
Introducing Stripe UK - woodrow
https://stripe.com/blog/introducing-stripe-uk
======
aculver
For any Ruby on Rails developers in the UK who may now be jumping into Stripe
for the first time because of this, Pete Keen has just released (or is
releasing today) a new book called Mastering Modern Payments
([http://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-
payments](http://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments)) which focus on
Stripe and Rails.

~~~
smickie
I've been using the UK beta for a few months.

Honestly, the API docs and Gem are so good you don't need a book.

From sitting down can looking over the docs to charging my debit card for a
monthly subscription took about an hour (and I'm not even that good with ruby,
if you're a pro you could do it in half an hour I reckon).

~~~
agduncan
I was of the understanding that UK debit cards are not currently supported.
Has this recently changed?

~~~
smickie
It's payment systems that are supported. Not debit or credit cards.

My debit card is from Visa, and Visa is a supported payment system.

I think that's why he makes a point of saying American Express in the blog
post too, it's one of the more obscure payment systems in the UK.

On a side note, I remember my mother, who runs a corner shop, giving anyone
who pays on AmEx the evil eye because they have a higher merchant fee in the
UK and it takes a few extra days to clear.

I wonder if Stripe UK have the same fees for AmEx...

~~~
epo
It used to be a few extra weeks! Quite a few years ago I was buying an
expensive (for me) watch in the UK. I asked if they took Amex, they said
"yes". "What's it worth to use my bank card" I asked. I think they may have
got a little flustered but the difference was £150 on an amount near £1000. It
was the only real benefit I got out of having that card for about 15 years.

~~~
walshemj
I recall when I worked for a big UK company we took our teams industrial
placement students out to dinner at the end of their time with us (around 15
people)

The restaurant refused the company amex card of the team manager and one of
the better off senior members of the team had to put it on his debit card and
claim it back.

------
julesie
I'm a co-founder at Teddle, one of the companies mentioned in the press
release.

When we started Teddle the landscape for payments in the UK looked very very
different. At one point PayPal looked like our best option. In reality their
product would have killed our business (matching customers with independent
house cleaners), with their punitive withholding of funds and lengthy clearing
times.

Then Andy and the guys at Stripe UK came along and blew the competition out of
the water. They have been doing an outstanding job. The product is
ridiculously good, the documentation is awesome and the customer service is
human, friendly and reliable. Honestly I can't praise the product enough.

Well done guys!

------
hiddenfeatures
Oh man... I love that Stripe is finally coming to Europe.

BUT seriously (going on a disappointed rant here): Belgium & the Netherlands
get into private beta and Germany gets nothing? I mean: Come on. BE + NL
together have 27m people - Germany has some 80m AND a world-class economy. I
don't want to bash on our neighbors (God knows we've done that one or two
times in the past), I just want me some Stripe.

I know that the delay is probably because of some ridiculous red tape in
Germany. :-(

tl;dr: Please absolve us from PayMill & the Samwer brother

~~~
jusben1369
No idea but one thing Germany is famous for is the low adoption of credit
cards vs direct debit (ELV) etc - more so than most European countries.
German's tend to find it a deal breaker (locally) if you are a payment gateway
that only supports credit cards. So that could be one reason why but just a
guess.

~~~
k-mcgrady
AFAIK debit cards are supported but limited to Visa and Mastercard.

~~~
hiddenfeatures
n.b. we were talking about DIRECT DEBIT (which is something else entirely from
debit cards). You basically allow a company to directly withdraw money from
your bank account (assuming sufficient funds on the account)

~~~
k-mcgrady
Sorry, misread that. Direct debit support would be nice!

~~~
hiddenfeatures
No worries. Indeed direct debit would be awesome - at least for the marginal
subset of "companies doing business in Germany"

------
mrweasel
Could someone people explain the appeal of Stripe? The APIs are nice, but so a
most other payment providers.

The fee Stripe charges are pretty high. We would never agree to a percentage
of the sale, only a fixed price. The fact that you can't change who process
you credit card payments (can you?) excludes you from getting any good deals
on fees. If you shop around you can save a lot of money.

Honestly getting a merchant account, if that's the excuse for using Stripe,
isn't that hard.

~~~
vidarh
> Honestly getting a merchant account, if that's the excuse for using Stripe,
> isn't that hard.

Have you tried getting a merchant account in Europe for a company taking
online payments with little to no history of processing card payments?

Most banks will laugh you out of their offices.

Once you've established 2-3 years history and some volume, sure, you can start
negotiating drastically lower rates.

