Stripe: Alipay support

https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-alipay

by siddarthcs • 12 years ago

200 72 12 years ago

stripe.com

pastaking• 12 years ago

This is awesome!

PS author misspelled the link to Stripe Checkout https://stripe.com/chekcout (missing a c)

siddarthcs• 12 years ago

Oops, thanks for the heads-up: fixing! :)

alphadevx• 12 years ago

Kudos to Stripe for adding this. Having working on an Alipay integration via another provider, I know there is business demand for this.

jqueryin7• 12 years ago

This is great news for those using Stripe Checkout. Are there any plans to offer Alipay to Stripe customers who are utilizing the API for subscriptions, invoicing, and recurred payments?

As an aside, we also get a load of client requests for PayPal as an alternative simply because many people don't have a US-based credit card. If you're making the moves to support global markets, it's tough to side step them.

I really wish PayPal brought back their digital credit card which you could preload with cash and use online like a real credit/debit card. It would solve all of our problems with users who don't have a CC!

lachyg3• 12 years ago

(I work at Stripe.)

The Alipay integration with Checkout works just like Stripe.js, in that it will return a token that you can charge instantly, or attach to a customer and utilize for subscription, invoicing and recurring payments.

silverlight2• 12 years ago

Which is amazing. Serious kudos for making it so darn easy. Once you have a token, you no longer have to care what the original payment method was. Absolutely how it should be.

jqueryin7• 12 years ago

Thanks for the response. To narrow down the scope of my question a bit: Do you have any plans to open up API endpoints that would afford us the privilege of choosing a gateway on our own?

I'm asking because our checkout is completely devoid of Checkout or Stripe.js, i.e. the "building the whole payment form" route you mention on the checkout page: https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/forms.

silverlight2• 12 years ago

If you guys would do this exact same thing for PayPal, I would be so happy.

pc2• 12 years ago

We'd be very happy to support PayPal in the same way. If any PayPal folks are reading, I'm patrick@stripe.com :-).

jenius• 12 years ago

This is awesome, and you are awesome Patrick. Gotta have serious respect when the founder of Stripe, who I have to assume is quite a busy guy, shows up to personally respond to comments, encourage new features, and drop his personal email.

bcx• 12 years ago

How much permission do you need from paypal to do this?

I suppose the main barrier is how annoying their UI is? And your ability to get a share of the interchange?

jqueryin7• 12 years ago

Seriously PayPal, get on this. I just asked for the same thing in the comments further down. We've got an international base of clients asking for PayPal support and we're using Stripe. Rather than force us into two flows on our end, work with Stripe so we can just utilize them and you collect $$.

gerry_shaw• 12 years ago

Please make that happen! If I never have to deal with the PayPal API again I would be very happy.

Rabidgremlin• 12 years ago

Any chance you be rolling out support for New Zealand... we sell heaps to China!

rogerdpack• 12 years ago

and dwolla please, with its lower overhead? :)

darvy• 12 years ago

I wish there was a non-JS version of Stripe Checkout. Rather than throwing up the modal window, I'd prefer to redirect my users to a Stripe hosted checkout page where they can make payment and we can deal with it via webhooks. Similar to how PayPal works really.

Currently I'm integrating with the API directly to do this but I'd have preferred to use a page hosted by Stripe, especially considering they are starting to open up to other payment methods.

afarrell• 12 years ago

As a buyer, I hate when pages do that. It jolts me out of the smooth experience of buying a thing. Since I've never done a PayPal integration, seeing the PayPal logo as part of that experience is a big chunk of the reason I believe it when other programmers say that PayPal is super-annoying to integrate with.

Stripe would need a page that doesn't have its branding but instead only has yours.

mperham• 12 years ago

Stripe defers to partners that handle the checkout process. One example that I use personally is Plasso.

JohnTHaller• 12 years ago

Which you have to pay another 3% on top of Stripe's fee.

mattste• 12 years ago

I'm curious what method they use for identifying the buyers as Chinese.

iLoch• 12 years ago

They turn on the webcam and look into their soul. Or IP address + locale information like everyone else.

wootest• 12 years ago

That's not an exclusive or.

vcherubini• 12 years ago

Wow this is awesome. I had to integrate Alipay into a checkout process in ~2010 and it was a complete nightmare - and not even as a result of the language barrier. The API was just so so bad. Glad this is in Stripe now.

leetrout• 12 years ago

Just did an integration in December- it looks like it has changed for the better but the documentation is still in poor shape.

This is going to make things so much easier. I'm excited to try this since we had to pay $1000USD to open an Alipay account.

karsonenns• 12 years ago

If we don't use stripe checkout, would there still be a way to integrate this using the APIs?

pc2• 12 years ago

Not for now. Part of the reason Alipay was comfortable with this new flow is because it's served as part of Checkout. If we were to provide Checkout-less APIs, we'd probably have to go back to the old redirect model, which (among other things) just doesn't work well on mobile. I expect we'll always offer APIs for "standardized" instruments, though (ACH, Bitcoin, cards, etc.).

Silhouette4• 12 years ago

Just to be clear, are you saying that this new payment method will only be supported (at least for now) for those with a checkout.js integration, not those using stripe.js and their own front-end/branding?

Obvious feature request #1: Support it via stripe.js and the usual APIs as soon as possible.

Obvious feature request #2: In the meantime, provide a version of checkout.js that is (a) stable and (b) simplified to support Alipay only (so those of us who prefer to accept other payment methods can still do so via stripe.js without winding up with multiple confusing options and bad UX).

taigeair• 12 years ago

What do you think about Amazon Payments? How come people don't use it?

