
Ask HN: Best Stripe Alternatives? - ceffio
Recently, we&#x27;ve been having a lot of problems with stripe (transactions are falling because some issue when passing the token&#x2F;customer to stripe). We are considering moving to another provider. I&#x27;ve used stripe in all my previous companies.<p>Any recommendations on which payment gateway to use? We want to own the entire checkout experience.<p>I am interested in hearing your experiences :)<p>[Edit] We are trying to find the root cause of the issue, a processor that allows us to talk to an engineer would be great.<p>[Edit] Checkout works correctly on test mode, but fails when running payments live. Customers have used their cards on other websites using stripe and transactions went smoothly.
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mootrichard
Full disclosure: Dev Advocate for Square

Feel free to try out Square, but I'm going to be transparent in that any issue
that you might be having with passing tokens from a front-end to your back-end
for payment processing isn't necessarily going to be solved by switching
processors.

It sounds like someone else mentioned that you might not be supporting Strong
Customer Authentication (SCA). Additionally, just because you got a token and
created a customer, doesn't necessitate that a transaction would be
successful. There are many other factors that can cause a transaction to fail.

Sometimes the transactions fail for fairly vague reasons sent from the bank,
so you'll just have a generic declined message. Your best bet is to attempt to
root cause the reason for the failures with your processor. You want to find
out if this is only for transactions with a particular bank, credit card
network, etc...

If you're unable to root cause the failures with your processor, then that
might be your actual reason for switching.

[EDIT] Not going to be linking out here, but you're always welcome to talk to
engineers on our team in our community chat channel that is linked throughout
our developer docs. Only adding this having seen an edit above regarding a
desire to talk to an engineer.

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edwinwee
Edwin from Stripe here. Sorry you've been having trouble as of late—do you
know yet what’s causing those transactions to fail? I'm happy to help
troubleshoot if you email edwin@stripe.com.

~~~
xrd
Edwin reached out to me when I had an issue with Stripe and was really
thorough in getting everything resolved to my satisfaction. He's top notch.

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eajacobs
I may be biased, but I work at a competing processor called Adyen. We process
payments for many of the world's leading e-commerce companies (Uber, Netflix,
Spotify, FB, MSFT, etc...).

Merchants switching to Adyen from Stripe generally experience increased
performance (higher authorization rates, no downtime), and more transparency
into what's going on with their transactions. We've put a lot of effort
recently into making our APIs and documentation more developer-friendly-- an
area where we know Stripe excels.

Feel free to reach out directly if you'd like more info! eric [dot] jacobs
[at] adyen [dot] com

~~~
lucb1e
That text "merchants switching to $us from $competitor experience $benefits"
sounds very marketing-y. I can't find it literally on your website (I expected
this to be the description on the homepage) so it does seem to be your own
words. Is this statistically measured and somehow controlled for any new
feature on the site / newsletter going out, your personal experience, or from
some sales kit?

~~~
rupert1234
He didn't publish a science paper. It's a specific claim and you can easily
call Adyen customers and find out if it's true. It's not an outrageous claim
and he goes on to acknowledge said competitors strength in another area. FWIW,
if you've spent time in payments you will know his claim isn't bogus. It might
be pretty close these days, but it's far from a bogus claim.

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IdontRememberIt
> We want to own the entire checkout experience

The less you see, the better. Being PCI DSS compliant (as soon as you
see/store sensitive transaction data) is a pain...

~~~
ceffio
What I meant was, we don't want to redirect them to another website. I agree
with what you mention.

Sorry if I wasn't clear.

~~~
thestepafter
You don’t have to redirect to another website. I recommend getting a better
web developer because integration with Stripe can be completely seamless.

~~~
ENGNR
Stripe is starting to inject themselves into the transaction, turning more
into Apple Pay by saying the charges API is deprecated

I think OP is just looking for something similar to Stripe. I’ve found Pin
Payments to be pretty good. If they’d support ‘connect’ I’d migrate everything
over to them

~~~
simlevesque
> Stripe is starting to inject themselves into the transaction, turning more
> into Apple Pay by saying the charges API is deprecated

That's not at all what is happening. Do you have any idea why they deprecated
the charges API ?