~~~
ratherbefuddled
Not my experience at all. We got a merchant account with no problems
whatsoever with online services. We didn't need to negotiate rates either.

------
samwillis
Awesome, congrats guys. We have been using the BETA since the start and its
been very good.

If anyone from Stripe is reading, in your announcement you say:

"In addition to keeping the best parts, we've also built multi-currency
support: the ability for UK businesses to charge customers around the world in
US dollars, British pounds, and Euro. We'll automatically handle all the
conversions for you and deposit daily into your bank account."

My understanding was that we would need a USD account in the UK in order to
charge customers in USD. Have you now fixed that? I can't find anything in the
docs? Or are you saying that we can just charge people GBP no matter where in
the world they are?

~~~
pc
> Have you now fixed that?

We've fixed it :-)

~~~
samwillis
Awesome, thanks Patrick.

How do we do it?

~~~
samwillis
Thanks pc, cannot reply to your comment yet.

In the docs
[https://stripe.com/docs/api#create_charge](https://stripe.com/docs/api#create_charge)
there is no reffrence to exchange rates. Do you return a response that shows
what the exchange rate was and so how much we will be paid in GBP after
charging in USD? (paypal (yuck) do this)

~~~
amfeng
Hey, charge responses now return a reference to a balance transaction (which
represents what you'll actually be paid in).

You can auto expand the balance transaction upon charge creation by passing
expand[]=balance_transaction, or you can retrieve the balance transaction
directly:
[https://stripe.com/docs/api#retrieve_balance_transaction](https://stripe.com/docs/api#retrieve_balance_transaction).

~~~
samwillis
Would that not bundle all the USD payments for the day into one conversion?

I would be very keen to have an individual conversion on each card payment as
that is how our internal database sees the world.

~~~
amfeng
Right -- those are per-charge, not per-day.

~~~
samwillis
Ah, yes. I was distracted by cake in the office and missed that this is a new
endpoint on the API. I thought you were talking about the transfers endpoint.

This is exactly what we wanted. Thanks!

~~~
amfeng
Cake in the office is a great thing to be distracted by. (:

------
markokrajnc
This is great! I have been waiting for this for a loooooong time! I hope they
will come also to other European countries soon. But at least in UK! This is
great!

~~~
toretore
I'd really be interested in knowing why it's not "Stripe EU" instead. What
sort of problems they had trying to do that, and what needs improvement for
that to become reality.

~~~
pc
Mostly because there's a bunch of subtlety around bank transfers and identity
verification. The EU simplifies a lot of the regulatory framework but the
actual operations still entail a decent amount of heterogeneity from country-
to-country.

~~~
toretore
So it's because of technical/operational and not regulatory or legal problems?
What about SEPA, or is that just for "regular people"?

------
alan_cx
Forgive my ignorance, but is this the PayPal replacement/alternative I have
been waiting years for?

If so, I may experience the rare emotion of "happiness".

~~~
kintamanimatt
It's a very good alternative and I'm very that more of the best-of-breed
payment providers are expanding outside the US/Canada.

There's also the German Stripe clone, Paymill. Also, not every country is
heavy on credit/debit cards (think, Poland, Japan, etc) and Adyen is able to
support all kinds of local payment methods.

------
jdg1
I would love to use this but the pricing is a bit of a problem. The Visa
credit price per transaction is only a little bit higher but almost half our
transactions are Visa debit which are charged by our existing provider at a
flat rate of 34p + 10p for the gateway. The Stripe cost for a £60 transaction
would be £1.64. The pricing needs to take into account the higher rate of
debit card usage in the UK.

------
davidjgraph
If you mostly export (i.e sell abroad), there are some additional
considerations for picking a payment provider (I speak from the point of view
of a UK company).

We've been using Shareit for selling software for many, many years and it's
basically 4.9% as fees. The first interesting part for me is the currency
conversion rate. We operate in GBP and all of our sales last month were in
USD. Working out the average rate we got 1.54 USD to 1 GBP. Looking at the
exchange rates for July [0] that seems reasonably close to the mid market
rate.

I'd be interested to know how Stripe determine their conversion rates. If it's
mid-market then we're looking at 4.4% against 4.9%.

The next issue when exporting is whether you have to register formally in the
country you're selling to in order to avoid withholding taxes [1]

The countries we've come up against this to date are the USA, Portugal and
India. The volume we do with the US justifies registering with the IRS and
making a W8-BEN form available to all companies we sell to.

