Stripe Connect v2

by pc • 11 years ago

332 134 11 years ago

khoury• 11 years ago

I mean god damn stripe has some great front-end engineers.

solaris999• 11 years ago

The only thing most of us were thinking, scrolling down that site. I definitely missed some text as my eyes glazed over...

solutionyogi• 11 years ago

+100.

It looks modern yet very readable thanks to great typography. Loads fast. Fully usable on mobile as well. E.g. Gets a hamburger menu on Mobile. The featured client animation is simpler. The spinning globe icon is replaced by a static image. They have absolutely top notch front end engineering talent.

This is in huge contrast to the current trend where they want to hijack browser's scrolling behavior for absolutely no gain to the end user.

platz2• 11 years ago

Some tradeoffs though; this is what it looks like on IE9 http://i.imgur.com/EkH81zN.png

Kalium• 11 years ago

I believe the current trend is designed around an Apple-esque disregard for what the user thinks they want.

threefour• 11 years ago

typography...usability...graphics... They do have great design talent :-)

saidajigumi• 11 years ago

I recently implemented a site with a feature similar to the spinning-globe in the International section[1]: a video element overlapped by text in an adjacent element. I ran into a vexing problem in some browsers where the the text that intersected the video appeared somewhat degraded, as if it were a lighter weight than what was actually specified. In Firefox, only the text directly overlapping the video was affected. But in Safari all text in the entire intersecting div showed this effect, even that not over the video. AFAICT, this is some kind of compositor bug, but I haven't been able to dig up any decent information about it.

I do note that Stripe's page isn't exhibiting this issue, but don't see anything that appears to be a workaround or otherwise unconventional.

Anyone have any color on this? Is this a font-specific rendering issue, e.g. so Stripe's fonts don't exhibit this problem? Or perhaps the presence of a background image on the li tags forces the compositor to behave? TIA!

[1] https://stripe.com/connect#international

sudhirj• 11 years ago

Usually happens when the text is above a section of the page that's being hardware accelerated. The browser basically rasterizes the text, which changes the aliasing properties.

Either move the text off to a separate sister div, or move the animation to a div with a higher z-index. Or you can set -webkit-font-smoothing: anti-aliased - that will set all of the text to same antialiasing settings as GPU accelerated text.

xasos• 11 years ago

And back-end as well. Their API is so easy to set up and use.

gdb• 11 years ago

Always looking for more :-) — gdb@stripe.com.

poxrud• 11 years ago

It's pretty cool. The entire meteor animation is done on canvas using javascript.

Xorlev• 11 years ago

It's running at 5 FPS for me on Chrome. 2013 MBP driving 2 non-retina monitors, lid closed. Seems to work a fair bit better on Safari for whatever reason.

ssmoot• 11 years ago

IMO: It's just awful.

1. Forced waiting for transitions everywhere. For a page I'll probably only ever visit once. You want to ease-in to things. I get it. But you shouldn't hide them. If you want a dithering transition as you scroll, do that. Don't fade-in. There's almost never an excuse for that.

2. What's the point of the "meteor"? To look cool? Is there any point at all to the businesses scrolling in it? Because I don't know how many there are. There's no link to view them all. There's no points to click to go back a pin and re-read one that caught my eye.

I don't know. It just feels like people are obsessed with having the coolest Flash splash screens again.

ProAm• 11 years ago

Forced wait is definitely an irritating practice in web today. Not only is is distracting and usually valueless, it's delays what is important: information transfer.

pierotofy• 11 years ago

Looks very good. I just don't like how mesmerizing the meteor animation is. I wasn't even paying attention to the content. Also it could use a navigation bar once you start scrolling?

supercoder• 11 years ago

* and designers.

hrktb• 11 years ago

The engineers are good, the designers less so.

The whole page is slow to load, solutionyogi must benefit from different optimisations, but on an ipad it seems to get the worse of both worlds.

Even after the page is loaded, the sections are mostly blank until the animations kick in.

Their features page [1] in comparison has a similar concept but is much clearer, simpler and very fast to load and navigate.

