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0 pointsjonstaab6y ago0 comments

Yeah, depends on your business, but for us Stripe is only necessary for new customers or for folks to update their billing information once in a blue moon. I definitely envy anyone getting multiple new customers per minute.

Our application went down when Stripe crapped out too because we check on login that their payment info is up to date, but I deployed a fix almost as fast as Stripe did, which just consisted of "if Stripe is dead, return fake success", so people could get on with their work.

Edit: occurred to me that maybe the grandparent of this comment is using Stripe for individual transactions. If so, may I suggest you use a payment processor that won't take 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction? Those are relatively high rates. Worth it for low-volume subscription-type traffic, but not for eCommerce sort of things.

Edit 2: regarding the previous edit, it's complex, and it depends. You do you.

0 comments

8 comments · 2 top-level

mattbk16y ago· 3 in thread

Do you have any payment processors to suggest who don't take cuts that high?

jlaurend6y ago

You can negotiate with Stripe if you're at high enough volumes. It's likely that the "best" choice of payment processor is heavily dependent on the specific business in question. If you need agility and developer friendliness, Stripe is hard to beat. If you're trying to grind out every last percent of margin, you'll have to shop around and see what you can negotiate (and the offers you get will likely depend on the nature of your business, chargebacks/fraud, etc).

jonstaabOP6y ago

I have to admit I was thinking primarily of my company's use case, which is serving brick-and-mortar. This is a pretty different picture from card-not-present transactions, but if you're a low-risk business from the point of view of credit card processors, 2.9% is still at the high end. If you're brick-and-mortar, you can get rates as low as .25% sometimes.

Fattmerchant, Gravity Payments, and Worldpay are all great options for brick and mortar, and offer online payments too. Paypal is also cheaper than Stripe for US businesses.

As always, it depends, and it's complex. I probably was too confident in my above answer.

buildawesome6y ago

disclaimer: I work at Gravity Payments AMA.

Stripe is an aggregator, which means they collect all payments and distribute to their clientele. This is why merchant processors like Square and Stripe can often get their customers up and running more quickly. Lower underwriting requirements = less regulation on the merchant. The level of risk is higher so they have to charge higher rates to cover their losses of fraud.

Gravity Payments is an Independent Sales Organization (ISO) which means they underwrite each merchant and "approve" each merchant account with their backend processor. This equals less fraud and more flexible pricing.

We do offer integrations and also have an online product that can process ecomm transactions for developer usage.

LocalPCGuy6y ago· 3 in thread

> if Stripe is dead, return fake success

Just a thought, might want to make sure that cannot be exploited by blocking the Stripe API when someone logs into your app?

shkkmo6y ago

I would assume that the check is

1) made server side, so can't be blocked by the client

2) only made to prompt people to update their payment info if needed

jonstaabOP6y ago

Correct, the check is server-side. Nothing the client can do about it.

1 more reply

XMPPwocky6y ago

That'd only work if the client/web page is doing the API calls, not if the backend was doing them, right?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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8 comments · 2 top-level

mattbk16y ago· 3 in thread

Do you have any payment processors to suggest who don't take cuts that high?

jlaurend6y ago

jonstaabOP6y ago

Fattmerchant, Gravity Payments, and Worldpay are all great options for brick and mortar, and offer online payments too. Paypal is also cheaper than Stripe for US businesses.

As always, it depends, and it's complex. I probably was too confident in my above answer.

buildawesome6y ago

disclaimer: I work at Gravity Payments AMA.

We do offer integrations and also have an online product that can process ecomm transactions for developer usage.

LocalPCGuy6y ago· 3 in thread

> if Stripe is dead, return fake success

Just a thought, might want to make sure that cannot be exploited by blocking the Stripe API when someone logs into your app?

shkkmo6y ago

I would assume that the check is

1) made server side, so can't be blocked by the client

2) only made to prompt people to update their payment info if needed

jonstaabOP6y ago

Correct, the check is server-side. Nothing the client can do about it.

1 more reply

XMPPwocky6y ago

That'd only work if the client/web page is doing the API calls, not if the backend was doing them, right?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse