Introducing Stripe UK

https://stripe.com/blog/introducing-stripe-uk

by woodrow • 13 years ago

371 162 13 years ago

nhangen3• 13 years ago

Really excited about this because Stripe is the most popular gateway for our WordPress plugin and this opens new doors for many of our customers in the UK that don't wan't to use Paypal.

Would love to see them continue spreading East.

markokrajnc2• 13 years ago

This is great! I have been waiting for this for a loooooong time! I hope they will come also to other European countries soon. But at least in UK! This is great!

thibaut_barrere• 13 years ago

They are already available in France (and apparently Ireland too):

https://support.stripe.com/questions/what-countries-does-str...

pc8• 13 years ago

We're in private beta in France and Ireland. (I work at Stripe.) We try to make sure that things are very comprehensively tested before we allow public signups.

toretore2• 13 years ago

I'd really be interested in knowing why it's not "Stripe EU" instead. What sort of problems they had trying to do that, and what needs improvement for that to become reality.

pc8• 13 years ago

Mostly because there's a bunch of subtlety around bank transfers and identity verification. The EU simplifies a lot of the regulatory framework but the actual operations still entail a decent amount of heterogeneity from country-to-country.

markokrajnc2• 13 years ago

I don't know for sure, but I guess the credit ratings are not available in all EU countries. ("Paperwork" is different in every EU country.)

helipad• 13 years ago

This is good news, and hopefully websites will vote with their feet.

Stripe may work out more expensive than PayPal, but that extra cost is probably offset by the amount spent on heart medication.

rs• 13 years ago

Stripe has flat pricing:

https://stripe.com/gb/help/pricing

Paypal has tiered pricing:

https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-receiv...

So, it depends on which tier you're on for PayPal, it may go either way. However, I suspect most people are sitting on 3.4%+20p on PayPal will find Stripe cheaper.

madaxe5• 13 years ago

Never mind PayPal, they're more expensive than the commodity players in the UK, like SagePay.

Stripe's strategy is all about developer-led adoption, and their approach to their tech belies this. Unfortunately, in reality, developers have as much say as to which PSP their client uses as the cabin boy does what course the captain should sail.

I run an eCommerce firm - we've mooted stripe to all of our customers, as we like the look of their approach - but none will adopt, purely on the basis of cost.

pc8• 13 years ago

For what it's worth, a lot of our bigger users (from MoMA to Walmart) ended up using Stripe because their developers successfully pushed it internally.

Could you drop me a line? patrick@stripe.com. I have an idea I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on.

nandemo• 13 years ago

If you're doing typical e-commerce -- as opposed to, say, SaaS -- the cost of payment processing seems especially important, since it might eat into your (typically low) margins. Why would you recommend Stripe over an established, cheaper processor?

yogo• 13 years ago

I've actually had a different experience where clients are now requesting Stripe. My situation is unique in that across various sites clients got to experience PayPal, Braintree and Stripe. Due to a range of reasons with the flow of PayPal subscriptions to the phone nature and fee structure on Braintree (they might have simplified it now), Stripe is turning out to be the favorite even with the 7 day transfers.

There are also cases where developers do have some say, especially since many clients don't even care as long as they can accept payments--the fee is more or less on par. It's a favorite for me because when you look at Stripe.js + the API you can tell it was developed for use by other developers and not as an after thought.

noir_lord2• 13 years ago

For stripe to be more expensive than Paypal I'd need to bill 15,000 a month.

That is a nice problem to have (and in fairness it's a .5% different or about about 75 quid).

On 15,000 billable I'll take a 300 a month hit to never have to deal with PayPal again.

Broken sandbox, flaky API, customer service reps from the Hannibal Lecter school of customer service, payment frozen, ridiculous demands on holding cash and proving you are who you say you are, high pressure sales.

Screw PayPal, I'll drive to my customer and take cash before I use them again.

junto• 13 years ago

Great comment. I had to laugh at this:

   "extra cost is probably offset by the amount spent on
   heart medication"

One of my top comments [1] on SO says much the same:

   "Enjoy PayPal's sandbox test environment! It's about
   as fun as extracting one's teeth with a pair of pliers."

