Stripe has been amazing for us. We've even gotten emails from them (most recently Saikat!) about how we were accidentally hitting their API twice. They helped us find a bug. No other company I've integrated with us paid that close attention to such matters. We've changed our internal usage of Stripe many times (from doing lots of recurring work with various plans and invoice item adding) to just doing simple charges and it's worked great every time.<p>We're quite proud of our Stripe-powered CC form on Picplum! <a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/186198/Screenshots/t26p.png" rel="nofollow">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/186198/Screenshots/t26p.png</a>
I have always attributed PayPal's problems to having to perform fraud prevention on a massive scale. That's where I understand most of the initial difficulty comes from in getting a PayPal account setup: they have to weed out scams and money laundering. Same with the horror stories I read: most of those people have circumstances that would also preclude them from a standard merchant account.<p>So is Stripe doing fraud prevention differently? Put another way, are they an entirely different animal from PayPal and Google Checkout, or are they betting that they can do a better job at what PayPal and Google Checkout already do?
I love Stripe and it's been awesome to use, but must repeat a question I asked in another thread. I wonder if that level of simplicity is sustainable for them going forward. The reason other payment providers have paperwork and approval processes is because of liability and the reality that there are unscrupulous merchants out there. Is Stripe assuming an increased liability because of the ease at which anybody can just sign up?
Stripe has been fantastic for us at <a href="http://mailgun.net" rel="nofollow">http://mailgun.net</a><p>Aside from solving the problem of dealing with recurring payments, they bring some unexpected benefits to the table. Their reporting (and the overall dashboard design) is so good that we canceled our original plans for building our own reporting completely - we just link directly to Stripe reports and customer pages from our own backoffice admin portal.
We were lucky in that Stripe was made available right as we were starting <a href="http://www.ginzametrics.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.ginzametrics.com</a>. We never had to deal with the painful issues that we've seen other companies go through with their billing systems.<p>Their dashboard has also come a long way so that many of the back office management things I thought I was going to have to build have been taken care of. You can create / manage plans, customers and more. It's hard to believe nobody has solved this problem until now but I'm glad that somebody finally did.
What is it about Stripe that is taking Google and Paypal a long time to imitate?
Article mentioned api took tons iterations and stringent auditing, but the api is now known and auditing established companies should be relatively faster.
It seems unlikely that the first mover advantage will allow enough time for Stripe to make a dent in the market. Flying under the radar longer might be better, but congrats to the team for all the accomplishments.
Stripe looks so awesome that it's got me thinking about charging for things that I might not have bothered charging for in the past. I think that's one of the unseen benefits. I'm looking forward to using Stripe.
Been very pleased working with Stripe for one of my projects. It just feels like it was very carefully thought out. Hope they continue to make strides in the developer community.
We're loving it over at <a href="http://coursebookapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://coursebookapp.com</a>. We've been happily humming along for a few months, PayPal-free.
Please come to Australia!<p>I can't confirm or deny I'm working on a direct competitor.<p>Am I serious? Or joking, just to light a fire under you?<p>Please hurry! :)
Stripe is great, simple and awesome support. Once I got past the super simple first charge, I had some technical questions. I jumped into their support chat and had my question answered, plus some helpful php links.
If only they would come to Europe (or any European alternative would rise and stand up against Paypal).<p>They're an amazing and promising startup and I do hope they succeed soon in expanding across the ocean.
Here's how my startup ended up using Stripe:
After being told by Paypal I couldnt use Paypal at all (due to my business model being a violation of their Acceptable Use Policy) and then more recently Braintree telling me I could only process low number transactions (less than $250), Im happy to say that <a href="http://www.sponsorist.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.sponsorist.com</a> now processes payments with Stripe.
Seems like a great service. Thanks for the article.<p>How does Stripe line up in terms of services compared to GoCardless which was up here the other day: <a href="https://gocardless.com/" rel="nofollow">https://gocardless.com/</a><p>Differences in the agreement / metrics / UI / API? Seems like the 1.9% fee difference could add up.
Hehe the desk shown there is exactly the same setup at <a href="http://stripe.com/jobs" rel="nofollow">http://stripe.com/jobs</a> page. And yet none of the other workstations come with $1500 Herman Miller Embodys...<p>I can also identify a pair of grados in the far right. Aging SR60s if I had to guess...
This is completely off topic for the business model, but how do you like the orange Embody chair in the last picture? It looks like the fabric is getting dyed from jeans, but other than that, how is the actual chair?
AS businesses scale, is it fair to assume they would want to start accepting and storing credit card information - basically the costs would be much lower? If so how do they meet security requirements/compliance?
does anyone know if there is a way to transfer credit cards from Stripe to another 3rd party if they raise their rates? (I'm worried about this being a "low introductory offer")<p>Or do you have to solicit credit card info from all your customers again?
If you read about the early founding of PayPal you will find one of the big issues they faced was fraud. I hope they give that angle enough thought otherwise they are going to start leaking cash like the Costa Concordia took on water.