[1]https://stripe.com/features

rjvir• 11 years ago

Whenever I see one of their products, I always think "if it's that good on the outside, imagine how good it is on the inside".

amelius• 11 years ago

I applaud your enthusiasm, but... seriously?

tlogan• 11 years ago

I was waiting for half an hour thinking that image will change and tell me something more. Then I figured out that I can scroll down. Stupid me.

Then it occurred to me that we do the same thing on our home page: we have animation which makes people (stupid like me) wait a little thinking that we will tell them more info - even that info is available only if you scroll down. Stupid me x 2.

Sindrome• 11 years ago

Took an unusually long time for everything to load and it didn't load from top to bottom, mixed everywhere.

But, it is very nice and well formatted. 10/10 would refresh again.

devonoel• 11 years ago

Dat landing page tho

BradRuderman• 11 years ago

Does this require people who want to be paid to sign up for accounts on stripe? Or can the application initiate bank transfers to the seller, on behalf of the buyer or from escrow.

collision6• 11 years ago

You have two options: you can have sellers link a Stripe account (and we'll do all the downstream work, like collecting their bank account info and verifying their identity). Or you can create a managed account via API, where the seller does everything from within your app and never needs to go to Stripe.

tnorthcutt• 11 years ago

Also of note:

Setting up managed accounts, including international accounts, ID verification, and 1099-Ks, costs just 0.5% of funds paid out.

Transfers to standalone accounts are free.

citizens• 11 years ago

Update: Works for me when I log out of Stripe. Nevermind.

The managed account page appears to be down: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/managed-accounts

tomsaffell3• 11 years ago

Can you do the following (in this order): 'Provision' a standalone account with just an email address (with zero work by the account holder to-be) > Initiate a charge (to a buyer) that will ultimately be paid out to that standalone account > Have the seller setup their standalone account (so it's then capable of receiving funds)

I'm trying to figure the work flow that has the least toing and froing for both parties.

enos_feedler• 11 years ago

Is there any plan to offer some kind of in-between option where the seller links their stripe account, but the application is "sandboxed" in a way that prevents the user for creating, updating and deleting resources like cards, customers,etc? I like the idea of users linking their own accounts, and Stripe taking control of the identity verification, etc, but I don't like keeping all my data in sync with stripe via web hooks.

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

Does Stripe support all the EU countries yet?

collision6• 11 years ago

In our defense, they keep adding new EU countries. But no, we're not in all of them yet. We're in 13 EU countries, Norway, and Switzerland: https://stripe.com/global

chralieboy• 11 years ago

In our defense, they keep adding new EU countries.

Best progress response I've seen.

daniel_levine• 11 years ago

If it helps, they seem to also be on the brink of losing some. Congrats on the launch!

foxpc2• 11 years ago

Not really adding any new ones for quite some time now.

I've quickly developed a page to view the progress: http://0xff.lt/stripe-spread.html

Still more than 50% of EU left. And Switzerland does not seem to be moving anywhere, hehe.

foxpc2• 11 years ago

I wish!

I've quickly sketched a website with the current supported countries: http://0xff.lt/stripe-spread.html

gabhubert2• 11 years ago

You have? Wait I remember reading about this somewhere... ;)

rebelidealist2• 11 years ago

One question that came up when browsing thru the api doc. What are the advantages of "Charging through the platform" vs "Charging directly"?

bkrausz12• 11 years ago

Charging through the platform has you pay all of the fees and take on chargeback liability, whereas charging directly passed those on to the managed account. This also affects the default statement descriptor and contact info on statements.

rebelidealist2• 11 years ago

Hmm correct me if i'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like it would be that advantageous to take on the chargeback liability just for the statement description unless 'charging thru the platform' also provides a escrow system for the safety of the buyer.

melvinmt• 11 years ago

In retrospect, the global P2P marketplace that we've launched in 2010 on top of PayPal's API may have been 5 years too soon. Requiring all our buyers and sellers to have a PayPal account was detrimental to our brand. But, we concluded that we "didn't want to be in the nasty business of dealing with fraud, ID verification and international payments" so it made sense back then to leave that up to PayPal. But I would have given anything for a white label solution such as Stripe Connect. Also makes me wonder why PayPal wasn't able to come up with this in 5 freaking years. The technology, the platform and ecosystem was clearly there, just not the insight.

colechristensen• 11 years ago

PayPal does have something quite a lot like this though the business model is a little different.

