
Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation - hhs
https://www.axios.com/stripe-fundraising-600-million-1f1f38b6-fde6-4316-b111-2f3b0e868ab7.html
======
pc
Stripe cofounder here. This isn't really new -- it's an extension of our last
round ([https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/fintech-start-up-stripe-
notc...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/fintech-start-up-stripe-
notches-35-billion-valuation-in-funding-round.html)).

That said, we've seen a big spike in signups over the past few weeks. If any
HN readers have integrated recently and have feedback, we're always eager to
hear it. Feel free to email me at patrick@stripe.com and I'll route to the
right team(s).

As always, thank you to the many HNers who are also active Stripe users!

~~~
plantain
My top issues running my business on Stripe:

1) Many countries still only allow depositing a single currency (i.e.
Aus/AUD), doubling the cost of transaction due to the currency conversion,
even tripling when we have to convert it back to pay our bills. I always get
told either "soon", or "not possible due to the law", despite competitors
doing it.

2) If we were an EU company, we'd get charged 1.4%+25c on transactions in the
EU, where most of our customers are. Instead, because we're selling from
Australia, we get charged 2.9% for some arbitrary reason. This coupled with 1)
puts our all-in transaction fees at 5%+ :(

3) I think billing the vendor for refund fees is a really retrograde step - it
increases friction in the decision for us when a customer asks for a refund,
and industry wide is going to cause less happy customers and less card users
online. It's already hard enough convincing Dutch/German customers to use a
credit card online.

If any non-EU companies know a cheaper way to process transactions in the EU,
I'm all ears...

~~~
pc
Great feedback... thank you. In case it's useful, some context on them:

On (1), we started an FX team this year. (There are a lot of legal
complexities here around how the funds move, who has title to what at which
moment, and so on.) But we're investing significantly in improving it and it
should get better soon. On (2), the core issue is card network pricing rules
-- by design, they discriminate on the basis of where the business is located.
We happily extend EU fees to all EU legal entities, however, and would be
happy to work with you to set that up. On (3), refunds aren't free for Stripe,
and we were previously in a position where businesses with a lot of refunds
were being subsidized by those who didn't. We want to give this margin away
more sensibly.

Still, all the issues you bring up are real and I'd like us to find better
solutions.

~~~
econcon
Isn't FX a done deal based on how TransferWise is able to do it. Maybe you
guys can collaborate with them and make payouts in any currency possible
atleast in countries where there are no Forex restrictions like Hong Kong.

~~~
joering2
Please no. TransferWise is terrible at customer support and internet is full
of horror stories of people founds being frozen. The are the new incarnation
of good ole’ paypal. You will get your account frozen the moment you wire more
than$1,500 as per my own experience with 3 different businesses giving them a
chance.

I hope Stripe which is amazing will never have anything to do with
TransferFraud.

~~~
byefruit
Not affiliated with TransferWise in any way but just want to say that this is
totally the opposite of my experience and that of pretty much everyone I know
who uses TransferWise.

We've moved hundreds of thousands of dollars through them over the last couple
of years with no problems on their end (we've had problems with banks failing
to transfer correctly though..)

~~~
kernelbugs
I've had the same (mostly) great experience with them.

My only issues with TransferWise have been having to ask recipients for their
full addresses and then manually having to translate address schemes into
something that fits in the boxes TransferWise provides in their forms.
Sometimes things don't map over 1-to-1 (some Japanese and Taiwanese addresses,
for example). I've also found that some Japanese banks only have one branch
without a name and Transferwise requires a branch name. I eventually figured
things out by researching the branch number online though.

All minor gripes though. Transferwise has let my business operate smoothly and
make connections to vendors that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive to pay.

~~~
timcameron
Hey kernelbugs, I work at TransferWise and would love to learn a little more
about the issues you face with our address forms (it could be due to the fact
that payment system limitations often lead to field limitation on our side).
Hopefully I can help you figure out a way to make your life using our product
easier as well. Could you please send me an email to tim@transferwise.com?

------
pianoben
Jeez, just go public already! You've had employees waiting for nigh on a
decade to realize the value of what they've built, but instead it appears that
those gains are just going to VCs (and whoever is privileged enough to take
money off the table during these raises).

Perhaps I'm being too cynical, and perhaps Stripe is taking a more enlightened
view than I'm giving it credit for, but my goodness this trend of large
businesses just raising money forever (and long after they cease being
startups) is frustrating. At least at Google I know I can actually spend all
of my paycheck at some point in the decade after I've earned it.

