I have read horror stories about Stripe. What else is out there?
I have worked on and managed a lot of e-commerce sites. If you can open a merchant account with a bank (which is not necessarily easy) you can use any number of processors. Braintree is the one several of my clients use. PayPal owns Braintree but it works separately from PayPal’s credit card offerings.
If you don’t have a merchant bank account you have to use an intermediary like Stripe or PayPal. They use their own merchant account and charge higher fees. I’ve used both and find them about the same, though I think Stripe integration with a web site is a bit simpler. Most of my clients use Stripe and none of them has had serious issues. When I’ve had support issues I got them resolved quickly, though it seems like PayPal has more bureaucracy.
Not every terrible review is from owners who are not familiar with credit card processing procedures. Especially considering Slack is fairly new and already has 1000s of terrible reviews.
Anyway, I am familiar with how merchant accounts and the intermediaries work.
Thanks for recommending Braintree, they are already on my list.
Most all the complaints I've seen about PayPal have to do with someone selling a pricey item and the buyer claims it did not meet their expectations. In those cases PayPal seems to side with the buyer and refunds their money, and that makes sense. They shouldn't be expected to arbitrate those issues because they are not in that business and have no legal authority to do so (as far as I know).
I honestly don't know what PayPal's legal obligations are in cases like that but it's clear they don't want to be in the business of enabling the defrauding of people.
In my case, PayPal has never been a problem for me.
