

Stripe launches in Australia - thairu
https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-in-australia

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bobbles
For anyone from Stripe reading this, having a '401k' plan for Australia makes
no sense, but is listed on the AU hiring page.

~~~
gdb
(I work at Stripe.)

Don't worry, the benefits box just isn't localized (yet). We have a draft of a
new jobs page we're working on, but figured we should prioritize launching
products over it :).

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illumen
Products are more important than people. Good to know.

~~~
ceejayoz
The people are presumably getting a proper retirement plan even if the copy
isn't fixed on the website yet, and customers are people too.

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SupremumLimit
I wonder if Stripe is planning to launch in New Zealand any time soon - it's
very close to Australia :) I'm really keen to stop relying on Paypal for
accepting payments.

~~~
thairu
We are working on New Zealand, but don't have an immediate ETA for an New
Zealand beta. Sign up at
[https://stripe.com/global](https://stripe.com/global) to be notified when we
launch

~~~
jbardnz
That is amazing news. Payments are absolutely horrible in NZ, I have been
desperate for Stripe to be here for the longest time :)

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SupremumLimit
What are you using now?

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jbardnz
Using Paypal at the moment, as te_chris said PX pay is decent but requires a
merchant account which is expensive and slow to setup. As far as I am aware
their aren't any other decent solutions. Kiwipay could be good but at the
moment it isn't really suitable for anything more than casual payments.

~~~
SupremumLimit
Aside from merchant account setup, last time I looked (4 years ago), Payment
Express worked out to be really expensive when charging in USD. I think it was
in part due to merchant account/currency conversion charges by the bank. It
was significantly more expensive than Paypal. I don't know if the situation
has changed since then.

~~~
jbardnz
I know that the only bank that allows international currency transactions is
BNZ so they are likely fairly expensive seen as they have an monopoly on it.

~~~
veb
Technically (for those who don't know) they allow multiple currency
transactions from one/single account. So you may have 1,000 NZD but it's made
out of USD, PHP, AUD etc

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elithrar
The currency support that hit the AU beta a month or two ago was the big one
for me, but the low rate (1.75% + 30c for Australian cards) is a nice touch
for those who might normally smash their heads against a bank's merchant API,
PayPal or someone like eWay (who I don't have nice thoughts about).

~~~
jsmeaton
What would be an example of a traditional rate with other merchants in
Australia?

~~~
elithrar
eWay is $49/setup + 2.9% + 30c per transaction at the low end
([http://www.eway.com.au/pricing/popular-
plans](http://www.eway.com.au/pricing/popular-plans)), which is their closest
option to Stripe. Now, trying to read their API docs is another thing
entirely: they give you a PDF with a couple of examples and that's it -
[http://www.eway.com.au/docs/api-documentation/token-
payments...](http://www.eway.com.au/docs/api-documentation/token-payments-
field-description.pdf?sfvrsn=2)

PayPal Express Checkout starts at 2.4% + 30c (across all trans). One might use
PayPal for other reasons than just their fees (i.e. your user demographic) but
their API is still a mess.

~~~
davidlumley
It's completely anecdotal, but we've used eWay for the past 2 years. They've
been slightly cheaper than the alternatives and pleasant to deal with for the
most part, but any technical interaction has been incredibly painful. The
dashboard is a pain to use, and they generally seem oblivious to trends in
payment gateways.

In addition, two months ago we were unable to process payments for a period of
a few hours due to an SSL error on their secure payments API. Any customer not
using a hosted payment page was affected. From what has been communicated to
me it was an issue with their CDN provider, but I'm still waiting on the full
details. I understand things happen, but a lack of communication from someone
who processes your payments is really frustrating.

On the other hand, Stripe have been really nice to deal with, and integration
has been a breeze. Things might change once we put it into production, but I'd
be surprised if they got worse.

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shearnie
Will anyone who signed up for pin be moving to stripe?

~~~
thejosh
Been with PIN since the start.

Will only move if Stripe introduces the 2 day bank transfer feature that the
US has.

~~~
chrisdahl
Happy to offer 2-day settlement (we've got a number of merchants on this
already). E-mail chris@pin.net.au.

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girvo
Finally! Where I work we're already discussing moving every (all 6 of them)
project that we're working on at the moment over to Stripe. I'm so happy, this
was a great start to my Tuesday morning!

~~~
shimms
Can I ask why Stripe and not Pin? I've been using Pin for a number of
different projects and have been really happy with it.

Curious why Stripe seems to be the default alternative to PayPal/eWay etc,
even though Pin has been established in AU for a while now.

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ux-app
fantastic news! I just finished a Stripe integration a day or two ago.
Everything I had heard about stripe was true. I've done eWay, PIN and now
Stripe integration and Stripe is hands down the easiest to get up and running.

Subscriptions in particular are very well designed. Their documentation is
outstanding. I was up and running with a multi-tiered subscription setup in 1
day. The checkout flow is particularly awesome.

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JacobAldridge
For the uninitiated, is there benefit in using Stripe (etc) over a bank
merchant facility, when your business is already transacting $80,000+ per
month?

Working with an Australian client at the moment about moving more sales online
- I don't want to hold back information about other payment processors, but
can't see any benefit over their existing bank facilities. What am I missing?

~~~
netcan
I'm not sure what your conclusion would be, but don't assume that your client
is correct about their real cost of transacting.

In Australia, banks will usually offer an online merchant account and a
payment gateway (you can also use a third party like eway). When I worked in
Australia I usually found that using a third party payment gateway worked best
in terms of price. The UI can also matter. Some clients spend a lot of time in
there manually processing, reviewing, refunding transactions, running reports,
etc.. I had good reports from clients using Eway. Bad reports from clients
using NAB. (This is 5+ years ago, so YMMV).

If the difference in price isn't really relevant in absolute terms to the
overall cost of the project, I would always strongly recommend the option with
better software & customer support.

The pricing structures can be complicated. If you really want to understand
them, it's better to run it as an audit. What did it cost the client in the
last 12 months. What would it cost them using stripe. Take into account
monthly fees, per transaction fees (depends on transaction size and on
volume), any anti-fraud fees, chargeback fees. You can actually send the info
to stripe (or another third party gateway) aand they'll probably do the
analysis for you.

You will probably find that your client is actually paying a little more than
they think they are.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Thanks netcan, that's a lot of really useful information.

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peterjancelis
Great to see you guys coming to Asia-Pacific.

Can some Stripers on this thread give an estimate as to when Stripe will come
to Hong Kong or Singapore?

I am bootstrapping a side project with a colleague and literally the only
reason to even consider a UK partnership over a Singapore or Hong Kong one is
that we want to use Stripe (or whatever clone gets there first).

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chrisrickard
Great news. I have built a number of MVPs for startups that will be very happy
to move from PayPal.

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Veinlash
I'm so excited for the Norwegian beta! Been needing Stripe for a project for
ages!

~~~
michaelmcmillan
Me too! I just noticed. I think I've signed up to be notified 40 times.

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Pephers
Awesome! Can't wait until Stripe is launching in Denmark, hopefully soon!

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pc
We actually launched our Danish beta earlier this morning:
[https://twitter.com/stripe/status/491224812958650370](https://twitter.com/stripe/status/491224812958650370).
You can sign up for an invite over at
[https://stripe.com/global](https://stripe.com/global).

~~~
MattPearce
Any plans for NZ? As you can see with the success of EFTPOS here, we have a
history of adopting new payment technologies quickly. I personally have an
idea that's just waiting for a proper mobile payment system.

~~~
thairu
Yup!
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8066572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8066572)

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asher_
This is fantastic! We've recently gotten a bank's merchant account and eWay as
a gateway, but I've been impressed with neither. I'm so glad that Stripe is
now available here.

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shruubi
Awesome! I've been waiting for Stripe here down under for ages!

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dalanmiller
Someone needs to fix payment culture in Australia and also in Europe. Going to
the bar with a large group of people and either paying with:

A) A pocket full of coins

B) A card but only being allowed to pay with one or two for your whole group,
is just straight up silly.

Situation B happened to me a million times while I was down there for a year
and it's just an annoyance, and carrying a kilo in coins is no fun either. I
actually submitted a suggestion to ANZ for them to make some sort of group
payment option for restaurants but heard nothing back and couldn't pursue.
Hopefully someone can make something easy with Stripe.

~~~
veb
Use... Notes?! You know, money... Coins?! Who uses coins? Secondly nobody is
going to refuse 5 payments from 5 cards either or they don't get paid. Simple.

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benologist
What actually prevents Stripe from just being international?

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elithrar
> What actually prevents Stripe from just being international?

The need to partner with a local bank to provide merchant services/accounts.
i.e. Pin Payments partners with NAB in Australia, with NAB setting up an
"invisible to the user" merchant account. It's part of their model - you just
deal with them, not the bank, not anybody else.

~~~
benologist
I get that's _what_ they do but why do they need to do that for each
individual country instead of just running everything through their own bank +
only subject to their own state/federal regulations?

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pinpoll
Sweet! And is Stripe going to obtain stripe.com.au ?

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instakill
Come to ZA please!

~~~
richardw
Absolutely. It would crush the market.

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semerda
Nice work peeps! Definitely needed for Australia.

~~~
thejosh
Yep, amazingly during BETA a major competitor dropped its monthly fee ;).

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eddy_chan
Going to be tough for that competitor to survive if they don't pivot from a
'Stripe-clone'. Hope they're well funded and well backed.

You need to do a huge volume of transactions to be able to live off 2.6% +
30c, close to two million a month to support a startup with 5 fully loaded
employees including the founders.

Working with a lot of Ecommerce sites I know a well established one (attached
to 3 bricks and mortar stores) does on average $16k a month. Say on average an
Online store is doing 10k/month you're looking at 200 clients to keep the
payment processor afloat. Doable but you'd want them to have some runway
otherwise people are gonna go with Stripe to know they've got a payment
gateway that's not gonna disappear

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davyjones
Is Stripe Japan on the anvil?

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SimonDawlat
What took you so long Susan!