It looks like Stripe could really start to push back on PayPal in the UK as well. About time if you ask me.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/67394/which-should-i-impl...

cristinacordova• 13 years ago

(I work at Stripe)

For a more detailed cost comparison with PayPal:

Stripe's pricing starts at 2.4% + £0.20 per transaction + VAT. Stripe charges 2% for foreign conversions (i.e. charging in EUR, when you want to be paid out in GBP).

PayPal's pricing starts at 3.4% + £0.20 per transaction. In addition to their published rate, you'll also pay:

* £20 per month if you want to design and host your own checkout pages.

* If you process in other currencies other than your local currency, PayPal will charge you a fee of 2.5% above the wholesale exchange rate (https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/cross-border-and-conve...).

* If you receive payments from customers outside of the UK, PayPal will charge you a fee of anywhere from 0.4% to 1.5% (https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/cross-border-and-conve...).

* If your customers pay with American Express, PayPal will charge you a fee of 3.5%.

* If you issue a refund, you will pay a fixed fee portion of the original transaction fee.

sleepyhead4• 13 years ago

Any plans to roll out in Norway soon? All alternatives here have a very poor technical offering (bad docs, SOAP, errors, downtime) and are expensive for low volume.

We are looking for a payment provider we can integrate in http://makeplans.net but it has to be with no fixed costs as our clients are small businesses. Please get in touch if you need someone to be part of the beta rollout here in Norway: espen@makeplans.no

aculver2• 13 years ago

For any Ruby on Rails developers in the UK who may now be jumping into Stripe for the first time because of this, Pete Keen has just released (or is releasing today) a new book called Mastering Modern Payments (http://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments) which focus on Stripe and Rails.

smickie2• 13 years ago

I've been using the UK beta for a few months.

Honestly, the API docs and Gem are so good you don't need a book.

From sitting down can looking over the docs to charging my debit card for a monthly subscription took about an hour (and I'm not even that good with ruby, if you're a pro you could do it in half an hour I reckon).

aculver2• 13 years ago

I totally agree that Stripe is easy to get started with and I believe their documentation is the best in the industry. But, as someone who processes payments in the six figures annually with Stripe, I feel there is definitely still room for a book like Pete's, in the same way that there was a place for a book about design patterns even among talented and experienced developers. His book builds on the platform, rather than replacing the documentation.

I manage a drop-in Rails engine for adding Stripe subscriptions to an app (http://github.com/andrewculver/koudoku) and the number one piece of feedback I get is that people wish they had heard of it before they integrated Stripe subscriptions in their app. This tells me that there is room for gems like mine and books like Pete's in the little ecosystem Stripe has created.

agduncan• 13 years ago

I was of the understanding that UK debit cards are not currently supported. Has this recently changed?

lifeisstillgood3• 13 years ago

This is a little off topic I admit, but ... how do people make those little book images - is there a service online to give you back a paperback book with your title on it?

Sounds like fun

zrail• 13 years ago

I made the image in Gimp and then uploaded it to http://www.myecovermaker.com and generated that image. It's $5 if you want to remove the watermark but it's well worth it, since there's no way I would be able to make that myself.

samwillis6• 13 years ago

Awesome, congrats guys. We have been using the BETA since the start and its been very good.

If anyone from Stripe is reading, in your announcement you say:

"In addition to keeping the best parts, we've also built multi-currency support: the ability for UK businesses to charge customers around the world in US dollars, British pounds, and Euro. We'll automatically handle all the conversions for you and deposit daily into your bank account."

My understanding was that we would need a USD account in the UK in order to charge customers in USD. Have you now fixed that? I can't find anything in the docs? Or are you saying that we can just charge people GBP no matter where in the world they are?

pc8• 13 years ago

Have you now fixed that?

We've fixed it :-)

samwillis6• 13 years ago

Awesome, thanks Patrick.

How do we do it?

julesie• 13 years ago

I'm a co-founder at Teddle, one of the companies mentioned in the press release.