The kids these days call it eBay.

hartard• 11 years ago

It's likely this was a conscious business decision; PayPal derives value through its brand, which is lost to consumers (buyers) using the platform if the platform becomes a white label solution.

PayPal wants customers to know they can pay with PayPal at business/merchant X, not just their credit card.

fineline• 11 years ago

Indeed, Paypal doesn't want you to pay with your credit card, and won't let you change your default PayPal payment method. You have to go through a process to select it Every.Single.Time, if you remember, and if you overlook to do it - well, what do you know, PayPal just saved the CC fee...

joshcrews• 11 years ago

Did you just merge "Connect" and "Marketplaces" so that there is no "Marketplaces" anymore? I saw that stripe.com/marketplaces is a redirect to stripe.com/connect

collision6• 11 years ago

Yes, they're the one product now. We didn't want divergent products for similar use cases. One feature we think is neat is you can mix-and-match standalone accounts (where the seller uses a regular Stripe account) and managed accounts (where the seller never goes to Stripe).

colinsidoti3• 11 years ago

Is this a change in price for $0.25 per transfer, to 0.5% per transfer? I guess there's additional value-add from tax management.

sorenbs2• 11 years ago

probably OT: Is it possible to link Stripe to a credit card so I can perform an online shopping transaction on behalf of my customer without handling their credit card data?

collision6• 11 years ago

What's your use case? You can't use cards stored in Stripe on non-Stripe sites, if that's what you're asking.

sorenbs2• 11 years ago

What I was imagining is stripe issuing a credit card that my system can use to perform credit card payments on any generic webshop (either manually or some web scraper) and have that linked to a payment into my stripe account by a specific customer. I am not aware of anyone offering this service.

adyda• 11 years ago

All of the links on rotation images and company text go to DoorDash for me. Also, only a short line of text is shown and the rest is cut off. "Lyft uses connect to Create an integ"

This is on IE10 Version: 10.0.9200.17267 (work machine).

Screenshot: http://imgur.com/lddIlhz

krithix2• 11 years ago

Thanks for the heads up, we're looking into it!

needhelpplz2• 11 years ago

wow some people still use IE on HN.

imron• 11 years ago

Wow, some people on HN access the site from work where corporate IT policy may limit the software that runs on their machine.

damonpace• 11 years ago

Lots of great changes that make a world of difference for marketplace builders. From someone who used to use Authorize.net and spent a lot of money building tools around it... I love Stripe. So simple, so smart. Best YC company yet.

abnathan• 11 years ago

Any timeframe on when managed accounts are expanding beyond US/Canada?

krithix2• 11 years ago

I work at Stripe. We're looking to expand as soon as we can in the 18 countries we support (https://stripe.com/global), but no ETA yet I'm afraid. If you're interested in helping us test a private beta, shoot us a note at connect@stripe.com.

Shizka• 11 years ago

How does it look with transfers for other countries than US?

dopamean• 11 years ago

That is not how orbital mechanics work...

dewey• 11 years ago

They are aware of that ;)

https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/580060489796829184

bharris315• 11 years ago

How much of this decision was based upon regulatory / payments compliance pressure?

tbrooks3• 11 years ago

If Stripe is charging 0.5% of funds paid out to managed accounts, does this mean you’re “double dipping”?

collision6• 11 years ago

We're getting rid of the $0.25 transfer fee and replacing it with 0.5% of funds paid out to managed accounts. We do more work (and incur more cost) if you're using managed accounts, so we think it makes sense.

tbrooks3• 11 years ago

Seems like it would require the same amount of work to pay out $10,000 vs. $100,000.

Why scale the fee?

Does this apply to marketplaces/accounts migrating from Balanced? There was an assurance that Stripe would honor Balanced's pricing. https://www.balancedpayments.com/stripe/faq#will-our-pricing...

If you require marketplaces to use managed accounts then it's an extra tax, no?

