
Stripe launches German beta - TomAnthony
https://stripe.com/global#germany
======
blackdogie
Great to see the acceleration of roll out of counties ! DE does have lower CC
usage, but I think it will be more use for DE businesses operating
internationally to accept in EUR & USD. btw. I threw together a handy tool for
calculating the cost of a transaction.
[http://www.blackdog.ie/stripe/](http://www.blackdog.ie/stripe/)

 _edit : clarity_

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philjr
Completely off-topic - but why does a consultancy company in Munich have a .ie
domain? :-)

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blackdogie
Because I'm Irish.

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stephanos2k
It's astonishing how quick they can expand something as complicated as payment
processing to many - bigger and smaller - countries in Europe.

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cperciva
One you get into one EU country, dealing with other EU countries is probably
quite a bit easier...

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donw
Especially if that first country is Germany, as they're one of the economic
powerhouses of the EU.

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mtrimpe
They were already in beta in the Netherlands for a while actually.

Given that we're quite similar to Germany except for being a bit more focussed
on international trade, we might have been a test run for German deployment
though.

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Kudos
Ireland was the first Eurozone country to enter Stripe beta, UK was the first
EU.

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Irishsteve
Ireland is in the EU and uses the euro. UK is also in the EU but uses GBP.

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skrause
Isn't that exactly what Kudos said?

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Irishsteve
Ah yes a little confusion has taken over on my part. Ireland is in the EU and
the eurozone.

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lukeholder
Just got accepted into the Australia Beta, its working awesome.

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janekk
D'oh, I had no idea, and here I am already having spent months talking to NAB
in order to charge USD and support AMEX. Stripe seems a lot cheaper too in
terms of fees.

Stripe AU supports AMEX and USD charges, right?

~~~
thairu
Stripe AU supports AMEX (as well as Visa and MasterCard!), but is currently
only for AUD charges. We are actively working on adding USD support, and hope
to roll it out soon. Email me @ thairu@stripe.com if you would like a beta
invite.

~~~
janekk
Thanks thairu, patrick has sent me an invite.

USD charging is definitely essential for SaaS selling to the US.

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stephanos2k
To those who say "I almost went with PayMill, thank god Stripe is here now"
don't forget that PayMill features _direct debit_. Depending on who your
customers are this might be an important feature for you!

~~~
rmoriz
Direct debit can easily done by creating some CSV-style file without
additional charges using FinTS/HBCI.

For most SaaS/e-product models "direct debit" is not an option because a
customer can do a refund without a reason for at least 6 weeks. It also has no
CVV2, so you can just abuse some charity bank details for a direct debit
purchase. Good luck dealing with fraud.

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k__
Sadly Germans hate credit cards.

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pc
Credit card usage is somewhat lower in Germany (though by a smaller margin
than people think), and we considered holding off 'till we had a better answer
to this. But we thought about it more, and talked to a bunch of German
companies, and realized that a lot of German users want to sell to a _global_
market in the very same way that, say, an American company would -- there
isn't necessarily a tight coupling between the geography of your customers and
the geography of your business. (This is what's great about the internet!)
Travis CI is a good example here.

Seen this way, we figured it made sense to bring the capabilities that US
users have today to Germany as quickly as we could.

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WA
I just signed up for PayMill yesterday, but didn't send them the paperwork
yet. I might as well sign up for Stripe then.

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psteinweber
Same here, the paperwork will be left undone as it looks...!

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happywolf
I can see a vast majority here are very positive on this news. Just wonder in
areas that are yet to be covered by Stripe, what are you guys using? Also, I
recall a few months ago PayPal introduced a revamped set of APIs which claims
to be more developer friendly. Anybody cares to chime in on that front?

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CarlHoerberg
We use Paymill for which we're very satisfied with. The initial paperwork
isn't fun, but the experience is much better than all previous options for EU
companies..

I believe that PayPal's new API is only available for american merchants.

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stephanos2k
Do you guys usually just use Stripe API directly or do you use some kind of
middleman (e.g. spreedly.com)?

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beshrkayali
This is fantastic news for german startups. I wish Stripe can expand to more
countries around the world faster!

Anyone knows how easy would it be for them to expand to Dubai for example?

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jorangreef
Any plans for Stripe to serve startups based in South Africa?

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thairu
South Africa is on our roadmap, but have no current ETA for when it will be
available. Please sign up at
[https://stripe.com/global](https://stripe.com/global) to be notified when we
launch.

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Ecio78
According to the linked site they seem to be in Beta also in France, Belgium
and Netherlands. I think I lost those announces in the past weeks. Congrats!

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vbsteven
Indeed, I just received my invite for the Belgian beta

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frank_boyd
Honest question to everybody:

Would you trust your financial data (= growth data, etc.) to a company like
Paymill that's owned by a clone factory (i.e. the Samwers') or do you think
that's being paranoid?

EDIT: I wasn't asking for downvotes, I was asking for rational comments,
explanations, thoughts.

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iSnow
Well, Paymill is German and Stripe is based in the US, so from a trust
viewpoint, I'd go with Paymill, maybe their customer data gets fleeced a bit
less by the NSA than Stripe's.

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pc
Stripe has never participated in any kind of government surveillance program.
Quite the opposite -- we're trying to figure out new ways to protect our
users: [https://stripe.com/blog/towards-
transparency](https://stripe.com/blog/towards-transparency). As CEO, I'll do
everything in my power to make sure that that remains the case. If you follow
me on Twitter (I'm @patrickc), you'll notice that I'm no fan of this stuff.