When we started Teddle the landscape for payments in the UK looked very very different. At one point PayPal looked like our best option. In reality their product would have killed our business (matching customers with independent house cleaners), with their punitive withholding of funds and lengthy clearing times.

Then Andy and the guys at Stripe UK came along and blew the competition out of the water. They have been doing an outstanding job. The product is ridiculously good, the documentation is awesome and the customer service is human, friendly and reliable. Honestly I can't praise the product enough.

Well done guys!

k-mcgrady7• 13 years ago

Been using it in the beta for a couple of months. Surprised at how simple it was to get running.

jbrooksuk• 13 years ago

I've been using their beta for my startup, the API is amazing. I've only tested it with my own cards, but it's worked a treat (my SaaS isn't solid to be released yet).

Love them!

asb2• 13 years ago

Am I right in thinking that Stripe has no option for a hosted payments page? This makes it much clearer to users that the site they are in does not process their credit card details correctly. I am aware of Stripe Checkout.

nhangen3• 13 years ago

The beauty of stripe is that you CAN keep users on your site and process payments via a great API. Hosted payments would defeat the purpose.

asb2• 13 years ago

Yes I recognise having that option is an advantage, a major one for some cases (e.g. e-commerce). However I wouldn't be keen to put my credit card details in to a form on e.g. a blogger's website soliciting donations.

matzipan• 13 years ago

Welcome to europe. Been waiting for you for a long time guys.

noir_lord2• 13 years ago

Damn.

Between Stripe and gocardless we finally have a viable zero-friction way of taking payments.

This is brilliant!.

hiddenfeatures6• 13 years ago

Oh man... I love that Stripe is finally coming to Europe.

BUT seriously (going on a disappointed rant here): Belgium & the Netherlands get into private beta and Germany gets nothing? I mean: Come on. BE + NL together have 27m people - Germany has some 80m AND a world-class economy. I don't want to bash on our neighbors (God knows we've done that one or two times in the past), I just want me some Stripe.

I know that the delay is probably because of some ridiculous red tape in Germany. :-(

tl;dr: Please absolve us from PayMill & the Samwer brother

jusben13694• 13 years ago

No idea but one thing Germany is famous for is the low adoption of credit cards vs direct debit (ELV) etc - more so than most European countries. German's tend to find it a deal breaker (locally) if you are a payment gateway that only supports credit cards. So that could be one reason why but just a guess.

k-mcgrady7• 13 years ago

AFAIK debit cards are supported but limited to Visa and Mastercard.

hiddenfeatures6• 13 years ago

Very good point there! Sadly we (as usual) have found our own way of doing things :-/

Peroni• 13 years ago

Out of curiosity, what's the issue with PayMill? I always assumed they were a decent alternative?

germangirl2• 13 years ago

ive implemented them into my shop and im totally happy with it to be honest. easy implementation, works fine & great supported provided.

thairu3• 13 years ago

We are working on bringing Stripe to Germany. Please sign up at https://stripe.com/global to be notified when we launch (I work at Stripe)

Major_Grooves• 13 years ago

What is now the difference between using Stripe and Paymill? Any objective benefit to using either?

asking this as an ex-Rocket guy with my own startup that needs payment integration soon. I've started the Paymill process but not sent the docs in yet.

sdrinf• 13 years ago

Having used both in production:

- https://stripe.com/chat VS email

-You usually don't need to "send the docs in" (being hungarian, they asked for my ID, but email was fine), which reduces time to launch

-After having launched with Paymill, production started throwing strange errors. Root cause analysis revealed, that they don't have USD / EUR acceptance enabled by default; and they asked for extra paperwork to have that. This is not a good problem to have when users are hitting the payment wall.

germangirl2• 13 years ago

yeh but this problem can be easily solved. change the settings in your account, fill in the pdf & scan the form. sent overvia email - done. easy as that.

thijsc• 13 years ago

Paymill kind of got the idea right, but the execution sucks. Stuff in the API has strange names and the docs and examples are often not completely correct.

