Kicking off Stripe’s private beta in India

By the way, stripe has a cool new project, &quot;stripe-mock&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;stripe&#x2F;stripe-mock" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;stripe&#x2F;stripe-mock</a><p>It lets you run a local stripe API on your machine. I&#x27;ve got high hopes in it. This could be the cure to building resilient stripe tests on local machines.<p>The maintainer @brandur seems to know his stuff in regards to rest apis.

I have really high hopes from this. There is currently no good way for a SaaS startup in India to get money from international customers. I think this is why many are forced to incorporate in the US&#x2F;Singapore&#x2F;etc. I am a single founder working on a SaaS project and receiving payments from outside India is one of the biggest challenges for me. I do not want to raise funds but may have to got that route just so that I can incorporate outside India and start receiving payments.<p>I have three requests for Stripe:<p>1) I hope that Stripe does not come out with a limited version for India, and that it is possible to charge international customers a variable amount every month, like you can do in the US.<p>2) I also hope that they come up with a prompt way of issuing FIRCs for every payment received. Without an FIRC there is no way to prove that the transaction was an export and therefore you have to pay GST on it, which is normally 18% for services. This reason alone is pushing me to incorporate in some other country. I stand to lose thousands of dollars this year because I can&#x27;t get an FIRC for the payments I receive via Paypal&#x2F;Wire transfer&#x2F;Transferwise.<p>Paypal and Transferwise have procedures to get FIRCs, but when you approach their banks they either don&#x27;t respond or come up with hundred reasons to not issue one. Citibank absolutely sucks at this. I really hope that Stripe just charges me whatever they want and couriers the FIRCs to my address automatically.<p>3) I hope that Stripe has a legal setup that is compatible with RBI regulations regarding the filling up of SOFTEX forms. There are some restrictions which in my understanding prohibit Indians from using international gateways like fastspring.

Oh god yes, thank you! I&#x27;ve wanted this for so long. I&#x27;m building a SaaS and I seriously considered paying $500 for Stripe Atlas to incorporate in the US just for Stripe. (I don&#x27;t expect my crowd to be from any particular country, so a global payments vendor is the best option.)<p>The state of payments here is sub-par; while providers are still coming up, the documentation is just not sufficient (at least not up to Stripe&#x27;s standards), the APIs are a bit convoluted, and the whole thing feels shaky. Plus, Stripe is trusted by customers, so I bet at least a few of them would be more comfortable if they see the familiar Stripe payment form.

&gt;In just the past two years, the percentage of India’s population connected to the internet has more than doubled to 500 million users<p>This is the statistic that will change the world more than a little bit. This is partly because the richest man in India has spent $25bn on telecom infrastructure and acquisition of new customers.<p>Here&#x27;s a related article - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;business&#x2F;21718495-jios-100m-new-customers-cost-cool-25bn-acquire-mukesh-ambani-has-made-business-worlds" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;business&#x2F;21718495-jios-100m-n...</a>

This is going to be tough. The competition in payment ecosystem is pretty hot in India. You have Alibaba funded paytm with about 250 million users. They provide digital wallet services which can be used for buying anything from flights tickets to electronics online or paying for Uber. Apart from that they are also present offline, you can but grocery or even tea with that. Additionally they also have payments bank licence so you can have your bank account there itself. Then there is Jio money funded by India s richest man which also operates in telecom and has roughly 100 million users, they also have a payments bank licence. Finally there is Amazon pay, which is moving slowly but has recently tied up with lot of websites for movies or online food delivery. So the competition is likely to be fierce.

What&#x27;s the credit&#x2F;debit card penetration like in India? I recall most transactions happening in cash when i visited a few years ago. Which also led to amazon and flipkart offering cash on delivery payment methods.<p>Did something change in relation to that? coz if not then stripe is gonna have a hard time finding customers

As someone who doesn&#x27;t know Stripe well, because it hasn&#x27;t been available in India, is it just a payment gateway, allowing me to put a Buy button in my site or app to charge someone&#x27;s credit card, debit card, net banking or Paytm?

It would be interesting to watch Stripe competing with the Razorpay which started as the Stripe of India. Both are funded by YC.

Is the Indian Stripe account same in functionality as the US account? Or is it restricted in some way due to the strict RBI rules in India?

I&#x27;m still waiting for Stripe to launch in the UK&#x27;s Crown Dependencies. I&#x27;m based in Jersey, and we have no (easy) marketplace payment solution.<p>Currently using Safecharge, which is quite good, however the setup process requires submitting 10+ documents with details on the company structure, UBOs and nature of business.

Razorpay (funded by YC) is a competitor to Stripe in India. Has anyone tried using it? How was your experience?

Can you do subscriptions, how does it work with the compulsory 3D secure rules?

Does this allow companies outside of India to accept payment from Indians without an international credit card?

Will this accept RuPay?