~~~
alkibiades
might be nice for employees but borders on negligent when private markets are
practically begging for you to take their money and going public has alot of
hoops and disclosures

~~~
pianoben
I will never argue that the founders are not acting wisely - they've got no
moral imperative to go public. As you say, there's far cheaper capital on
offer. Rather, it's a systemic failing. They would pay an undeniable cost by
going the IPO route, but it would be to the benefit of their employees and the
public at large.

Private markets being so flush with cash while regular folks are strapped, on
the other hand, is a sign that the tax code is too lenient and we should be
re-purposing those dollars for societal benefit. _There_ is the moral failing.

~~~
GarrisonPrime
>...we should be re-purposing those dollars for societal benefit. _There_ is
the moral failing.

To see such a dangerous, totalitarian ideology expressed so casually is
terrifying.

~~~
pianoben
I'm sorry to have terrified you. Here's what I mean by that, and what I think
should change.

Companies boast of record profits, buy back stock constantly, and pay next to
nothing in taxes. Meanwhile, even with the ACA Americans scrimp and save,
paying outrageous amounts for paltry healthcare that most of the First World
would find totally inadequate. Education is chronically underfunded and over-
regulated. Student debt is a ticking time bomb.

All of these problems could be resolved in an instant, had we the political
will to solve them. Is it totalitarian to wish for a modern single-payer
health system? Is it totalitarian to want my children to have access to a good
education like I had in the 80s? Is it wrong to ask those who benefit most
from society, to pay their fair share? I don't think so. Neither of us want
boots on the ground, so to speak.

------
fbelzile
I'm very happy with Stripe and for their success, but I plan on switching all
my payments to go through PayPal again. I did some math and PayPal offers a
better deal for Canadian businesses after Stripe bumps me off of their
grandfathered conversion fees in a couple months.

I love the slick interface, but it's simply not worth the thousands per year
I'll be saving with the switch.

For me the main selling point for any payment processor is the minimization of
fees. Sure, the API's are nice, but I already use a payment gateway for that.

I'm a few clicks away from saving thousands. Am I missing anything?

~~~
nickjj
Are you planning to go through PayPal directly or Braintree?

One thing I notice is, I get much less fraudulent payments through PayPal, and
when I do get them it's handled automatically (and most of the time they end
up being not fraud because PayPal investigated it and released the funds).
100% hands free, $0 in fees.

With Stripe, not only do I get more fraudulent payments but you need to pay
$15 as a dispute fee through Stripe when you lose the case and pretty much all
fraud causes through Stripe will be lost (because it's actual fraud). It also
takes like 20 minutes to fill out the forms, create fax-compatible sized
screenshots and a lot of other boilerplate information if you plan to contest
the dispute.

It's a shame Stripe doesn't offer the Radar service (helps detect and prevent
fraud) with custom rules as part of their normal service. You can only get it
if you pay insurance fees, which are added fees on top of the normal amount.

Combine that with the new Stripe SCA compatible APIs and sketchy docs and yeah
I'm in the same boat as you. Stripe is no longer an immediate "of course I'm
going to use Stripe" decision. Braintree is looking pretty good at this point.

~~~
csdreamer7
Would you mind sharing your percentage of fraud with the two services? (I
assume you are using Braintree.)

Honestly, you are the first person to make a good case on using PayPal over
Stripe. Especially with the arbitrary horror stories I hear about PayPal all
the time.

> It's a shame Stripe doesn't offer the Radar service (helps detect and
> prevent fraud) with custom rules as part of their normal service. You can
> only get it if you pay insurance fees, which are added fees on top of the
> normal amount.

I agree. This should be standard.

> Combine that with the new Stripe SCA compatible APIs and sketchy docs

Would you please describe what is sketchy? Their docs seem pretty good... but
I am now just hearing about SCA.

[https://stripe.com/guides/strong-customer-
authentication](https://stripe.com/guides/strong-customer-authentication)

~~~
nickjj
I use Stripe and PayPal currently but on the next platform I'm currently
building I'm strongly (and very seriously) considering Braintree.

With PayPal, the fraud experience has been nothing short of amazing. Out of
many many thousands of transactions, I've only had about 3 or 4 transactions
get flagged as high risk by PayPal. What this means is PayPal will hold the
funds, review the transaction and then either give you the funds if it's legit
or do something else if it's not legit.

I've had 0 cases on PayPal where fraud / disputes actually took place. Of
those 3-4 transactions, they were all released. None of this required any
intervention by me. I just got notified by email from PayPal when a high risk
transaction occurred. 100% of the funds were put back into my account a few
days later (short of the normal 2.9% + 30c fees).

