
Why did we switch from Braintree to Stripe? - blakenomad
https://www.deekit.com/braintree-to-stripe/
======
thsowers
For one of my clients we had to recently choose between Stripe & Braintree.
Although I was really pushing Stripe for the reasons outlined in this blog
post, management eventually went with Braintree.

The reason for this is that Stripe had no phone number, and no way to contact
them other than via their support channels, where I found response times to be
very slow (perhaps this has changed in the past years?). With Braintree we
have a rep who we can call at anytime who is very responsive.

Really for my boss it just came down to who had a phone number. I'm surprised
that Stripe is lacking in this department, you would think that a company who
wants you to trust them with all your payments would at least give you a way
to talk to an actual human.

~~~
edwinwee
We've been testing phone support, and we're working to roll it out very soon.

Last week, we expanded live chat availability, and it's now available 24
hours, Monday through Friday.

~~~
thsowers
That's awesome! Can't wait to hopefully give you guys a try in the future :)

------
xxkylexx
> pro-rata pricing wasn’t a thing

That's not true. We use Braintree for almost the same per-seat model described
in the article and we pro-rate changes to the subscription mid-cycle using
Braintree's "pro-rate on upgrades/downgrades" options.

Ref docs: [https://articles.braintreepayments.com/guides/recurring-
bill...](https://articles.braintreepayments.com/guides/recurring-
billing/recurring-advanced-settings#proration)

------
buf
Funny, I just moved
[https://www.castingcall.club](https://www.castingcall.club) from Stripe to
Braintree. I find Stripe to be superior, but the users wanted subscription
Paypal payments rather than using credit cards. Having it in one place made
sense.

Follow the users.

~~~
thoughtpalette
I'm a huge fan of PayPals subscription payments personally. :}

~~~
cweagans
Yeah, but then you have to use Paypal.

------
sparrish
I'm confused. We've been Braintree customers for 6+ years now and they provide
both "pro-rata pricing" and "discount model" based on more than time. I can
provide screenshots that show both features for subscriptions and
transactions. So confused right now.

~~~
angryasian
Reading this article I thought the same thing. The reasons they decided to
switch sounds like just a lack of understanding the the Braintree offerings.
The title should be titled "We switched because Stripe's documentation was
better and we didn't want to learn Braintree's"

~~~
blakenomad
Yep! As we mentioned in the article, it was poor scoping from our part which
we 100% own up to. Equally though after pushing on with Stripe after the
transition we have found it way more suited to our particular needs.

That's not to say Braintree wouldn't work for others. As we stated, it's an
awesome solution and we couldn't fault their support at all.

------
thoughtpalette
Great write up with drawing comparisons between the two. I've looked into
Braintree as I have some colleagues that work there (Easy tech support
channel) and the Ignition program (first $50k transaction fees waived) seemed
like a no brainer for lean startup implementation. Had no issues with the node
API and the documentation was very helpful.

That being said, I've seen nothing but praise for Stripe payments. The dev and
design team are very solid and supposedly have great documentation as well.

I wonder, since Braintree is owned by PayPal, if companies have experienced
the same pain points with getting locked out of funds for arbitrary reasons on
that platform, or if Braintree is completely agnostic to PayPals TOS.

~~~
droopyEyelids
Braintree stripe and PayPal all have similar reserve policies.

You don't hear about people getting upset with Braintree (or Stripe) because
when someone integrates with Braintree they're aware they're making a business
decision and they read the contract, and have probably looked into getting
their own merchant account and have an idea of the lay of the land.

You do hear about people getting upset with PayPal because it's "laymen" who
click through everything without reading, and they don't often understand the
concept of a reserve at all, let alone the idea that a product delivered in
the future increases the risk to the payment processor. Or the myriad other
product/circumstance combinations that increase processor risk