One thing we've hit is that there's a requirement to specify the first amount you're going to charge (which you might not know at that point) when you get a customer's CC data, that can be a real pain.

1bo1bo1• 13 years ago

Does anybody has used GoCardless or Braintree? What advantages there are between Stripe and those other ones?

jusben13694• 13 years ago

GoCardless is direct debit only so would be a natural compliment to Stripe but unlikely to be a head to head competitor.

nqureshi• 13 years ago

(I work at GoCardless).

GoCardless and Stripe tend to solve very different problems. We're a Direct Debit provider, whereas Stripe do card payments.

In short, Direct Debit is great for recurring payments and variable billing. It's traditionally really hard to get access to in the UK if you're a smaller business; but we allow people to sign up instantly and start using it without having to go to the bank.

DD is a great solution if you're in a service business or are charging a similar set of people each month. It's a less good solution if you're doing e-commerce/physical goods, since you need fast payment timings/clearing. That's the sort of problem cards (and therefore Stripe) are optimized for.

More info here: https://gocardless.com/direct-debit/use-cases/

shedside• 13 years ago

Also, according to Stripe's Terms and Conditions, “the Stripe Service is not made available to persons … for personal, family or household purposes” — this isn’t the case for GoCardless, where signing up as an individual to collect gift payments by Direct Debit is A-OK.

lbarrow• 13 years ago

I'm an engineer at Braintree. The way I see it when you compare Braintree and Stripe in the UK:

- Stripe has instant signup. Braintree does not (yet). You have to send us a few documents; the signup process takes a few days.

- Stripe multicurrency support is limited to USD, EUR, and GBP. Braintree can accept payments in 130 currencies and settle in the following currencies:

AUD - Australian dollar CAD - Canadian dollar DKK - Danish krone CHF - Switzerland francs EUR - European Union euro GBP - British pound HKD - Hong Kong dollar JPY - Japanese yen NOK - Norwegian krone NZD - New Zealand dollar SEK - Swedish krona USD - US dollar ZAR - South African rand

Being able to settle in DKK, CHF, NOK or SEK might make a big difference to merchants with large customer bases in Northern Europe.

- Stripe charges a 2% currency conversion fee if you settle in a different currency than you present. Braintree does not.

- The pricing structures are different. Stripe charges 2.4% + 20p per charge; Braintree charges on an interchange plus model: IC + 0.9% + 10p, with a 100 GBP monthly minimum.

Finally, of course, our products are different as well. Braintree.js and Stripe.js don't work the same way, and our APIs have different capabilities.

sleepyhead4• 13 years ago

The 100 EUR minimum fee per month in Europe was a show-stopper for us. We were about to develop an integration with Braintree in our SaaS (http://makeplans.net - online appointment scheduling) but as our clients are small and have little volume Braintree was not an option after changing from no fixed fees to 100 EUR / month.

deskpro3• 13 years ago

We'd love to move to Stripe; the one issue is that you can't send us $USD to our UK based $USD account via a wire transfer (like Amex does for example). Instead, it seems the only option is for you to send us £GBP after charging another 2% on top. This is both expensive currency conversion; but we also spend $USD so have to pay to turn our £GBP back into $USD!

Fix this, and we'd move in a heartbeat.

collision4• 13 years ago

We don't support making our daily transfers via wires, but if you have a US-routable USD bank account we can transfer USD to that without conversion.

deskpro3• 13 years ago

Do you know of any UK bank that will provide a US-routable USD bank account?

krmmalik3• 13 years ago

How do I get a job with this company? I hear nothing but great things about their product and the working culture there. I want to be a part of it.

People from Stripe. If you're reading this, I'd like to work for you.

Can we talk?

collision4• 13 years ago

We'd love to hear from you. We're hiring in the US, UK and in a few other countries.

https://stripe.com/jobs & jobs@stripe.com

krmmalik3• 13 years ago

Sent you an email as soon as I typed my comment. Please look out for an email from "Khuram Malik". It should have landed in your inbox just now.

Thank you for responding :)

lifeisstillgood3• 13 years ago

Great. Now I have no excuses not to launch a side project

javindo• 13 years ago

Glad to hear they're finally coming over here!

