|
| OmegaPG wrote:
| We are paying roughly 9% fees to stripe which includes currency
| conversion charges.
|
| So if a customer pays us $100, we are getting $91 to our bank
| account which is absolutely ridiculous.
|
| If anyone looking for next $10B-$100B business idea, work on
| making the transaction fees to 1% and you can take business from
| stripe and PayPal immediately.
|
| Wise.com is doing this and I hope more such companies work on
| this.
| [deleted]
| nomilk wrote:
| Could crypto help here, at least for customers who have some in
| a wallet ready to use?
|
| When I checked about 2 years ago, transferring bitcoin from one
| wallet to another was negligibly cheap, although I think it
| took about 20 minutes for the seller to be certain that the
| bitcoin had been sent to them (too slow for most website
| payments).
|
| Curious to know if crypto could solve this problem though, if
| not now, maybe in the future. If some of the 9% fees were
| passed on to customers in the form of lower prices, it could be
| quite appealing and give a price advantage (if only a few %)
| over competitors.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Crypto is too volatile to really make day-to-day purchases
| realistic.
| mattdesl wrote:
| USDC + L2 would be a suitable protocol for day-to-day
| purchases and nearly 0% fee, at least for those already in
| the system. But most of this tech is still basically in
| beta.
| searchableguy wrote:
| Does stripe restrict payout currency to INR in India?
|
| Can you add a bank account which can handle alternative
| currency payout and let your bank handle do conversion?
| merek wrote:
| I'm not an expert, I think by default they payout in the
| currency of the country that your business is located in.
|
| In not sure about India, but in AU, we have the option to
| receive USD payouts to USD accounts in Australian banks, so
| you can avoid Stripe's conversion fees. But now you have USD
| in an AU bank. What are your options? Convert to AUD at the
| bank's terrible exchange rate. Or send the money to a US bank
| (or Wise), paying horrendous international transfer fees.
|
| I hope I'm missing something but I don't see this offering
| from Stripe as being very useful.
| etothepii wrote:
| Not sure about wise's offering in AU but CA and UK you
| could just receive the USD into your AU Wise account and
| pay basically nothing <.5% for FX when compared to spot.
| searchableguy wrote:
| I don't know about AU banks but in India, most big banks
| allow you to convert at 0.3-0.4% + FIRA and interbank
| charge which is around $10. Not great but it's better than
| stripe for bigger amount.
|
| You can also get a multi currency bank account. There are
| some options available to Indians which provide US based
| ACH and IBAN. Be careful with FEMA compliance.
| chinathrow wrote:
| > In not sure about India, but in AU, we have the option to
| receive USD payouts to USD accounts in Australian banks, so
| you can avoid Stripe's conversion fees.
|
| I tried that, didn't work. I opened a local USD account in
| my non-US country and tried to add it for payout to Stripe.
| Stripe only allows (at the time I checked, please correct
| me if that has changed) US based USD accounts with ACH
| routing information.
| [deleted]
| locallost wrote:
| But wise.com is not a card processor?
| OmegaPG wrote:
| Yes. They only do bank to bank. But there is definitely a
| business model here.
|
| If you can offer subscription model and can do bank to bank
| transfer with 0.5% fees, you will disrupt the whole
| subscription industry relying on visa/Master card monopoly.
| Not only this, banks also charge very high currency
| conversion fees which you can disrupt.
|
| You of course need to build lot of things from scratch but
| with most of the banking now a days going online with new
| APIs, it is possible.
| locallost wrote:
| Thanks, I don't doubt that, just wanted to know more
| wise.com or if I misunderstood something.
|
| You're right also, I live in Germany since a couple years
| and and businesses taking money off your bank account is
| definitely a thing here, I don't know for how long. But
| mostly it's done by your electricity utility or by the tax
| man, various fees e.g. the fee for public tv etc. I don't
| know if there are costs to it, but probably yes.
| AnhTho_FR wrote:
| From my understanding, they are not. They provide _payment
| cards_ but _don 't process payment by cards._
| AnhTho_FR wrote:
| I think what Merek meant is:
|
| A workaround to Stripe fees for FX card payments would be
| to have a set of Wise accounts to receive the money in the
| local currency (one account or wallet for each currency)
| _but_ then you 'd still need to pay Wise conversion fees,
| once you want to gather the money from the different
| wallets into a master account
| Aeolun wrote:
| Problem being that the credit card processor already takes 1%,
| so that won't happen.
| OmegaPG wrote:
| Yes.
|
| The disruption has to come from bypassing credit card
| companies like Visa and Mastercard.
|
| In India, almost every merchant is using UPI which saves them
| fees of credit card processing.
|
| The world banking is getting more advanced and technical and
| I am sure payment gateways can bypass the credit card and
| currency conversion fees with direct bank to bank transfer.
|
| For larger Amount, we are asking our customers to use Wise
| instead of stripe or PayPal as the saving for us is
| significant.
| koblas wrote:
| Depending on where you're located you should potentially
| consider a solution that looks more like Payment Processor ->
| Hold in Currency -> Bulk Fx to Local currency. Typically
| business level Fx processing is 2% - with 3% for credit card
| fees.
|
| At scale your Fx fees can be less than 2% of the conversion
| amount, I know that at scale the fees can get down to <0.2% if
| you're moving multiple millions (USD) in a month.
|
| I know that both Adyem and Braintree will capture into local
| currency, so you can avoid Fx fees by the payment processor
| themselves.