The process for the US is doable and the volume we sell there easily justifies
it. The process for Portugal is awful and the process for India comprises
about 6-8 weeks of utter bureaucratic bullshit [2]. The sales volume from
these countries were not worth going through the process.

If we didn't go through this process and sell directly in these countries the
buyer would have to withhold a proportion of the purchase, usually around 20%.

Shareit is an actual reseller, legally. Stripe isn't, AFAIK. So, Shareit can
deal with the admin in these countries and pass over the same amount they do
as for any country. A few years ago, we hadn't heard of withholding taxes,
it's becoming more and more common as countries try to clamp down on tax
evasion.

It's more strictly enforced the larger the payment amount gets, but my point
is to be aware of the legal differences in payment processing services
regarding foreign withholding tax rules.

Edit : There's actually a third issue as well and that's whether your
insurance covers you to take card information on your site (up to details
regarding the type of SSL certificate you have installed) and, if it does,
whether you comply with all the security constraints the policy imposes. You
may find that the additional premium is more than the cost savings.

[0]
[http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=1Y](http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=1Y)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withholding_tax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withholding_tax)

[2] [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dallaway/pan-card-uk-
company.ht...](http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dallaway/pan-card-uk-company.html)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Withholding is also an issue for anyone selling services, such as software
development.

I work for a US company whilst being in the UK, and a W8-BEN form took most of
a day to finish, and I remember calling the IRS direct to help - and they were
surprisingly helpful and courteous. Nothing like as bad as they are painted
:-\

~~~
kybernetyk
Yeah, I was surprised about the IRS too, when I called them about my W8-BEN.

With a long polish family name and residing in a city with a long German (with
umlauts) name the whole call over a low quality transatlantic line wasn't a
walk in the park. But the IRS employee always stayed nice and helpful. (I
think the address entry took us good 20 minutes alone).

------
javindo
Glad to hear they're finally coming over here!

Somewhat unrelated but:

[https://stripe.com/jobs#eu_developer_evangelist](https://stripe.com/jobs#eu_developer_evangelist)

This is my absolute dream job description, unfortunately as a CS undegrad I
think I'd find myself somewhat under qualified for it.

~~~
voltagex_
Reach out anyway, you never know!

------
Major_Grooves
What is now the difference between using Stripe and Paymill? Any objective
benefit to using either?

asking this as an ex-Rocket guy with my own startup that needs payment
integration soon. I've started the Paymill process but not sent the docs in
yet.

~~~
sdrinf
Having used both in production:

\- [https://stripe.com/chat](https://stripe.com/chat) VS email

-You usually don't need to "send the docs in" (being hungarian, they asked for my ID, but email was fine), which reduces time to launch

-After having launched with Paymill, production started throwing strange errors. Root cause analysis revealed, that they don't have USD / EUR acceptance enabled by default; and they asked for extra paperwork to have that. This is not a good problem to have when users are hitting the payment wall.

~~~
germangirl
yeh but this problem can be easily solved. change the settings in your
account, fill in the pdf & scan the form. sent overvia email - done. easy as
that.

~~~
yadoga
In theory, yes. But in practice we've been struggling for a month now to have
Paymill's support enable USD support for one of our customers. After two weeks
of silence, they came up with some excuse that the forms had some info
missing. After sending those in for a second and a third time we've been told
that at that point it'd be only a matter of 24 hours to have their fulfilling
bank green light the USD account. That was ten days ago and since then, our
emails keep being unanswered. At this point I even doubt, Paymill offers any
real USD support at all. Being the startup that they are, the support for us
has been ridiculously bad.

------
asb
Am I right in thinking that Stripe has no option for a hosted payments page?
This makes it much clearer to users that the site they are in does not process
their credit card details correctly. I am aware of Stripe Checkout.

~~~
nhangen
The beauty of stripe is that you CAN keep users on your site and process
payments via a great API. Hosted payments would defeat the purpose.

~~~
asb
Yes I recognise having that _option_ is an advantage, a major one for some
cases (e.g. e-commerce). However I wouldn't be keen to put my credit card
details in to a form on e.g. a blogger's website soliciting donations.

~~~
jusben1369
I think the problem is that Stripe is not a very well known brand yet (outside
devs). So I can see your point where it's a global brand like PayPal or a well
known bank/payment gateway in a country. But I'm not sure if you're nervous
about putting your card details in that going to something called "Stripe"
makes it seem much more trustworthy?

