The new ‘Pay with Stripe’ button makes online payments feel better

http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/10/10/the-new-pay-with-stripe-button-makes-online-payments-not-feel-like-death/

by iProject • 14 years ago

42 35 14 years ago

1simonsayz• 14 years ago

"While PayPal was once known for easing the pain of that process, you can’t deny that digital payments has stagnated as the rest of the Web elevated in general usability." So true. With initiative like this, Stripe seems to be going in the right direction to become the new Paypal(better and improved of course ;-)) Way to go guys!

kennu2• 14 years ago

It's beautiful, but how does the user verify that the credit card popup form is being posted to a valid, secure site?

I mean, normally you'd first be redirected to a trusted payment site and verify its SSL identity in the browser URL bar. Then you'd know that the trusted site will do things properly from there.

But in this case, are you just supposed to trust blindly that the Stripe-looking payment form popping up on some semi-random site will really be submitted to Stripe? Am I missing something?

_pius• 14 years ago

Am I missing something?

Yes: most customers don't think about the question you're posing.

For that question to even arise in a customer's mind, they would have to know what an iframe is. Otherwise, it's just a cool little popup that the website opened.

lucisferre• 14 years ago

Besides how does a pop up make it more likely to be an iframe than just any old iframe?

gailees2• 14 years ago

100%....Most customers don't even understand https vs http. In the tech bubble, we definitely recognize things like that, but for normal people, they determine their trust by the look and brand name on the payment form.

This button is the first step for stripe to start being a trusted name by more skeptical e-customers.

k3n3• 14 years ago

Don't all modern browsers warn of (or block) mixed HTTP/HTTPS content?

brandon272• 14 years ago

Only if the parent page is HTTPS and tries to load HTTP content, but not vice versa. So an HTTP page loading an HTTPS iframe won't trigger an error.

gailees2• 14 years ago

While I do like that they have a standardized button now, I wouldn't say that the button itself is gorgeous.

jessriedel• 14 years ago

> Either way, I’m hoping PayPal, Google and everyone else follows suit, because buying something online should be frictionless by now.

This aesthetic choice doesn't seem to change the friction much. We're still typing in 16-digit codes by hand.

prophetjohn2• 14 years ago

Paying with Amazon is mostly frictionless for me. If I remember correctly from my purchase on louisck.net on Sunday, it was click to get to Amazon login page, click to login to Amazon account, click to use card ending in 9432, click to confirm.

overbroad• 14 years ago

And, correct me if I'm wrong, they've been delivering that level of convenience for many years and without any need for iframes.

All due respect for Stripe, iframes are a potential security hole waiting to happen. iframes open many possibilities for exploits. I doubt we've seen all of them yet.

Evbn2• 14 years ago

Neither PayPal nor Google require you type in your CC number at point of sale.

michaelkscott• 14 years ago

Original discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4633443

Actual link to the site (Stripe): https://stripe.com/docs/button

k3n3• 14 years ago

I wouldn't go so far as to call it gorgeous, it's just an extension of the default Bootstrap theme[1].

I guess if your site is using the default Bootstrap theme, then that's great, but in and of itself it is not eye-catching IMO.

1. http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

k3n3• 14 years ago

So how long after a link is submitted here at HN can the OP alter the title?

Last night when I commented, the title was something along the lines of:

> The new ‘Pay with Stripe’ button is gorgeous

But now this morning, it's:

> The new ‘Pay with Stripe’ button makes online payments feel better

...which makes my comment seem like a critique out of left field.

mcphilip• 14 years ago

This article sort of rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. I understand the problems with PayPal and the benefit of companies like Stripe competing, but an article gushing over a bootstrap-esque button on a payment popup? Comes across as inane, at best...

pc2• 14 years ago

Yeah; this isn't something we're looking to make a big deal out of. It's just a beta product we're experimenting with and which The Next Web chose to write about. There's still a lot we want to fix and improve.

SoftwareMaven• 14 years ago

I've gone back and forth on this. I totally get what you are saying about the bootstrap-esque button. That was the first thing I thought, too.