_pius• 11 years ago

Love it, awesome stuff.

colinsidoti3• 11 years ago

The final piece of the puzzle - for me at least - is the ability to collect money as a business, then pay out my service providers through Stripe.

There's a temptation to just let the money sit in my Stripe account, then payout using a "Special Case Transfer" https://stripe.com/docs/connect/special-case-transfers

But this approach seems non-compliant.

How long before we can payout service providers so the charge is seen as coming from my business, instead of from my customers? (This appears to be the compliance issue.)

An ACH "source" is potentially a good solution (and apparently in beta), but I imagine I'll incur additional fee. Perhaps using my own bank account as a source will be free, but using others will be paid? (Kinda like managed accounts)

bkrausz12• 11 years ago

Do you mean a situation where the service provider is not directly providing the service to the customer, like paying out a caterer for your office lunch? I'd love to better understand exactly what you're trying to use this for.

The short answer is that we're also really excited about the "many-to-many" use case of moving money around. There are many hurdles to getting there, and we're checking them off one by one. This is a leap towards that eventual world.

colinsidoti3• 11 years ago

"like paying out a caterer for your office lunch"

Pretty much. But it's a little hard to envision at that scale.

Think instead about a large company with a set of approved vendors. Execs submit purchase orders to the vendors. The vendors get paid out by check.

Instead, you can payout the vendors through Stripe.

Edit: As I think about this more, I don't think it should be free from my own account, but it's hard to reason what ACH pricing should be. I can send an automated check for $1.50 with Lob today.

brandon2722• 11 years ago

We want to create a service that allows us to ship items on behalf of vendors who just upload artwork. Similar to CafePress. I've been trying to find out if Stripe's "special case transfer" could possibly be used for this but am not having much luck.

(i.e. Accepting a $30 charge for a customer and doing two transfers using source_transaction, one for $10 to Vendor 1 and one for $20 to Vendor 2)

I know that it would be compliant if we setup a Stripe account for each vendor and created the charge directly with their Stripe account but we want to be able to have customers checkout with items from multiple vendors.

alexandersingh• 11 years ago

I assume you need to file a 1099-MISC with the IRS for each managed account that's setup on the system?

If so, you might want to make this reporting requirement more visible in your documentation.

bkrausz12• 11 years ago

We will, by default, send out 1099-Ks to the managed accounts. We'll likely provide some flexibility here depending on what the platform would prefer, but we're still talking to platforms to find out what's ideal for them.

pbreit• 11 years ago

Actually only if account does 200 txns and $20,000.

http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/New-1099-K-Reporting-Requireme...

rjurney• 11 years ago

What is the name of the person that created this design?

bkrausz12• 11 years ago

Philipp Antoni made the gravity header - https://twitter.com/phlntn

Mizza• 11 years ago

What does this mean for those of us who already use Stripe Connect? Do we get support for more countries automatically - do we have to change our code - will the v1 API stop working soon? Please send out an announcement current to Stripe Connect API users with upgrade information!

The new site is very pretty, but also very sluggish in Firefox.

bkrausz12• 11 years ago

Existing Connect integrations will still work: no changes are necessary. Connect has always allowed you to connect directly to accounts in other countries, so no major changes there either.

We're getting some emails out now with more specific "what can I do not"-style information.

milkmanjr• 11 years ago

current balanced customer who is soon to be a stripe convert.

very thrilled about this and being able to payout internationally as a marketplace!

hberg2• 11 years ago

Heads up, another broken link. On this page: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/connecting-to-accounts#manag...

There's a link to learn more about managed accounts: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/managed-accounts

Which just shows "An unexpected error occurred" http://cl.ly/image/3V2k333n0d32

bkrausz12• 11 years ago

Sorry about that! Should be fixed now.

hberg2• 11 years ago

Thanks!

idyllicshine• 11 years ago

Should clicking on the companies (lyft, Kickerstarter..) open in a new tab instead of navigating away from Stripe?

chrischen• 11 years ago

Any stripe engineers here to explain how the new multi-party payments work? The documentation has a new "destination" field but doesn't explain if it can be used as a third party in a normal Stripe Connect charge.