Somewhat unrelated but:

https://stripe.com/jobs#eu_developer_evangelist

This is my absolute dream job description, unfortunately as a CS undegrad I think I'd find myself somewhat under qualified for it.

voltagex_• 13 years ago

Reach out anyway, you never know!

joshdotsmith• 13 years ago

Every time I got an email asking to join the beta, I asked the same question. I'm sure I'm getting annoying, but I'll ask again:

When can US customers start charging UK customers?

collision4• 13 years ago

You can already charge UK customers, but I presume you mean UK customers in GBP. This is on our roadmap to add. (Most of the heavy lifting is already done for the reverse in the UK.)

jdg1• 13 years ago

I would love to use this but the pricing is a bit of a problem. The Visa credit price per transaction is only a little bit higher but almost half our transactions are Visa debit which are charged by our existing provider at a flat rate of 34p + 10p for the gateway. The Stripe cost for a £60 transaction would be £1.64. The pricing needs to take into account the higher rate of debit card usage in the UK.

workhere-io2• 13 years ago

Will companies located in other EU countries than the UK be able to use this?

k-mcgrady7• 13 years ago

It's available in a few other EU countries in beta: Belgium, France, Ireland, The Netherlands. Details here: https://stripe.com/global

alan_cx• 13 years ago

Forgive my ignorance, but is this the PayPal replacement/alternative I have been waiting years for?

If so, I may experience the rare emotion of "happiness".

krmmalik3• 13 years ago

Yes. This is it.

kintamanimatt• 13 years ago

It's a very good alternative and I'm very that more of the best-of-breed payment providers are expanding outside the US/Canada.

There's also the German Stripe clone, Paymill. Also, not every country is heavy on credit/debit cards (think, Poland, Japan, etc) and Adyen is able to support all kinds of local payment methods.

woodylondon• 13 years ago

Just signed up. How crazy easy that was, no sending in a ton of information of waiting. Live account in 2mins. In fact it's cheaper than PayPal Pro! Paypal, Worldpay you are doomed!

davidjgraph• 13 years ago

If you mostly export (i.e sell abroad), there are some additional considerations for picking a payment provider (I speak from the point of view of a UK company).

We've been using Shareit for selling software for many, many years and it's basically 4.9% as fees. The first interesting part for me is the currency conversion rate. We operate in GBP and all of our sales last month were in USD. Working out the average rate we got 1.54 USD to 1 GBP. Looking at the exchange rates for July [0] that seems reasonably close to the mid market rate.

I'd be interested to know how Stripe determine their conversion rates. If it's mid-market then we're looking at 4.4% against 4.9%.

The next issue when exporting is whether you have to register formally in the country you're selling to in order to avoid withholding taxes [1]

The countries we've come up against this to date are the USA, Portugal and India. The volume we do with the US justifies registering with the IRS and making a W8-BEN form available to all companies we sell to.

The process for the US is doable and the volume we sell there easily justifies it. The process for Portugal is awful and the process for India comprises about 6-8 weeks of utter bureaucratic bullshit [2]. The sales volume from these countries were not worth going through the process.

If we didn't go through this process and sell directly in these countries the buyer would have to withhold a proportion of the purchase, usually around 20%.

Shareit is an actual reseller, legally. Stripe isn't, AFAIK. So, Shareit can deal with the admin in these countries and pass over the same amount they do as for any country. A few years ago, we hadn't heard of withholding taxes, it's becoming more and more common as countries try to clamp down on tax evasion.

It's more strictly enforced the larger the payment amount gets, but my point is to be aware of the legal differences in payment processing services regarding foreign withholding tax rules.

Edit : There's actually a third issue as well and that's whether your insurance covers you to take card information on your site (up to details regarding the type of SSL certificate you have installed) and, if it does, whether you comply with all the security constraints the policy imposes. You may find that the additional premium is more than the cost savings.

[0] http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=1Y

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withholding_tax

[2] http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dallaway/pan-card-uk-company.ht...

lifeisstillgood3• 13 years ago

Withholding is also an issue for anyone selling services, such as software development.

