It's interesting to see:<p>- Square become Stripe, while Stripe becomes Square<p>- Stripe owning the whole user experience in purchasing<p>- If they own the physical end points, will they eventually cut out credit card companies? You can already see that they are pushing for collecting emails with checkout.js. The first step is to have direct contact with the end user.<p>- If they cut out credit card companies, what's to stop them from moving into personal payments (e.g. Square Cash, Venmo) and then banking?
We spent a lot of time building a terminal at Sidestep on top of Stripe (and a few other processors). Everything on the in-person payment level was done through an iOS or Android device. The hardest part wasn't managing devices (they could log in on almost any device), but the hardware integration for accepting credit cards. It exists in various places, but none of it could do exactly what we wanted to do. CardFlight was the closest to being a stripe friendly api for swiping cards. Usually the devices for swiping cards were too expensive and the failure rate was high. I don't think swiping hardware has gone down, unless you're using Square.<p>But hardware costs aside, the ability to fully integrate with the API on a terminal level is the most powerful thing here. It allows for so many cool POS integrations like the one we building at Sidestep.<p>To me, the coolest thing about this is that it supports Stripe Connect so you can create a POS that's used by others without having to deal with any money transfer yourself. Customer swipes card -> your software -> client's bank account.
A shot across the bow against Square. This will be very interesting. Payments has always been a race to the bottom, I wonder how quickly rates will drop for POS payment providers now that Stripe is going after that business and directly against Square.
Wondering if this could enable use-cases for in-person subscription selling. I.e. selling SaaS/subscription content at conferences and tradeshows.
Starting a subscription in-person seems like a game-changer.<p>Also, attribution of in-store purchases to marketing efforts is so hard. I bet Stripe could help with this, e.g. starting with email address, or tying an online account to an in-person transaction.
I am working with a company that has small physical stores processing hundreds of payments every day... and having to rely on all the existing crappy hardware for taking payments is a pain in the a$$.. this looks like it could change the game - I'm applying for invite and see what happens next
Some ideas:<p>1) Flash up a QR code (and/or NFC) on the device to allow for crypto payments/buy/sell.<p>2) Flash up a QR code (and/or NFC) to sell custom store tokens or loyalty points.
Looks awesome, already requested an invite and can't wait to put it in practice.<p>The next thing that I really want from Stripe is an API for the analytics they generate. I would love to be able to display the data that they are already showing in their web application via something like their elements library. I want my customers to have a better sense of how their business is doing, without having to duplicate the work that Stripe is already doing.
Living in Russia i every time wondering why Stripe or square companies exist. We have batch of banks which doing this card acquiring, mobile phone operators who made pos terminals with internet connection and online tax services. And now i see stripe pos like back in years ago. Wtf.
Pretty interesting. I wonder if this is going to eventually turn into something comparable to Shopify's hardware POS offerings[0].<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.shopify.com/pos/features#hardware" rel="nofollow">https://www.shopify.com/pos/features#hardware</a>
I really hope they have a web based API, not requiring a native app. If they do, we would love to use them for our PWA (<a href="https://usebx.com" rel="nofollow">https://usebx.com</a>) as a bunch of customers ask for this regularly.
Absolutely great. This industry(card processing - esp. in person) is mired by a ton of ambiguity and it would take a company like Stripe to open it up to innovation. Cannot wait to see what comes out of this from the ecosystem.
We have developed a POS for salons and spa and have been working with various in-store payment solutions - including Square. None of the existing solutions meet our needs.<p>I have applied for an invite - can't wait to get access.
Can someone clarify what the use-case is for this new functionality? I've regularly used POS stripe devices based on iPads, is the idea this allows Stripe to be used on proprietary POS devices?
anyone know if it will support pre-auth .. I own a nightclub and this would be clutch. I saw they have a preauth endpoint. But, can I preauth for $1 and capture $100