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 (<a href="http://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments" rel="nofollow">http://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments</a>) which focus on Stripe and Rails.
I'm a co-founder at Teddle, one of the companies mentioned in the press release.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Well done guys!
Oh man... I love that Stripe is finally coming to Europe.<p>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.<p>I know that the delay is probably because of some ridiculous red tape in Germany. :-(<p>tl;dr: Please absolve us from PayMill & the Samwer brother
Could someone people explain the appeal of Stripe? The APIs are nice, but so a most other payment providers.<p>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.<p>Honestly getting a merchant account, if that's the excuse for using Stripe, isn't that hard.
Awesome, congrats guys. We have been using the BETA since the start and its been very good.<p>If anyone from Stripe is reading, in your announcement you say:<p>"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."<p>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?
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!
Forgive my ignorance, but is this the PayPal replacement/alternative I have been waiting years for?<p>If so, I may experience the rare emotion of "happiness".
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.
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).<p>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.<p>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%.<p>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]<p>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.<p>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.<p>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%.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=1Y" rel="nofollow">http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=1Y</a><p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withholding_tax" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withholding_tax</a><p>[2] <a href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dallaway/pan-card-uk-company.html" rel="nofollow">http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dallaway/pan-card-uk-company.ht...</a>
Glad to hear they're finally coming over here!<p>Somewhat unrelated but:<p><a href="https://stripe.com/jobs#eu_developer_evangelist" rel="nofollow">https://stripe.com/jobs#eu_developer_evangelist</a><p>This is my absolute dream job description, unfortunately as a CS undegrad I think I'd find myself somewhat under qualified for it.
What is now the difference between using Stripe and Paymill? Any objective benefit to using either?<p>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.
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.
Interesting that Braintree went to the whole EU at once while Stripe seems to take it country by country.<p>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.<p>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.
Why is Stripe so interesting? As far as I can tell, they still only offer one payment method, credit cards.<p>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.<p>The movement is now towards harmonizing direct payments and mobile payment. Using credit cards for online payment feels so yesterday to me.
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).<p>Love them!
This is good news, and hopefully websites will vote with their feet.<p>Stripe may work out more expensive than PayPal, but that extra cost is probably offset by the amount spent on heart medication.
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!<p>Fix this, and we'd move in a heartbeat.
Not to spam the thread but if any UK merchant is looking for an invoicing product supporting Stripe, check CurdBee here - <a href="http://vesess.com/survey-results-and-stripe-uk/" rel="nofollow">http://vesess.com/survey-results-and-stripe-uk/</a>
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.<p>Would love to see them continue spreading East.
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.<p>People from Stripe. If you're reading this, I'd like to work for you.<p>Can we talk?
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!
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:<p>When can US customers start charging UK customers?
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.