I work for a US company whilst being in the UK, and a W8-BEN form took most of a day to finish, and I remember calling the IRS direct to help - and they were surprisingly helpful and courteous. Nothing like as bad as they are painted :-\

kybernetyk• 13 years ago

Yeah, I was surprised about the IRS too, when I called them about my W8-BEN.

With a long polish family name and residing in a city with a long German (with umlauts) name the whole call over a low quality transatlantic line wasn't a walk in the park. But the IRS employee always stayed nice and helpful. (I think the address entry took us good 20 minutes alone).

tonyedgecombe3• 13 years ago

I think if you want to sell in USD then you need a US based USD bank account, at least that's the message I got from support.

ebroder3• 13 years ago

That's actually no longer true - as of today for UK users, we can convert USD to GBP or EUR before transferring it to you. Just create the charge with a currency of "usd", and as long as you haven't manually setup a USD bank account (which you probably haven't), everything should just work.

robryan3• 13 years ago

Heh, registering a company and bank account in India. Going through that right now, I feel your pain.

daemon13• 13 years ago

Can you please elaborate on why & how the withholding taxes in other countries are affecting you? I assume that you sell software or services from your company's web site.

Somehow this does not click with my CFO experience.

k-mcgrady7• 13 years ago

One 'feature' that would make a big difference in the UK is better debit card support - specifically for Maestro.

pc8• 13 years ago

We decided against supporting them since Maestro cards are falling out of use. (See my other comment in the thread.)

k-mcgrady7• 13 years ago

Ah, I'm in Northern Ireland. One of our main banks (Danske) issues Maestro as the only debit card option making it one of the most used cards here. Are there any plans to add support of has it been completely ruled out?

Edit: Did a bit of research and it looks like Danske is finally offering Visa Debit as an option.

duiker101• 13 years ago

It's happening!!!

dodgrile• 13 years ago

Adding to the people happy about this - we've been using the beta for a while, took us a couple of hours to integrate it. Really nice to work with with.

knes• 13 years ago

Once they rollout the marketplace feature to UK users, this will truly be the best piece of service around.

GG to the stripe Team

mrweasel3• 13 years ago

Could someone people explain the appeal of Stripe? The APIs are nice, but so a most other payment providers.

The fee Stripe charges are pretty high. We would never agree to a percentage of the sale, only a fixed price. The fact that you can't change who process you credit card payments (can you?) excludes you from getting any good deals on fees. If you shop around you can save a lot of money.

Honestly getting a merchant account, if that's the excuse for using Stripe, isn't that hard.

someone13• 13 years ago

Actually, AFAIK, Stripe will export your card data to any other provider, if you ask them to.

mrweasel3• 13 years ago

Do you know if you get better rates that the 2.4 / 2.5% Stripe charges, if you choose a different provider?

You could use a company like PayEx, NetAxept, DIBS or ePay ( there are many more of cause ). You pay them a flat fee per transaction, I know at least one of them will do it for a fixed monthly fee and $0.04 per transaction. The you need someone to handle the actual merchant account, someone like Teller, SwedBank, Handelsbank ( again there are many more ). Many of these will process VISA and MasterCard for less than 1% of the amount and in some case a lot less.

Stripe is wonderfully simple, but if you want to process any real amount of credit cards they seem really expensive. For quickly starting up I get why you would go with Stripe.

rwmj• 13 years ago

My wife has a merchant account. It's not that the published "fees" are high -- I think she pays something like 20p / transaction. It's the crazy confusing other charges she has to put up with, like monthly fees which seem to me to be random, bogus insurance changes, hire of the terminal etc etc. It ends up costing a lot, and it's highly opaque.

If stripe has a transparent charging structure, that would be a massive plus to me.

ratherbefuddled4• 13 years ago

Our total fees for all of the admittedly less than transparent charges never amount to more than 1% each month, and they are proportional to the number of transactions not revenue so that will decrease as we grow.

ratherbefuddled4• 13 years ago

Unless you're ultra low volume I can't see why anybody would pay a percentage rate when you can use something like SagePay and pay 10p per transaction. It would be an order of magnitude more expensive to use this for us, so what have I missed?

vidarh3• 13 years ago

I don't for a second believe you are not paying 10p per transaction total.