~~~
iamcreasy
> concept of a reserve

Can you please explain what it is?

~~~
danielvf
From the stripe TOS:

> All funds resulting from Charges are held in pooled clearing accounts (the
> “Clearing Accounts”) with our Financial Services Partners. We will make
> Transfers to and from the Clearing Accounts in the manner described in this
> Agreement; however, you have no rights to the Clearing Accounts or to any
> funds held in the Clearing Accounts, you are not entitled to draw funds from
> the Clearing Accounts, and you will not receive interest from funds
> maintained in the Clearing Accounts.

> In certain circumstances, we may require you to place funds in reserve or to
> impose conditions on the release of funds (each a “Reserve”). We may impose
> a Reserve on you for any reason if we determine that the risk of loss to
> Stripe, Customers, or others associated with your Stripe Account is higher
> than normal. For example, we may hold a Reserve if: (i) your or your
> Customers’ activities increase the risk of loss to us or to your Customers,
> (ii) you have violated or are likely to violate this Agreement, and (iii)
> your Stripe Account has an elevated or abnormally high number of Disputes.
> If we impose a Reserve, we will establish the terms of the Reserve and
> provide you Notice of the amount, timing, and conditions upon which the
> funds in the Reserve will be released to you. In many cases, the Reserve
> amount will be the entire amount of Charges processed using the Payment
> Services. We may change or condition the terms of the Reserve based on our
> continuous assessment and understanding of the risks associated with your
> Stripe Account, if required to do so by Financial Services Providers, or for
> any other reason. We may fund the Reserve with funds processed through your
> use of Payment Services, by debiting the Payout Account or another bank
> account associated with your Stripe Account, or by requesting funds directly
> from you.

> To the extent possible, we prefer to identify the necessity for a Reserve in
> advance of establishing one. If you are concerned that we will impose a
> Reserve on you due to the nature of your business activities, please contact
> us before using the Services.

------
teilo
We moved from Auth.NET to Braintree, but not in the traditional sense. We use
our own merchant account with Braintree's API, something that not many people
know is even possible.

Braintree's one-iframe-per-field integration is a beautiful thing. It gives us
ultimate flexibility in formatting, bypasses a lot of PCI-DSS compliancy
issue, and avoids the impression that the customer is leaving our website to
enter payment info.

But we don't have to deal with subscriptions, so ours is a completely
different problem space than the article.

~~~
thsowers
> We use our own merchant account with Braintree's API, something that not
> many people know is even possible.

Could you elaborate on this?

~~~
taf2
The advantage here is with your own merchant account the fees can be
significantly better. Also you get paid typically much faster with settlements
happening daily instead of weekly. Assuming stripe PayPal still hold the funds
in their banks longer? Before the PayPal acquisition of Braintree it was much
more like authorize.net in that it was just a gateway for processing credit
cards. Not being a bank account like PayPal and stripe.

There is an advantage to having your processor be both an account and a
gateway in that you need only one relationship and it's much easier to get
started.

~~~
thsowers
Ah I see, Thanks for the info!

------
dhendo
We just moved from Braintree to Stripe (they changed their relationship with
Adyen and gave us ~ 6 weeks to re-sign with their new merchant provider or
move away). We do all our recurring payments on Chargebee, so it was pretty
painless when we eventually got the vaulted details securely moved out of
Braintree.

~~~
no1youknowz
I'm looking at using Adyen. Why do you need to use Stripe as well?

------
0x0
Halfway through the article I got a huge popup with a button "Create your
whiteboard". When I clicked it, I ended up on a 404 page -
[https://www.deekit.com/braintree-to-
stripe/https](https://www.deekit.com/braintree-to-stripe/https)

~~~
blakenomad
Thanks for letting us know 0x0! I've got that disabled now.

------
enkay
The only advantage Braintree has is Paypal support.

I haven't checked on Braintree lately, but the few times I've had to talk to
the Braintree support or sales team, they've been very unhelpful.

If your business is not the size of AirBnb they make it clear they don't
really care about having you as a customer. And that's even if you process a
few millions a year.

If you're outside the US, have fun signing up and jumping through hoops. If
you're building a marketplace, your users will have to jump through the same
hoops just to start accepting payments.

While Stripe isn't perfect either, they are a lot friendlier and helpful when
you speak with them. They also have Stripe Connect and self-signup which makes
it much easier to build a marketplace.

I'd rather use Stripe for credit card processing, even if that means dealing
with Paypal's bottom of the barrel APIs directly to add Paypal payments.
That's how bad Braintree support is.

Maybe they've gotten better and this is out of date, but based on past
experience, I don't really care to find out.

------
bpchaps
I truly do not trust Braintree as a secure payment service.

As a company, they host an asinine number of public events at their 100+
person meeting hall at Chicago's Merchandise Mart. To get to that hall, you
have to walk about 200ft past all of their workstations and meeting rooms.
Infrastructure diagrams and unlocked workstations are pretty much everywhere.

Sure, they do a few things to mitigate the risks of people who come in by
requiring sign-ins and presumably cameras everywhere, but it still feels very
surreal to be a few meters away from having potential access to a large
payment processor's infrastructure. I've seen at least one person there who
was very clearly using a burner laptop.

~~~
pc86
As an employee, how is walking away from your computer without locking it even
remotely accessible? Granted most of my experience is healthcare and
government but I've worked placed where leaving your computer open and
unlocked if you were more than an arm's length away from it was a fire-able
offense. I'm not saying that's an appropriate response, but come on... it's
downright negligent, especially if you're dealing with anything even remotely
sensitive.

~~~
chris72205
I lock my computer habitually even if I'm just walking over to a co-workers
desk. I find it funny though, because I was forced into this habit from my
days in school where leaving your computer open/unlocked meant coming back to
all sorts of pranks.

~~~
diggernet
Same here. Great way to learn the importance of basic security habits.

------
Teichopsia
As someone starting out (and still learning) what may be the recommended way
of going about this?

I can't seem to find a payment processor that I trust to send payments to
Central America (from the few I have seen - Braintree and stripe don't). There
are a few caveats to this, unfortunately. My plan is to do all the legal work
through the e-Estonia program but can't get started since I would need to fly
out to pick up the identification card. Cash which will need to be generated
through the business first.

Once that is set up it will be easier to get a payment processor (stripe,
please add Estonia to your list first chance you get).

I'm wondering if it is sensible to accept payments online, generate some cash,
start the e-Estonia process to have a legal business. But, I'm still stuck as
to which processor to use to send the payments to to a personal account in
Central America. Last I checked, I can't use paypal since that is a U.S only
option. In either case, besides wondering which processor I could use, is this
a sensible plan?

