
Stripe vs. Paymill - sippndipp
http://9elements.com/io/index.php/stripe-vs-paymill/
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adamlj
I have been working with, and implented, both Stripe and Paymill. I agree with
the article that the only time you would go with Paymill is simply if Stripe
is not yet available (and in those cases you are probably better off with a
local competitor).

Paymill is just a bad copy of Stripe in regards of technology, customer
support, processes etc. One example of this is the ID verification process.
Stripe has this automated and it takes minutes to complete. With Paymill we
had to send copies of several different ID documents to different people and
the process took weeks.

~~~
jasonwen
Second that, exactly same experience. Plus Stripes API is awesome. If you want
to move fast, avoid headaches, pay less fees, go with Stripe.

~~~
jamiesonbecker
I've had a much higher conversion rate with PayPal, even though I love stripe.
It's annoying, because it's hard to do add-on payments with PayPal. Stripe is
basically a dream to work with. But, if you don't have PP, you should -- but
then once you do, it torques your conversion numbers per platform because
people just see the PayPal button and click it. Suddenly 90% of your sales are
through PP. The fact is: no one wants to type in their CC numbers and all that
nonsense. Convenience factor is huge.

It's not sensical to choose one or the other over which YOU like more. You're
in business to increase profits. If that means a PayPal button, so be it.

~~~
pc
Hm, this is very interesting to hear, and doesn't match the what we see in
general or what PayPal apparently sees in aggregate[1].

I'd be very curious to hear more about your use case -- could you drop me a
line? patrick@stripe.com.

[1] [http://www.quora.com/Online-Shopping/When-purchasing-
online-...](http://www.quora.com/Online-Shopping/When-purchasing-online-do-
consumers-prefer-using-PayPal-vs-a-credit-card)

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Hates_
One big difference between the two is that from what I understand is that with
Stripe you use a shared merchant account where as with Paymill everyone get's
their own. This explains why with Stripe you can be approved in minutes where
as Paymill can take up to a few months at times.

~~~
pc
> _One big difference between the two is that from what I understand is that
> with Stripe you use a shared merchant account where as with Paymill everyone
> get 's their own._

(I work at Stripe.) What it even means to have a "merchant account" is
shifting in the industry, so it's hard to be absolutely definitive, but: most
of Stripe's transactions run through what would traditionally be designated as
regular merchant accounts. At the same time, it's our belief that it shouldn't
_matter_ (which is why we don't expose this). There are properties that our
users should care about -- that funds are held in their name, that the right
thing appears on cardholders' statements, etc. How that's accomplished is an
implementation detail that may change over time and which will depend on the
payment instrument, country, and so on.

~~~
jamiesonbecker
Great reply with just the right amount of transparency, technical detail, and
candor. Pretty much what we've come to expect from Stripe :)

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zsombor
The sole advantage Paymill has is that you can make use of it from any EU
country. That said my experience with them was horrific. If Stripe continues
to expand, I doubt that Paymill will be around in a few years.

Instead of the 10 days approval period they advertised I got hit with almost
three months. Some of the delay was caused by Wirecard, the bank they work
with. I can sort of relate to that. However the significant delays caused by
their own contract manager left me baffled. On average her email replies were
delayed by 3 to 4 days. Worse the emails were written without much thought. A
slow trickle of unhelpful messages that slowly erodes your hopes.

Was she overworked? Or in need of training, I don't know. But for certain the
future is bleak for Paymill, unless they drastically improve the on-boarding
process.

~~~
huhtenberg
So what exactly was "horrific" about the experience?

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henrikschroder
> Both services are providing solid libraries and gems for every major
> programming platform like Rails or Node.js.

Laughed out loud at that one. :-D

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rxever
I am not sure about Stripe since it is not available in our country
(Slovenia), but Paymill doesn't allow processing 3rd party payments. Plus it
took them 57 days from the day we sent them paper documents (they travel max 5
days to Germany) to respond that they cannot help us (since we do 3rd party
processing). I was not impressed by their customer support and look forward to
the day when Stripe will become available.