~~~
ENGNR
All I know is I went with Stripe so I didn’t have to see the PayPal logo (or
any logo) in my checkout process

You don’t have to confuse things with an intermediate brand to wait for a user
to auth a transaction in their banking app, just leave the timer on the screen
until they do it

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eljimmy
If you don't know what's causing the issue, how do you know the problem isn't
on your end? Switching providers won't fix that.

~~~
ceffio
Hi, Stripe's support keep telling us it is a a bank error.

According to stripe logs, a successful transaction has 3 steps: create a token
(/v1/tokens), then the customer (/v1/customers) and finally generate the
payment (/v1/charges). At the moment, all the transactions are falling when
they receive the customer (/v1/customer). I am not sure what's causing the
issue, I am requesting to talk to an engineer to get any response other than
"talk to your bank" (we have talked to them 4 times already :(

Thanks for giving me the chance to clarify what's going on.

~~~
trevorhinesley
I don't see the payment intent endpoint listed here, which means you're not
allowing for authentication challenges (SCA/PSD2). So it's possible the bank
is denying the charge, but your flow isn't accounting for it if it's not using
payment intents. See here for updating your implementation to account for SCA:
[https://stripe.com/docs/strong-customer-
authentication/migra...](https://stripe.com/docs/strong-customer-
authentication/migration)

~~~
sunaurus
This was my first thought as well. OP, your symptoms sound very similar to an
app I recently updated to support SCA - it was just dropping a portion of the
payments.

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sixhobbits
Braintree is probably the closest to stripe. I only implemented the sandbox
version though.

If stripe says it's the bank's fault though, it probably is. We had issues
with a lot of payments failing with "no not honor". It was the same with other
providers and did turn out to be the banks

~~~
rococode
> We had issues with a lot of payments failing with "no not honor". It was the
> same with other providers and did turn out to be the banks

Useful info, thanks for sharing! We've also been getting some "do not honors"
and have been wondering if we might see better results with other processors.

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tehbeard
> transactions are falling because some issue when passing the token/customer
> to stripe

That reads more like an issue in your stack than with stripe. Has this
happened since 3d secure rolled out? Perhaps something with the same site
cookie changes? Ca bundle out of date if this is backend passing to stripe?

Without knowing why you are having issues, you're running blind.

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jsumrall
Too vague of a question, given the different ways a PSP can be regarded as
“good”. Some have nicer docs, some have cheaper prices. It’s all in what you
need and your volume, margins, return rate, etc.

I’d take a look at something like
[https://www.spreedly.com/](https://www.spreedly.com/) or
[https://www.verygoodsecurity.com/](https://www.verygoodsecurity.com/) if you
want to avoid lock in with Adyen, etc. Something like VGS can work where you
don’t store credit card data but also don’t rely on a single PSP for
everything.

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martinkivi
When you are saying that you want to own the entire checkout experience, what
exactly do you mean? Do you want to own everything related to processing
credit card payments, including card data storage etc? It would also good to
specify where your company is located.

We've had good experiences with Braintree, Adyen, Stripe and multiple other
payment services for our customers at Shoperb (www.shoperb.com. It does sound
like the problem you are facing may be technical implementation related. Have
you done a custom implementation or using what Stripe provides out of the box?

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pbreit
If you're having problems with Stripe, you're probably going to have more
problems elsewhere.

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rickitan
I recommend Shopify's Checkout

Disclaimer: I work for Shopify (But I also use it for my side hustles)

The biggest benefit is that with the Shopify checkout you can support credit
cards, Paypal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Crypto and more with ONE integration.

You also get discounts codes and logic out of the box (buy one get one, X
percentage off, fixed amount off, etc)

And all you have to do is listen to the order completion web hook and do
whatever you want on your side.

You can use the JavaScript SDK to send your users to the checkout.
[https://shopify.github.io/js-buy-sdk/](https://shopify.github.io/js-buy-sdk/)

Hope that helps!