------
AhtiK
Interesting that Braintree went to the whole EU at once while Stripe seems to
take it country by country.

Not sure if it's related but at around that time Braintree changed the pricing
to add Interchange fee that depends on the card used, service offered etc.
Making the final pricing somewhat confusing but maybe more affordable as a
result.

Does anyone know if Stripe account setup&approval for UK is just as
straightforward as for US? With Braintree they ask for financial (turnover &
EBIT) and shareholder information when applying as an EU company, no idea if
it's also the case for US companies.

~~~
sleepyhead
One thing to note with Braintree though is that they rolled out in the EU with
a flat pricing, but a few months later changed it to having a minimum 100EUR
in transaction fees. That is a very big change and it becomes not a good
alternative for a small company to start with. Stripe has higher fees but no
fixed fees.

------
bowlofpetunias
Why is Stripe so interesting? As far as I can tell, they still only offer one
payment method, credit cards.

That makes them quite uncompetitive in most countries where credit cards are
just one of the many online payment methods, and completely useless in
countries where most only payment has already shifted to direct transfers
without the cost and hassle of going through credit card companies.

The movement is now towards harmonizing direct payments and mobile payment.
Using credit cards for online payment feels so yesterday to me.

~~~
ux-app
could you expand on this please? I'm from Australia and for us, payment online
means credit card pretty much 100% of the time.

 _" harmonizing direct payments and mobile payment"_ \-- I assume direct
payments are direct debit from savings account? What is a "mobile payment".

How are these direct debit payments made? Do you know of any payment
processors that process this type of payment?

I'm keen to hear how other parts of the world handle payments. Thanks.

~~~
ottbot
Take a look at what [http://gocardless.com](http://gocardless.com) are doing
with Direct Debit in the UK. Not sure what "mobile payment" really means,
outside of in-app purchases?

------
jbrooksuk
I've been using their beta for my startup, the API is amazing. I've only
tested it with my own cards, but it's worked a treat (my SaaS isn't solid to
be released yet).

Love them!

------
helipad
This is good news, and hopefully websites will vote with their feet.

Stripe may work out more expensive than PayPal, but that extra cost is
probably offset by the amount spent on heart medication.

~~~
madaxe
Never mind PayPal, they're more expensive than the commodity players in the
UK, like SagePay.

Stripe's strategy is all about developer-led adoption, and their approach to
their tech belies this. Unfortunately, in reality, developers have as much say
as to which PSP their client uses as the cabin boy does what course the
captain should sail.

I run an eCommerce firm - we've mooted stripe to all of our customers, as we
like the look of their approach - but none will adopt, purely on the basis of
cost.

~~~
noir_lord
For stripe to be more expensive than Paypal I'd need to bill 15,000 a month.

That is a nice problem to have (and in fairness it's a .5% different or about
about 75 quid).

On 15,000 billable I'll take a 300 a month hit to _never have to deal with
PayPal again_.

Broken sandbox, flaky API, customer service reps from the Hannibal Lecter
school of customer service, payment frozen, ridiculous demands on holding cash
and proving you are who you say you are, high pressure sales.

Screw PayPal, I'll drive to my customer and take cash before I use them again.

~~~
madaxe
If you're billing £2m a month, it's a big difference.

------
deskpro
We'd love to move to Stripe; the one issue is that you can't send us $USD to
our UK based $USD account via a wire transfer (like Amex does for example).
Instead, it seems the only option is for you to send us £GBP after charging
another 2% on top. This is both expensive currency conversion; but we also
spend $USD so have to pay to turn our £GBP back into $USD!

Fix this, and we'd move in a heartbeat.

~~~
collision
We don't support making our daily transfers via wires, but if you have a US-
routable USD bank account we can transfer USD to that without conversion.

~~~
deskpro
Do you know of any UK bank that will provide a US-routable USD bank account?

~~~
tonyedgecombe
HSBC will but they will charge you for it.

~~~
deskpro
You don't happen to have a contact there do you? Can't find much online about
it. So long I don't have to move other accounts that would work fine.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I don't but if ask in your branch I'm sure they will point you in the right
direction.