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nnd
[https://stripe.com/prohibited_businesses](https://stripe.com/prohibited_businesses)

Just have a look at this list, there are enormous markets which are not served
at all by stripe.

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msantos
I honestly wonder how big these markets are..

    
    
      > 17. Bankruptcy lawyers
    
      > 37. Mail-order brides

~~~
chimeracoder
> 37\. Mail-order brides

As was just pointed out to me, that means mail-order _husbands_ are not
forbidden. Just in case anybody was planning on starting a new business.... :)

In all seriousness, some of these other markets _are_ massive industries, but
are excluded for good reasons - I recognize a number of them immediately as
being disproportionately high targets for fraud and/or chargebacks, which
would be prohibitively expensive for Stripe to deal with right now.

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seivan
There is nothing to compare here. One company has a vision and a goal and the
ability to execute on those. The other is a clone. They will always be second,
they will always follow through, they will not innovate. That's for most
clones.

~~~
untog
So? A payment processor is, in many ways, a utility. There's only so much
innovation I need out of Stripe - they need to process payments for me. Done.
If a competitor is cheaper, it's valid to go for them.

~~~
notahacker
Yeah. Ultimately they're both trying to deliver incremental improvements to
the developer-friendly full-stack payment platform model that had already been
validated by Braintree as an incremental improvement on payment platforms that
had been around since before the internet. It's updating an old, unfashionable
industry for an audience in a particular part of the world, not making "a game
that looks a bit like Foo" or yet another Groupon clone. Being incubated by
Rocket Internet doesn't necessarily make you a vastly worse-run company than
being incubated by YC.

~~~
antoinec
The difference is the way it took to get where they are, technically speaking.
On one side, they chose to architecture their SDKs/APIs in a way for some
reasons, after some thinking. And they are going to keep improving on it in a
consistent way. Same thing for customer support. On the other side: "Hey, it
works for them, let's not think, throw $10M and do the same!", but I don't
think it's possible to improve the product when you just rely on the
innovation on someone else. Until now, the only valid reason that made people
chose Paymill was that they were available in Europe, but Stripe is going to
change that soon.

One other good example to show how good rocket internet is: Here is a french
website: [http://www.adopteunmec.com/](http://www.adopteunmec.com/) (you can
translate it by "adoptaguy.com") And here come RI in Germany:
[http://www.shopaman.de/](http://www.shopaman.de/), looks familiar?

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flyinglizard
I'm in the process of integrating with Paymill. I can't say much of the
service itself yet, but they are trying to help with the registration process,
even calling me when needed. I'm optimistic for now.

~~~
nhayden
Why did you choose them over Stripe?

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flyinglizard
I didn't, Stripe chose Paymill for me by not being available in my country.

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saurik
Paymill is _even more_ expensive than Stripe (as 0.28€ is $0.39), which was
already "way too expensive for product whose only value over PayPal seems to
be prettier documentation" (especially at the under-$12 price point that most
of these digital goods are at, but even at larger points as PayPal will give
you bulk pricing on orders-of-magnitude smaller transaction volumes). (I guess
maybe with larger transaction ticket pricing the cross-border 1% from PayPal
will be higher than the $0.09 fixed-fee different from Paymill? Is that the
idea?)

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largehotcoffee
I run a very large adult website and wanted to integrate Stripe as the payment
solution for subscriptions but like most payment processors in the United
States they refuse to work with adult sites. Ironically PayPal is more
accepting than Stripe and DOES work with adult sites (under certain
conditions). Stripe on the other hand does not under any circumstances. I know
adult websites are taboo, but it's really hard to find a payment solution that
is as easy to use as Stripe. Does anyone know if Paymill fills that void?

~~~
porsupah
Depends, but it doesn't seem hopeful - looking at their T&Cs at:

[https://www.paymill.com/en-gb/terms-conditions/](https://www.paymill.com/en-
gb/terms-conditions/)

Section 9.1 includes, amongst other excluded categories, "Sales of erotic
articles". I suppose the only way to get an authoritative answer would be to
describe your situation to them, and see whether they'll accommodate you.

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higherpurpose
Why is it taking Stripe so long to come to EU? Any idea when they will be
available across EU?

