's just against the contract you have to sign to get a merchant account. I don't know if the EU has a law or regulation prohibiting such contracts, but it seems possible.
> It's not actually illegal in the US to pass the processing fee to the customer, it's just against the contract you have to sign to get a merchant account. Depends on the state. It's no longer illegal federally, but many states, including the four largest states[0], still prohibit it. And if they pass the fees on, they have to pass it on for all credit cards, due to the specifics of a court settlement a few years ba…
Are you saying it _was_ actually illegal federally at some point or that no one had successfully brought a suit against the credit card companies' conditions until recently?
I didn't know about the state laws. That sure sounds like regulatory capture. It's hard to think of a legitimate reason for the state to do that.
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Hah. If you think 3% is bad, I'd love to know what you think about the 30% that Apple takes for in app purchases. You are forced to use their system (or your app gets rejected), so you have no option but to use their payment methods. Highway robbery if you ask me.
The difference is that Apple is providing you with tonnes of publicity and easy access through the app store, and is ensuring that your product works with all of their users. They are adding way more value than just convenient payments.
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The difference is that Apple is providing you with tonnes of publicity and easy access through the app store, and is ensuring that your product works with all of their users. They are adding way more value than just convenient payments.
This is true, and that is definitely a difference worth pointing out. I should have specified that even accounting for that difference 30% feels excessive considering your app, and the existence of it on their app store, also benefits their system (assuming your app is not completely pay locked). It wasn't that long ago that Apple was using as a marketing tool, the number of App's on the app store.
They literally marketed number of apps downloaded just yesterday in WWDC.
I've been using Laravel Spark [1] for recurring payments built on top of Stripe, and at a 100$ one-time fee for Spark and a small server setup (that I needed for the service in the first place) I think it's a cheap option for recurring payments, too. [1] https://spark.laravel.com/
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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 dealt with a local mechanic (small shop) earlier this year who, when it came time to settle the bill, said he will do debit/check for no fee, or a 2% fee for a credit card. In addition, some local gas stations advertise cash rates for fuel, which are slightly discounted vs credit cards.
It's an interesting practice that I don't mind. Ultimately it provides transparency and options to consumers who may be unaware of interchange rates and such that factor into day-to-day transactions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference is that Apple is providing you with tonnes of publicity and easy access through the app store, and is ensuring that your product works with all of their users. They are adding way more value than just convenient payments.
Isn't $100/year enough for the access and making sure that product works fine. For publicity, it's two way and nowhere should take 30% if there is a free market for app store.
Why? If a customer is subscribed to a "plan", and their payment fails it is retried three days later, then five days later, then eight days later, and if all three payments fail they're quietly unsubscribed without any notification being sent to you!
I have a toy project which has paying customers and last month realized I'd had people using my SaaS for over a year without having paid me. A few failures in a row meant they were unsubscribed, and since I didn't read the reports every month I didn't notice.
I reworked my payment system now, to subscribe to webhooks and ensure I find out promptly in the future.
Not a huge deal at my volume, but a surprise I could have lived without.