Silhouette4• 12 years ago

This is a very interesting development, partly for being a useful feature for some merchants in its own right, but perhaps also if it signals a more general move from Stripe toward supporting a broader range of payment methods through a unified API. That strategy seems to dovetail neatly with accepting payments in multiple currencies, which was something else Stripe developed not so long ago but isn't much use alone where the local conventional payment methods don't involve credit cards.

hunvreus2• 12 years ago

On a personal level, I'm very excited to know that I won't have to try and integrate Alipay in any of our products anymore. It's nightmare to deal with, even for our Chinese team.

But for Stripe, it's a huge step forward into tapping in a massive market. Most Chinese people can't (or won't) use card to pay online; they simply have Alipay connected to their bank account or use prepaid cards. Good move Stripe.

turingbook• 12 years ago

Alipay API is that bad?

hunvreus2• 12 years ago

Let's just say it's not a pleasant experience, especially when you're used to things like Stripe.

joedrew3• 12 years ago

As a Canadian, I'm most interested in when Stripe will start supporting our Interac debit cards. At that point, from my point of view, it'll have taken over the world. :)

alanctgardner3• 12 years ago

It'd be nice, but you could fit 40 Canadas into China (population-wise), and most of us already have credit cards due to our proximity with the US. It's sad but completely rational that so many American services don't bother with us as a country.

joedrew3• 12 years ago

Oh, totally. But heck, as long as we're wishing...

avibryant4• 12 years ago

(I'm Canadian and work at Stripe)

How often do you actually buy things online with interac? I think I've maybe done it once, and the redirect-to-the-bank flow is pretty awkward. My sense is that this isn't ever a barrier to conversion for Canadians (except maybe for very large purchases?), but I'd be curious to hear otherwise.

epa• 12 years ago

People don't do it because there is very limited ability to do so currently. Only certain websites accept it and it only works with certain financial institutions.

joedrew3• 12 years ago

I don't count as a user, since I am relatively affluent, tech-savvy, and always pay off my credit card every month.

I'm thinking of the average person who buys with Interac to avoid debt, and feels an impedance to buying online because of credit-card-only. I'd love to have the ability to enable those people's purchases through Stripe.

(I agree that the bank-redirect flow is awkward slash awful. However, you solved exactly that problem with your Alipay integration! :) )

PhilipA• 12 years ago

Now we just need to see Stripe come to the other countries, which doesn't yet have access to them (I have Denmark in mind).

stephenson• 12 years ago

I have Denmark in mind too!

sandstrom• 12 years ago

The same, for Sweden!

akirk• 12 years ago

Austria1 It seems like easy deal because almost everything works the same way as in Germany, tax wise.

jpalley• 12 years ago

How does Stripe deal with the currency conversion? Is this tracked by Alipay on an individual level (i.e. so consumers can't spend more then the legal conversion amount of 50k USD)?

rahimnathwani2• 12 years ago

How is that annual 50k USD monitored/enforced now? If I have multiple bank accounts, will I be prevented from withdrawing a combined 50k from overseas ATMs?

linklet2• 12 years ago

It's connected with the citizen number and it's applied to personal currency exchange only.

I think you may ask for a higher limit but usually you just use family accounts.

Paying with a multi-currency credit card has nothing to do with this limit.

sabalaba• 12 years ago

This is a huge deal. I'm currently in Shenzhen and Alipay (支付宝) is a common and convenient way to make payments, on Taobao, in person, or otherwise. Alipay is an interesting product in its own right, even if examined independently of the Alibaba Group. It has a money market service, Yu'E Bao (余额宝) that is currently a top 3 global money market fund with $89B AUM. That's a taste of the scale of the market in China.

http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/internet-trends-201...

gatehouse• 12 years ago

(slide 136)

dikunlun• 12 years ago

Same here, working in Shanghai, building a few products and we could not really find an elegant way to integrate payment in those targeted to the Chinese audience. Using Stripe for all of the payments is an awesome news!

SpacialSense• 12 years ago

Alipay payments will all be nominated in Yuan (RMB). How does Stripe convert this back to USD? The laws of converting currency in China are very restrictive.

saurik• 12 years ago

A question which no one has asked yet: what are the fees? Alipay charges a flat 3% while Stripe normally (for credit cards) charges 2.9%+$0.30. The variable cost to Stripe from a credit card processor is (of course) lower than 2.9% (so Stripe has a margin), 3% is (clearly) not (the fixed $0.30 only helping for small transactions). Will Stripe be charging more (variable, to have a margin) and/or less (fixed, to pass on the lack of a fixed interchange fee to customers) than its usual credit card processing fees when a customer is using Alipay? (An answer may also shine some light on whether Alipay is profit sharing with Stripe to get Stripe's support or if Stripe is being forced to charge on top of Alipay to get access to their users.)

cristinacordova• 12 years ago

(I work at Stripe)

The pricing for Alipay transactions is the same for credit/debit card transactions: https://stripe.com/pricing

jhancock• 12 years ago

three questions:

1 - Will you handle micropayments (i.e. not rake 30 cents on top of 3%)? Alipay excels at this.

2 - Can some/all of the RMB sent to the Alipay account not get exchanged to USD and auto transferred to the Stripe account holder's bank account? This is a common use case to pay for China-side costs and not have RMB exchanged to USD and exchanged back to RMB to pay partners/vendors.

3 - Will you have servers inside China? If you don't you will need some incredibly fault-tolerant javascript and page load magic as some of your interactions with non-China servers will fail.

rubycodesearch• 12 years ago

When would Stripe support withdraw to China then? It's the only reason that I'm still using PayPal.

ars• 12 years ago

Are there any companies that support sending money to other countries? Not just receiving it?

davecyen• 12 years ago

Will you be allowing marketplaces to transfer money to sellers' Alipay accounts?

Stripe: Alipay support

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