~~~
kuldar
Another vote for Stripe supporting Estonia. As for e-residency, I believe you
can also pick up the card at your local embassy.

~~~
Teichopsia
Just double checked. There are only three pick up locations on this side of
the world and they are all in the U.S.

~~~
spitfire
There's an embassy/consulate in Ottawa. Also the ambassador travels and you
can pick them up when they travel.

Check with your local embassy/consulate and ask about their travel schedule.

NB: I too would like to see Stripe support Estonia. They've been dragging
their feet long enough that "soon" is now feeling like an insult.

------
jwr
I chose Braintree over Stripe for my application. Want to know why? Because
Stripe doesn't want to do business with me. Stripe only operates in a limited
number of countries. Until they decide to actually allow me to use them,
articles like these are, well, amusing I guess.

~~~
mynameisvlad
"doesn't want to do business with me" is a bit much. I'm sure they'd love to
do business with as many companies as possible, but finance is one of the most
regulated industries in most countries; it's not trivial to enter new markets.

~~~
jwr
Perhaps it isn't trivial, but somehow Braintree does service me and Stripe
does not. It has been like that for many years now, so I can only assume it is
not a priority for Stripe, hence "doesn't want to do business with me".

------
richardknop
Braintree has built in PayPal support which is a big advantage compared to
Stripe. This can be very strong argument if your employer already has a
business relationship with PayPal as then legal work can be worked out faster
as Braintree is a PayPal company.

But as a developer I also prefer Stripe because they have better API and SDK
libraries.

Also subscription model is better in Stripe. You can create plans dynamically.
With Braintree the API doesn't allow you to create new plans on the fly.
Existing subscriptions cannot be upgraded/downgraded between different plans.

Also Braintree sandbox has been very flaky from my experience. In 3 months
they have had several downtimes which slowed down development a bit.

~~~
thsowers
> Also subscription model is better in Stripe. You can create plans
> dynamically. With Braintree the API doesn't allow you to create new plans on
> the fly

I believe you may be incorrect about this[0]

[0]:
[https://developers.braintreepayments.com/reference/request/s...](https://developers.braintreepayments.com/reference/request/subscription/create/node)

~~~
richardknop
The "planId" in the request must be manually created in the dashboard. There
is no API way to dynamically create a plan which you haven't hardcoded
manually in the console in advance.

This makes automated deployment a bit more annoying with Braintree as it
involves more manual fiddling with the console. With Stripe this can be part
of the code so your business logic creates a plan if it doesn't exist, similar
to upserts in SQL.

~~~
thsowers
I stand corrected, thanks! I can definitely see that this increases friction
and working with APIs that truly support everything is much more ideal.

------
jurgenwerk
Billing is far more complex than people tend to believe, and much more so with
subscriptions. As your pricing plans become more convoluted with discounting,
optional add-ons and conditionals it becomes hard not just to bill, but also
to keep track of activities, ordering, and reporting. In this case it's easier
to implement your own charging system, and leverage it using an external
billing API (Stripe, Braintree...) that hosts your customer's payment methods.

~~~
bradyd
Or use something like Kill Bill. It has plugins for many different billing
providers.

[http://killbill.io/](http://killbill.io/)

~~~
xxkylexx
Nice. never knew about this.

------
whipoodle
Granted I'm not running a business so what do I know, but their reasons for
making the decisions they made seem very flighty and not well considered.

------
jimaek
I am making the same decision right now. Unfortunately Stripe is not an option
because they don't support Poland :(

~~~
robertpohl
Hey, check out [https://www.mondido.com/en/](https://www.mondido.com/en/) that
support Poland 🇵🇱

------
grouseway
You're in a pretty good spot if your choice is between Braintree and Stripe.

Some of us are still stuck with stagnant vendors like
Beanstream/Bambora/Moneris that seem to have missed the last 15 years of
developments in the web space.

------
EvanAnderson
The title seems needlessly editorialized. (I have no problem with the word
'fuck', but the title of the page is "Why did we switch from Braintree to
Stripe?")

~~~
spraak
I hope the mods change it

~~~
blakenomad
My fault there. Noted for next time. :-)

------
galonk
Off topic, but yet another startup where the main page (which is actually
labelled "Product"!!!) is blank and doesn't tell you anything about the
product.

~~~
pc86
How? It's pretty clear that it's a white board for teams. There's a screenshot
of the product on an iPad and several other screenshots that give an
acceptable (if not great) idea of what it does.