Not even debit cards are that cheap to process. What you are missing at the very least are the fees to the card associations.

You need to compare Strip to SagePay's full merchant services, not fees for just using their software or whatever it is you're getting for 10p. E.g:

http://www.sagepay.com/great-value-merchant-services-sage-pa...

But even then, a large differentiator in merchant services cost is your risk profile and sales volume, as well as type of product.

vidarh3• 13 years ago

Honestly getting a merchant account, if that's the excuse for using Stripe, isn't that hard.

Have you tried getting a merchant account in Europe for a company taking online payments with little to no history of processing card payments?

Most banks will laugh you out of their offices.

Once you've established 2-3 years history and some volume, sure, you can start negotiating drastically lower rates.

ratherbefuddled4• 13 years ago

Not my experience at all. We got a merchant account with no problems whatsoever with online services. We didn't need to negotiate rates either.

noeltock• 13 years ago

This is unfortunately true for a number of EU countries. Stripe/ Paymill alleviate a fair amount of this.

smackfu• 13 years ago

We would never agree to a percentage of the sale, only a fixed price.

Is that really realistic? I thought all credit card transaction fees were percentage, while most ACH is fixed-rate (so if someone is charging you a percentage on ACH, you are getting screwed.)

nfm• 13 years ago

We pay basically the same % fee for our merchant account (maybe 2.2%), plus per transaction fees for the merchant account, plus an annual fee and per transactions fees to the gateway, plus an annual fee and per transaction fees to our recurring billing provider.

2.4% + 20p sounds great to me!

AhtiK• 13 years ago

Interesting that Braintree went to the whole EU at once while Stripe seems to take it country by country.

Not sure if it's related but at around that time Braintree changed the pricing to add Interchange fee that depends on the card used, service offered etc. Making the final pricing somewhat confusing but maybe more affordable as a result.

Does anyone know if Stripe account setup&approval for UK is just as straightforward as for US? With Braintree they ask for financial (turnover & EBIT) and shareholder information when applying as an EU company, no idea if it's also the case for US companies.

pc8• 13 years ago

Does anyone know if Stripe account setup&approval for UK is just as straightforward as for US?

Yep; it's the very same instant setup.

sleepyhead4• 13 years ago

One thing to note with Braintree though is that they rolled out in the EU with a flat pricing, but a few months later changed it to having a minimum 100EUR in transaction fees. That is a very big change and it becomes not a good alternative for a small company to start with. Stripe has higher fees but no fixed fees.

justplay• 13 years ago

To Stripe team,

You are doing great and fast. Keep going.

bowlofpetunias• 13 years ago

Why is Stripe so interesting? As far as I can tell, they still only offer one payment method, credit cards.

That makes them quite uncompetitive in most countries where credit cards are just one of the many online payment methods, and completely useless in countries where most only payment has already shifted to direct transfers without the cost and hassle of going through credit card companies.

The movement is now towards harmonizing direct payments and mobile payment. Using credit cards for online payment feels so yesterday to me.

ux-app• 13 years ago

could you expand on this please? I'm from Australia and for us, payment online means credit card pretty much 100% of the time.

"harmonizing direct payments and mobile payment" -- I assume direct payments are direct debit from savings account? What is a "mobile payment".

How are these direct debit payments made? Do you know of any payment processors that process this type of payment?

I'm keen to hear how other parts of the world handle payments. Thanks.

ottbot• 13 years ago

Take a look at what http://gocardless.com are doing with Direct Debit in the UK. Not sure what "mobile payment" really means, outside of in-app purchases?

lamby• 13 years ago

Thanks for the cupcakes.

buddhika• 13 years ago

Not to spam the thread but if any UK merchant is looking for an invoicing product supporting Stripe, check CurdBee here - http://vesess.com/survey-results-and-stripe-uk/

Introducing Stripe UK

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