
Stripe Checkout - theBashShell
https://stripe.com/payments/checkout
======
iou
What's new here? This was released a while back?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19739630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19739630)

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flibble
Starting to compete directly with a lot of their customers. Big change in
strategy.

~~~
CharlesW
How so? Are there checkout-experiences-as-a-service vendors that use Stripe
under-the-hood?

~~~
eshyong
It seems like payment/e-commerce companies in general are shifting towards
offering "express checkout" experiences nowadays - Shopify, Paypal, Amazon
Pay, are a couple prominent examples. My former employer Affirm was also very
concerned about owning the checkout experience/acquiring users up-funnel. It's
a smart move, really.

~~~
bobthepanda
We always hear about how payment networks manage to nickel and dime merchants
to produce lots of revenue, so it was probably only a matter of time before
other players in the process wanted a piece of that action.

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ve55
Stripe checkout has existed for awhile, which might not be obvious seeing it
on the frontpage of HN.

It does make Stripe integration much quicker, which usually takes quite awhile
especially when many users only need basic functionality when starting out.

However it's still intended for people that know how to do at least a little
development, so I wouldn't call it a competitor to Shopify and so on.

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AlchemistCamp
I really wish Stripe would either support Elixir or drastically improve the
quality of their docs.

As it is, every guide I see assumes the use of one of their few officially
supported languages.

It doesn't have to be that way. For a web API, the strings sent back and forth
in HTTP requests and responses can be generated by any server-side language.

Edit: Here is an example, the first guide linked from that page:
[https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-
payment?integratio...](https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-
payment?integration=checkout)

As you'll notice there's a toggle for language in Step 1 "Set up Stripe". The
options are: Ruby Python PHP Java Node Go .NET. Note that CURL is _not_ an
option. The entire guide presupposes you're using one of 6 languages Stripe
has blessed.

This has been the case for every guide on every similar Stripe product
announcement I've seen shared here over the past year and a half.

~~~
cosrnos
> As you'll notice there's a toggle for language in Step 1 "Set up Stripe".
> The options are: Ruby Python PHP Java Node Go .NET. Note that CURL is not an
> option. The entire guide presupposes you're using one of 6 languages Stripe
> has blessed.

That example you cited is about installing dependencies for the languages. You
don't need to install an additional dependency to run a curl command. I've
looked over the documentation you've cited in other posts and the only times
it seems to omit curl requests is when you aren't required to make a request
for the checkout flow.

While asking for specific documentation and language support for elixir is a
reasonable request, it seems a bit unfair to claim their documentation doesn't
provide enough information to roll your own interface.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
The documentation _does_ provide enough information to roll your own, but it's
buried. Notably, the newer "guides" seem to assume everyone is using one of
their official libraries.

Here's an example of something you'll need to know for subscriptions or
anything else involving webhooks:
[https://stripe.com/docs/webhooks/signatures#verify-
manually](https://stripe.com/docs/webhooks/signatures#verify-manually)

How many clicks is it going to take you from the subscriptions page of the
docs to get there? You know it exists, which is already a big leg up, but I
suspect it will take a while.

To be clear, _my_ site is integrated with Stripe. A lot of Elixir users in my
audience have had a rough go of it, though.

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sdesalas
As much as i loved integrating Stripe before i have to say it is pretty
expensive for micro-transactions in Europe (less than 5€). They charge a base
fee of 0.25€ +1.4% so this pretty much kills the business margin. We went with
a local payments company in Spain (paycomet) because they could offer a flat
17€ fee a month.

~~~
edwinwee
(I work at Stripe.) We're working on microtransactions in Europe! We can
support most use cases in Spain today, and we can look into hooking it up for
you if you email me at edwin@stripe.com.

~~~
sdesalas
Thanks edwin but its a bit late, we've done the integration already.

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joshuakelly
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but there doesn't seem to be anything new with
this release but a landing page?

~~~
edwinwee
Stripe Checkout has been around since 2014, but along with the new page, there
are a bunch of new updates today (coupons, tax rates, and more payment
methods). More in the blogpost:
[https://stripe.com/blog/checkout](https://stripe.com/blog/checkout).

~~~
bdcravens
Since January 2013 according to the Wayback Machine:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20130113004155/https://stripe.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130113004155/https://stripe.com/docs/checkout)

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BluSyn
Seems like a direct response to shopify. I like the competition. Interesting
how the design language is so similar, too. Seems there's been a solid
convergence in the payment space around simplified payment flows. As a
developer and a user I'm very happy with this trend.

~~~
cj
> As a developer and a user I'm very happy with this trend.

From the perspective of a dev starting a new app, it's a great trend.

From the perspective of a dev maintaining a Stripe integration first built in
2014, the breaking changes and migrations haven't always been fun. Stripe
circa 2016 "just worked". Today, we regularly run into stripe issues (ie.
irregularities in webhook data structure) as a result of new edge cases
introduced when Stripe has added new functionality + features.

Then again, I think we're at a point in technology where we basically need to
assume that nearly 100% of an application's code will need a significant
refactor (or complete rewrite) at least every few years in order to remain
maintainable.

~~~
auchenberg
Hi, Kenneth here from Stripe. I'd love to chat with you about the problems you
have with webhooks. How can I best reach you? My email is
auchenberg@stripe.com

~~~
cj
bp@brandonpaton.com

We're not actively having problems. It was a few months ago. Refreshing myself
on the technical details of the payload inconsistency and its cause would take
a couple hours. But I believe it was related to us using a 3rd party service
(that integrates with Stripe) sending out emails to customers whose charges
failed, with a form to collect updated credit card info. The form for updating
cc info used payment intents (may be using the wrong term) which is delivered
differently than the (old) payment sources type.

The edge case being now there exists 2 groups of customers, 1 group who have a
payment method attached under the new payment method / payment intent
architecture, and a 2nd group with payment methods attached using the original
/ old method.

Webhooks often include the payment method, and the data structure for the
payment method differs depending on how the payment method was attached to the
customer.