I see a new Stripe-Stripe programmatic transfer, but is that the only way to do multi-party setups?

aantix3• 11 years ago

I'd like to be able to capture someone's credit card for a given amount (deposit), and then charge it later (manually) if certain terms are met. Is this possible under this new system?

ngoel36• 11 years ago

Yes, I believe you've been able to separately auth and capture (up to 7 days) later for a while

https://support.stripe.com/questions/does-stripe-support-aut...

aantix3• 11 years ago

Seven days isn't helpful.

I've been looking at performing this functionality with utilizing a free trial; setup a subscription payment of one year with a three month trial.

If the client meets the requirements, let the subscription charge after three months (then cancel all subsequent subscription payments). If they fail to meet terms within the three month window, cancel the "trial" all together.

Feels hacky.

needhelpplz2• 11 years ago

I want to start a code marketplace using Stripe connect. someone posts a job, people bid on it, someone pays the person doing the job, I take the payment and release it when the work is confirmed to be done.

Is there an existing script that I can use and integrate stripe connect with?

javiercr• 11 years ago

Kudos for the great explanation here: https://stripe.com/docs/recipes/on-demand-app

However I still have one question: is it possible to delay payments to service providers? In other words to do escrow.

Here is our use case: a client books a service (maybe with 30 days in advance), we need to charge the client at that time, but we won't pay the service provider until 24 hours after the service has been provided (so that we've made sure everything went fine).

toomuchtodo• 11 years ago

However I still have one question: is it possible to delay payments to service providers? In other words to do escrow.

Yes: "You can control the transfer schedule for your recipients, which should effectively cover what you need to do. (Sorry this isn't clearer in the docs.) Feel free to email us, too. I'm patrick@stripe.com."

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9200224

kategleason• 11 years ago

gorgeous!!!

apitts• 11 years ago

I was just looking at Connect a few days ago and had one issue - the fact that the customer account needed to bear the fees. Very happy to see the option for the platform account to bear the fees. Much simpler for the customer to understand!

colemorrison2• 11 years ago

So the blog post on connect says "Managed Accounts" are available to anywhere that stripe is supported. However, on the docs, it says that it can only be used in the US and Canada. Which one is it?

bkrausz12• 11 years ago

You can create managed accounts anywhere Stripe is, but your platform needs to be in the U.S. or Canada. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

colemorrison2• 11 years ago

OHHH! That makes SO much more sense. Okay, yeah you guys should clarify that, that's a huge selling point. Thanks for the response.

Xixi2• 11 years ago

Does anyone know if Stripe have plans -in the rather short term- to come to Asia? Japan, or maybe Singapore?

I know this question always comes up so it must be getting obnoxious, and I apologize for asking it yet again, but it's a testimony to how great Stripe is. I'd go further: I think it is a competitive advantage for a startup to be in a country supported by Stripe vs others.

I have a Japanese tea subscription service (https://tomotcha.com), so my business is anchored in Japan. Yet because there is no acceptable payment system here I take payments abroad with all the tax headaches that it entails... It's ok for now because Tomotcha is pretty small, but when it grows I will have to switch.

I'm looking forward to the growth of course, but not to the switch...

victorology• 11 years ago

Either Stripe itself or something like Stripe needs to open in Korea. Payments are a major pain here. :(

harisenbon• 11 years ago

Check out Webpay for payments in Japan. Their API was originally supposed to be a clone of the Stripe API, but have gone off with their own API updates based on the JP market. https://webpay.jp/

Xixi2• 11 years ago

I know webpay, but it only issues payments in JPY while I charge my customers either in USD or EUR... It's great for Japanese companies targeting the Japanese market, but my customers are mostly in North America and Europe.

bemmu• 11 years ago

Cool service, how many subscribers are you at now?

jameshk• 11 years ago

You know Stripe attracts great talent when an API company has some of the best front-end work you've seen.

edmack• 11 years ago

This is great! Well done!

wmboy• 11 years ago

...our platform can support sellers anywhere Stripe operates (18 countries, more coming this year).

Asking from New Zealand, any hints on the "more coming this year" countries?

Stripe Connect v2

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