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rmedaer
I'm going to build a small online service with only one product and a
subscription fee by month. I had to compare the Payment Gateways to know which
one fit my needs.

To do this comparison, I made a small spreadsheet which could (maybe, or not)
help you. Here it is: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12-sWEe-
gsoGm0kT5LMcM...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12-sWEe-
gsoGm0kT5LMcMxfG3-U9BoS8A4UvHxVG7NJk/edit?usp=sharing)

Feel free to add comments if you find any issue.

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payguru
Ceffio, Payments integration can be a tad bit overwhelming if you are new to
payments. But, in my limited experience of about 12 years integrating payments
with Authorize.Net, Stripe, Braintree, I can advise that switching mostly
won’t fix the issue. There are a lot of edge exceptions in the response
payload returned from Stripe (or just about anyone else) that you can must
account for.

Also, it is fairly easy to build a PCI compliant stripe checkout experience
without having to send customers visually to another stripe.

I can help with a quick look if you want to hit me up. Always happy to help.
Rc at 44tables dot com

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ethanpil
I have also been looking for an alternative. In my case I often incorporate
Stripe for clients projects. Would love a solution which offers a referral
commission...

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throwawaysea
Stripe is also willing to deplatform those they ideologically disagree with.
We need better, more neutral, more reliable payment services.

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jeremiahlee
I can recommend against using Zuora and Adyen based on my two years of working
on a large scale migration to them.

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seanwilson
I use Paddle for [https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/). The
major reason I chose them over Stripe is Paddle deal with country specific tax
laws for you (like complicated EU VAT). Paddle take a bigger transaction fee
though.

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turingbombe
you can chat with devs on IRC if you go to freenode and the #stripe channel.
it's proven to be an invaluable resource on some issues.

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simlevesque
Don't try to own the checkout experience.

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rogerkirkness
We had the same issue with the token/customer thing. It seems to be an issue
with client libraries.

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llegnaf
I think GoCardless is another type of payment service that could fit your
domain possibly.

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gautamkmr89
Paypal ? Square ?

A lot depends on your use case.

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josefresco
Authorize.net was my go-to before Stripe. PayPal if you like pain.

~~~
lucb1e
Paypal if you want me looking for alternative places to purchase your goods

~~~
josefresco
If it's just a gateway (no transfer to PP), the consumer won't know the
difference.

~~~
lucb1e
By gateway you mean proxy right?

Is that even within Paypal's TOS? Can you front-end their web service and
capture users' passwords purportedly for proxying?

I know that Sofort does that and I'm flabbergasted by my bank switching their
stance from "wait, who's capturing our login tokens?" to "oh, you're talking
about Sofort. Yeah, we can't control what others do on the internet [I
mentioned they could just block the Sofort servers]. This is fine." Checking
back what the official statement was, in summary it came down to that (use of)
Sofort doesn't comply with the TOS but they're currently allowing me to use it
until they came to a more permanent agreement in current talks with Sofort.

~~~
josefresco
I meant _just_ their gateway services. It's been a few years since I used it
but I do remember a $20/month plan where you could use just the gateway to
process CC orders, no PP account required. This thread is old, we should move
on ;-)

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wilg
We use Paddle because they handle taxes for you, unlike Stripe.

~~~
robshep
Paddle don't list their prices. My rule of thumbs is: If SW companies don't
list their prices it's probably too expensive for me. This proves correct for
me more often than not, so I'm not going to stick in an email address to find
out. Can anyone share indicative pricing for paddle?

~~~
sparkling
5% + 0.50ct

Including all third-party fees from card network or paypal

They may give you a better deal if you are making 100k/month, but that was the
starting rate last time im checked.

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blairanderson
I am 99.999% positive you're doing something wrong.

~~~
lucb1e
I don't necessarily disagree, but it isn't a very helpful comment. Do you know
of any typical mistakes that OP could take a look at?

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chrisgoman
.. the grass is not always greener