But...it is also an indication of a change coming to a segment that has seen a decade of stagnation.

And that is beautiful.

pc2• 14 years ago

Thanks :).

dsl• 14 years ago

Did you try using it? The design might look stock-ish, but the UI experience is what I wish for every time I check out.

rhizome• 14 years ago

Consider the source.

eyevariety• 14 years ago

Kudos to Next Web for celebrating interface innovation. The payment process looks super slick.

EGreg• 14 years ago

iframes are hard to trust, they create opportunities for spoofing and phishing for regular users

I once sent a letter to Steve Jobs saying that the MacOS (and other operating systems) were susceptible to phishing by applications, which would simply present a dialog that looks very much like the System Security dialog, and thereby gain the user's root password.

The solution is to have an area where only the operating system can draw (and which cannot be screen-captured, the same way Apple currently does with DRM movies). In this area, the system would present to the user a phrase which the user selected when setting up their account.

This would prevent phishing, as users would be trained to look for the phrase (and / or icon ... the reason you can't have an icon alone is because the phisher could get it right 1 out of N times).

Now, on the web there is a similar thing you can do! When someone places KEYBOARD FOCUS in your password box, and starts typing the correct password, you display the icon + phrase that you previously selected when setting up your account. If the phrase doesn't pop up or is different, you know you're being phished.

THIS is a great way to stop phishing on the web. Anyone impersonating you will not know what phrase to display. Only by starting to type the correct pass phrase will they get this information. On the other hand, they won't be able to place anything fake over the password input box and capture your input, because the phrase only appears when you type IN the password input box, which the attacker can't get to, thanks to the cross-domain security in browsers!

dangero• 14 years ago

I've thought about that impersonating password window on OS X a lot too. I like your solution although I'm pretty sure nobody is going to implement that. It only makes sense if we go back to browsers taking over for login, then there could be a uniform approach that could also be outside of the browser controlled window area.

dfc• 14 years ago

"Am I just gushing, or is this feeling mutual?"

Someone please tell the author that web design components do not have any emotions. The feeling could never be mutual.

kyriakos• 14 years ago

go international for crying out loud

unreal37• 14 years ago

This is the first bad thing I've read about Stripe. I was expecting something a lot more special when I checked the article from the link-baity headline. Instead, it's just a bootstrap-style button. And an inline popup that I would never trust to enter my credit card details. Wasted first impression on me.

And The Next Web just dropped another notch on the news sites I trust list. I have to stop clicking those links. Wasn't this the same site that copied someones blog post basically word for word without giving them credit? Quick, check to see if this same story appeared somewhere else first.

BHSPitMonkey• 14 years ago

> And an inline popup that I would never trust to enter my credit card details. Wasted first impression on me.

Then you wouldn't trust any non-brand-name site that sells things via credit card charges (which makes you fall outside of the entire e-commerce consumer space).

Stripe isn't for Amazon and eBay, it's for those thousands of other sites out there that accept credit cards. If you would shop there using an inline payment form, you would still shop there with the modal <div> payment form. Believe it or not, people trust and use these kinds of sites every day.

modarts• 14 years ago

I feel like a lot of people here are missing the point of the article: mainly the fact that the author is commenting on the UX of the Pay with Stripe button (compared to more complicated payment workflows) and not its tasteful use of background gradient and pretty colors.

foxylad• 14 years ago

Sigh... I don't care about the pretty buttons, I just want a payment service that works.

After another spate of PayPal randomly refusing my customer's payments, I've just spent most of my day searching for an alternative, AGAIN. Stripe, Dwolla, you name it - all closed to non-US residents.

US-based companies have a significant advantage here. They can sell globally because the rest of the world is used to paying in US dollars. But North American customers are paranoid about paying in other currencies, and don't understand the concept of exchange rates.

If anyone can tell me how to get an account with ANY mainstream US payment processor (except PayPal), I would be forever in your debt. There is a HUGE opportunity here. There are thousands of reputable companies from reputable countries that would jump aboard within days.

The new ‘Pay with Stripe’ button makes online payments feel better

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