~~~
iSnow
Just to make this clear, I don't doubt your personal integrity.

However, I have lost faith in the ability of US-based companies using US-fiber
and US datacenters to protect against NSA snooping.

I am not naive - I have no doubt that German fiber is monitored as well, but
afaik LE could gain access to your servers and serve you a gag order -
something they could not do over here.

So, my comment was in no way specific to Stripe - I don't trust Google or
Apple either.

~~~
pc
Yeah, I think that's generally reasonable, and I totally see where you're
coming from. (Though I do believe that even though we're in the US, Stripe
will do a better job of guarding the privacy of our customers than the vast
majority companies.)

Having said that, in the particular domain of electronic payments, I think
that meaningful privacy is (sadly) a mostly unattainable goal: it seems safe
to assume that the card companies themselves collaborate with all kinds of
surveillance. Given that everything ultimately becomes a transaction on those
networks, what happens at the edges matters less.

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lhaussknecht
Does Stripe deal with scoring and fraud prevention etc. or do I have to
implement my own countermeasures?

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m_st
Any schedule yet for Switzerland?

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kops
UBS allows you to open a bank account in Germany and connect it to a Swiss
account. You can setup automatic transmission of money from German account to
Swiss account every 15 minutes or so.

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wikiburner
Just curious, does Stripe's recent expansion have any impact on US companies
using Stripe? Can Stripe now process German and UK customer credit cards for
US companies, or was that already available?

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dubcanada
I'm pretty sure that any Visa/MC can be processed at Stripe, regardless of
location. Country specific cards, like Diner's Club and others may require
extra effort by the processing companies, and sometimes lead to higher costs.
But can generally still be processed.

Moral of the story is anyone anywhere can buy something from a US company
using Stripe on their credit card.

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nXqd
Congrats to Stripe team. They have done a really good job, I find since they
get it work in UK, they are expanding in a very fast pace for now (y) Hope it
will come to Northen EU soon :)

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thairu
Northern Europe is on our roadmap. Please sign up at
[https://stripe.com/global](https://stripe.com/global) to be notified when we
launch there

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js4all
I just signed up. There is no setting for Germany in the account details, just
United States, United Kingdom and Canada.

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solaris152000
What's so great about Stripe? What does it do that other payment processors
don't? I don't get it.

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axefrog
It's developer-friendly, very fast to get started and doesn't require a
merchant account.

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solaris152000
Ah, cool thanks.

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patman81
I was just about to go with Paymill. It's great to have one more option. Now
the rest of Europe please.

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m_st
What speaks against Paymill? Are there any problems with them? They support a
lot more countries than Stripe right now.

Edit: Just read that its from the Samwers. Might be enough to wait for Stripe
then.

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StavrosK
When I tried to use them, they required me to mail in a bunch of paperwork.
Stripe doesn't.

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the_mitsuhiko
How does Stripe get away without the paperwork?

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StavrosK
That's what I'm wondering too. They require zero paperwork, though, and
Paymill did tell me that the paperwork they sent me was mandatory for all
money-processing companies.

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collision
Stripe collects information from you before you can start using it -- you'll
see us ask for this when you go to activate your account. But we've worked to
make it as quick, painless and sensible as possible.

The sign-up process is part of the product, and we treat it that way. Onerous
paperwork is not an inevitability.

~~~
StavrosK
Well, I don't even remember you asking for it, so you must be doing something
right. On the other hand, all I remember about Paymill is that they asked me
for the info.

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locusm
What criteria is Stripe looking for to get in the beta? Anyone know?

~~~
pc
No criteria per se -- everyone is welcome. We're just rate-limiting it a bit
to make sure that everyone has a good experience.

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skore
I've just sent my "notify me", but the response left me a little uncertain:
"We’ll get back to you as soon as we launch in Germany.".

So... is this what I need to do to get into the beta? Or is there something
else I need to do?

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pc
Good point; we'll update that wording.

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skore
Thanks - uhm... so... since I won't see that message, I still need to know
whether I'm now in line for being considered as a beta tester? ;-)

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abuiles
Any plans for Latin American countries?

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leh
Oh hallelujah!

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realbot
Is 3D Secure supported?

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TeeWEE
Fun to see stripe in europe, however in europe almost nobody pays by card, or
let alone: even owns a credit card.

We pay by baking systems such as Ideal (in the netherlands).

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selectstar
Debit cards are quite prevalent here, rather than Credit i'd say.

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xsace
Actually most people speak about credit card when they actually mean a debit
one.

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efdee
We refer to a "bank card" when we mean debit and "credit card" when we mean
credit. YMMV :-)

