It's nice to see Stripe coming here, but I wonder how much demand there really is for it. Many (Japanese) people I know would rather stick to bank transfers and payment at convenience stores than use credit cards. All of our company-to-company business is handled with bank transfers. The only reason we have a credit card is for international transactions, I guess.<p>On a semi-related side note, I saw Square out in the wild for the first time the other week -- I went to a newish bar and asked the owner if he took credit card; he said he'd bought something and would try it out with my card and it turned out to be Square's dongle, which I've seen in convenience stores here.
Is there any guide about what it takes for Stripe to launch in a country? From this article it seems that it was entirely Stripe's choice to launch in Japan (rising culture of startups apparently) so why not entering the Eastern Europe (Poland. Croatia, Romania etc) too?<p>Take Romania for example, we would love to have a decent alternative to PayPal, are there any legislation impediments that prevents Stripe from entering here? Also, what exactly are the costs for Stripe when launching in a new country?
I know they should be doing their best to roll out internationally as soon as possible. But in Brazil everybody is fed up with all the existing payment solutions.<p>Please Stripe, come take our money. (I'm not joking).
finally.
I've been waiting for Stripe to come to Japan.
I operate a hostel, SPACE riverhouse, in Nikko, Japan <a href="http://space.st" rel="nofollow">http://space.st</a> and use Squarespace and the reservation system I use also integrates with Stripe. The bonus will be a little store front.<p>I have a square reader (does't integrate well) and paypal (clunky widgets that don't really apply).<p>Really excited about this.
I'll be interested to see how well they do. In Japan there is Webpay which is almost a carbon copy of Stripe and was recently bought by Line so now has some clout behind it.
This is a step in the right direction, sadly as of this writing only JPY are supported [1]. I'll be switching tomotcha.com as soon as it supports USD. And probably open a bottle of champagne to celebrate.<p>I love you Stripe, keep up the good work!<p>[1] <a href="https://support.stripe.com/questions/which-currencies-does-stripe-support#japan" rel="nofollow">https://support.stripe.com/questions/which-currencies-does-s...</a>
Looks like the hot payment startups are finally getting serious about Asia. Braintree recently launched in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia, now Stripe in Japan.<p>Assuming they will want to avoid wasting resources battling each other the next logical step would be for Stripe to launch in South Korea and for Braintree to launch in Indonesia.
Great to see Stripe in another country. I keep checking Stripe's blog and global page for news of Stripe in South Africa. Hope Africa will be next after Asia.