| whichquestion wrote:
| Are there any companies arbitraging this % difference by
| collating lots of different businesses transactions into
| larger sums to then move into a particular currency for
| business owners who transact in non local currencies?
| [deleted]
| withinboredom wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Wise does something like this. Protip, you
| can get a Wise business account and collect stripe payments
| in a local currency, then bulk fx it to your local
| currency.
|
| Why Stripe isn't partnering with them, I don't know. My
| bank partners with Wise to get the best exchange rate
| possible (Bunq) when I'm out of the EU. It's fantastic.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Most people also don't understand that with Stripe, you don't
| actually have your own merchant account (this is why they can
| setup your account so fast).
|
| This can become hugely problematic as your business grows since
| you're a sub-account of Stripe business, making you beholden to
| their business practices and costs.
|
| My comments aren't intended to sound negative. There's Pro's and
| Con's to different business models. Getting quick access to the
| robust tools Stripe offers comes at the cost of you giving up
| some control over your companies operations.
| heipei wrote:
| Been using Stripe for years but now I realise that I don't even
| know what plan I'm on and can't see what Stripe is charging me. I
| get a monthly "tax invoice" which includes all charges done
| through Stripe and comes out at ~ 2.9% of the volume, but I don't
| see any line items for Billing or anything else. Where do I find
| this stuff?
| ezekg wrote:
| Reports > Financial Reports > under "Fees" in the report.
| heipei wrote:
| Those are the same numbers as on the tax invoice, and in that
| section it just says "Fees for all charges, including card
| charges and other payment methods." Curious if that number
| already includes charges for things like Subscriptions.
| bredren wrote:
| This came up two months ago, the pricing was described as
| "insidious." [1]
|
| I replied that this description could be extended to include how
| it generated and associated unique customer IDs. The way it is
| built now-a-days it is trying to be the central key for SaaS user
| accounts. Effectively: store all your user data with us.
|
| I thought it was some kind of oversight but it is most likely
| about lock in.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33269824
| jmacd wrote:
| I am the original commenter you had replied to.
|
| I am actually working on https://tier.run in part to help
| create a clean separation of interests between billing (and
| entitlement, and metering, and feature flagging) systems and
| how you store and access application and user data.
|
| With Tier we have `tier whois` [1] which lets you get the
| Stripe Customer ID based on your own userId.
|
| I'd love your feedback if you think there are improvements we
| could make.
|
| 1: https://www.tier.run/docs/cli/whois/
| chasebank wrote:
| When did stripe start charging extra 0.8% for recurring billing?
| I remember building my first online business with stripe api
| right when it came out and recurring billing was a feature, not
| an add on.
| corentin88 wrote:
| In 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16766846
| ryanackley wrote:
| In the USA, there is a huge payment processing API industry.
| Stripe is a great company and it has this family of products that
| work great together but it has lots of competitors that have
| better pricing and better service.
|
| I work in the industry for a payment processor. It's not a
| silicon valley startup (it's basically run by salespeople) but we
| have way better pricing and you can get someone on the phone if
| you have an issue.
|
| Reading HN, you might think Stripe is the only option.
| codegeek wrote:
| Sure but the reason Stripe became Stripe is due to the fact
| that they have an excellent API and dev experience. Most old
| school processors are too difficult to setup and manage and
| have horrendous APIs.e.g: authorize.net
|
| Having said that, feel free to share your company becaise I m
| always open to evaluatin for our company (low 7 figures ARR)
| jrs235 wrote:
| His email is in his profile.
| nomilk wrote:
| > the reason Stripe became Stripe is due to the fact that
| they have an excellent API and dev experience.
|
| That's their reputation, but it doesn't always stack up in
| reality.
|
| Recent example:
| https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1600316372344373249
|
| Canonical HN example:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30535572
|
| The association of Stripe with simplicity and good dev
| experience could be more due to Stripe's marketing/PR than
| the views of devs who've used Stripe APIs, at least from the
| few things I've read.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| >The association of Stripe with simplicity and good dev
| experience could be more due to Stripe's marketing/PR ...
|
| I don't think it's marketing/PR so much as a halo effect
| and reputation from years ago. My experience with stripe 5
| years ago was/is simpler and easier than it is looking at
| it today. More products/services/options/requirements -
| it's more complicated than it was years ago.
|
| But looking at it for a project 5 years ago, it was
| certainly simpler compared to authorize.net for what my
| project needed. Just the UI alone to go in and manage/test
| things was more straightforward and pleasant, even when I
| hit issues and roadblocks. Authorize.net looked like it
| hadn't changed much since 2005 or so when I'd looked at it
| then. May be better now - haven't looked since 2017.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| my recent experience working with the Stripe API lines up
| with this. Based on the reputation I was expecting a lot
| less complexity and strange default behavior when it comes
| to subscriptions/invoicing. Still a good dev experience,
| but not the greatest, most straightforward API ever like
| its reputation.
|
| For example, Stripe applies discounts prior to proration.
| So if a customer applies a $100 per month discount on a
| $1000 subscription, and signs up halfway through the month,
| they're charged (1000 - 100 * 0.5), not the more intuitive
| ((1000 * 0.5) - 100). Nitpicky, but not what I expected.
| acabal wrote:
| Stripe did actually have a great API at one point, when
| they just appeared. Their basics of charging a card and
| managing subscriptions was incredibly simple and developer-
| friendly compared to their competition at the time, like
| Authorize.net or PayPal. I don't think PayPal even had a
| real API back then - you had to use a ` |