------
1bo1bo1
Does anybody has used GoCardless or Braintree? What advantages there are
between Stripe and those other ones?

~~~
lbarrow
I'm an engineer at Braintree. The way I see it when you compare Braintree and
Stripe in the UK:

\- Stripe has instant signup. Braintree does not (yet). You have to send us a
few documents; the signup process takes a few days.

\- Stripe multicurrency support is limited to USD, EUR, and GBP. Braintree can
accept payments in 130 currencies and settle in the following currencies:

AUD - Australian dollar CAD - Canadian dollar DKK - Danish krone CHF -
Switzerland francs EUR - European Union euro GBP - British pound HKD - Hong
Kong dollar JPY - Japanese yen NOK - Norwegian krone NZD - New Zealand dollar
SEK - Swedish krona USD - US dollar ZAR - South African rand

Being able to settle in DKK, CHF, NOK or SEK might make a big difference to
merchants with large customer bases in Northern Europe.

\- Stripe charges a 2% currency conversion fee if you settle in a different
currency than you present. Braintree does not.

\- The pricing structures are different. Stripe charges 2.4% + 20p per charge;
Braintree charges on an interchange plus model: IC + 0.9% + 10p, with a 100
GBP monthly minimum.

Finally, of course, our products are different as well. Braintree.js and
Stripe.js don't work the same way, and our APIs have different capabilities.

~~~
sleepyhead
The 100 EUR minimum fee per month in Europe was a show-stopper for us. We were
about to develop an integration with Braintree in our SaaS
([http://makeplans.net](http://makeplans.net) \- online appointment
scheduling) but as our clients are small and have little volume Braintree was
not an option after changing from no fixed fees to 100 EUR / month.

------
justplay
To Stripe team,

You are doing great and fast. Keep going.

------
buddhika
Not to spam the thread but if any UK merchant is looking for an invoicing
product supporting Stripe, check CurdBee here - [http://vesess.com/survey-
results-and-stripe-uk/](http://vesess.com/survey-results-and-stripe-uk/)

------
noir_lord
Damn.

Between Stripe and gocardless we _finally_ have a viable zero-friction way of
taking payments.

This is brilliant!.

------
nhangen
Really excited about this because Stripe is the most popular gateway for our
WordPress plugin and this opens new doors for many of our customers in the UK
that don't wan't to use Paypal.

Would love to see them continue spreading East.

------
krmmalik
How do I get a job with this company? I hear nothing but great things about
their product and the working culture there. I want to be a part of it.

People from Stripe. If you're reading this, I'd like to work for you.

Can we talk?

~~~
collision
We'd love to hear from you. We're hiring in the US, UK and in a few other
countries.

[https://stripe.com/jobs](https://stripe.com/jobs) & jobs@stripe.com

~~~
krmmalik
Sent you an email as soon as I typed my comment. Please look out for an email
from "Khuram Malik". It should have landed in your inbox just now.

Thank you for responding :)

------
woodylondon
Just signed up. How crazy easy that was, no sending in a ton of information of
waiting. Live account in 2mins. In fact it's cheaper than PayPal Pro! Paypal,
Worldpay you are doomed!

------
joshdotsmith
Every time I got an email asking to join the beta, I asked the same question.
I'm sure I'm getting annoying, but I'll ask again:

When can US customers start charging UK customers?

~~~
collision
You can already charge UK customers, but I presume you mean UK customers in
GBP. This is on our roadmap to add. (Most of the heavy lifting is already done
for the reverse in the UK.)

------
dodgrile
Adding to the people happy about this - we've been using the beta for a while,
took us a couple of hours to integrate it. Really nice to work with with.

------
k-mcgrady
One 'feature' that would make a big difference in the UK is better debit card
support - specifically for Maestro.

~~~
pc
We decided against supporting them since Maestro cards are falling out of use.
(See my other comment in the thread.)

~~~
k-mcgrady
Ah, I'm in Northern Ireland. One of our main banks (Danske) issues Maestro as
the only debit card option making it one of the most used cards here. Are
there any plans to add support of has it been completely ruled out?

Edit: Did a bit of research and it looks like Danske is finally offering Visa
Debit as an option.

------
knes
Once they rollout the marketplace feature to UK users, this will truly be the
best piece of service around.

GG to the stripe Team

------
k-mcgrady
Been using it in the beta for a couple of months. Surprised at how simple it
was to get running.

------
workhere-io
Will companies located in other EU countries than the UK be able to use this?

~~~
k-mcgrady
It's available in a few other EU countries in beta: Belgium, France, Ireland,
The Netherlands. Details here:
[https://stripe.com/global](https://stripe.com/global)

------
lamby
Thanks for the cupcakes.

------
matzipan
Welcome to europe. Been waiting for you for a long time guys.

------
lifeisstillgood
Great. Now I have no excuses not to launch a side project

------
duiker101
It's happening!!!