On Stripe, I've also had many many thousands of transactions. I've had a
number of fraud transactions in the process which ended up as disputes. Stripe
sends out an email letting you know, but then it's now on you to decide if you
want to contest the dispute. This dispute typically happens when someone who
got their credit card stolen sees an unknown charge in their records.

Now you need to fill out like 8 form fields and supply screenshots and server
logs of proof that someone was accessing the material they've stolen (I sell
digital courses so there's no physical item). The screenshots need to be sized
perfectly to be displayed in portrait mode on a sheet of paper that gets faxed
over to the person reviewing it from the bank, otherwise it'll be unreadable
from their perspective and you'll auto-lose the case.

Stripe doesn't let you see a real preview of these screenshots and they even
alter the uploaded image size in your preview which makes it hard to preview
what it will look like from the reviewer's POV even though that's the only
thing that matters.

After doing that, it takes about 2-3 months to get a resolution. You get
charged a $15 bank dispute fee (on top of the full amount of the product of
course) which is non-refundable unless you happen to win the dispute, but if
someone got their card stolen then you're not going to win the case. You also
don't get any information from Stripe about the review, other than you won or
lost. Stripe says it's because banks don't give them any info beyond that.
Fine, that's ok, but yeah the overall experience is very very bad.

Then on top of that, Stripe sells a Radar service that you need to pay extra
on top of for each transaction to get better tools to help prevent fraud
before it takes place. They choose not to give it to everyone because I guess
they profit from dispute fees and fraudulent transactions.

The kick in the teeth is that the data Stripe uses to train their Radar /
anti-fraud service is data provided by business owners who have trusted Stripe
with their business. Now they are selling that data back to us in the form of
insurance fees on each transaction (the Radar service you need to pay for).

I haven't personally used Braintree yet but from what I read in their docs,
you get that type of anti-fraud service baked into the normal 2.9% + 30c
(don't quote me on that, but it very much reads that way on their site).

Whatever PayPal is doing (and in turn Braintree since it's a PayPal service),
they're doing a fantastic job at combating fraud and disputes, especially
compared to Stripe.

 _> Would you please describe what is sketchy? Their docs seem pretty good...
but I am now just hearing about SCA._

Their docs are typically good, but the SCA / Payment Intents docs are not
really at the same standards as the rest of their documentation yet.

Come back in a few weeks when you've implemented it.

What's interesting is I run a podcast about running web apps in production and
I've had a bunch of folks come on the show who use Stripe to accept payments.

All of them have said the experience with implementing SCA with Stripe was
pretty rough. These are seasoned developers running successful platforms too.

They've all done it in the last couple of months as well.

~~~
olivierrg
> _Their docs are typically good, but the SCA / Payment Intents docs are not
> really at the same standards as the rest of their documentation yet._

Stripe PM on the Payment Intents API here. You're right that there were some
rough edges when we started rolling out this new API last year. SCA is complex
and we want to help make it easy to navigate this regulation: we designed the
new APIs to abstract away as much of the complexity as we can. In addition,
thanks to a lot of feedback from users, we made important changes to our docs
architecture, guides, API reference, and Dashboard in November 2019, and are
continuing to iterate on it. I would love feedback on how we can further
improve our documentation. I’m olivier@stripe.com.

~~~
chrischen
One of the main tough things with the SCA / Payment Intents is that we have to
keep our payment state in sync with Stripe's (updating the amount to charge
and syncing with the cart total), and then syncing with a webhook. The
transaction apparently happens in a separate process from the customer's
browser session.

With PayPal you simply send a request for a certain amount, and when it gets
approved the customer's client comes back with a token and you choose to
execute it or not. If you don't execute, the charge just isn't completed.

Stripe's docs says to not depend on the client because the client can close
the browser window. In the PayPal case, if that happens, the transaction is
simply canceled (since the client closed before finishing).

EDIT: It looks like Stripe's docs do support the PayPal style integration, but
recommends against it because it doesn't work with longer-delay asynchronous
methods. It's funny because PayPal's old API was done in this way (with
instant payment notification webhooks) and their new API is closer to Stripe's
old API.

------
JaakkoP
I love the quote from John Collison:

"This is digital migration in a very compressed period of time, for both
businesses and customers," Collison adds. "My mom recently asked me if I'd
heard of 'this Instacart thing.' Yeah mom, I have."

~~~
tlrobinson
Sadly, it’s also likely one of the largest and fastest transfers of wealth
from small businesses to large corporations. As Amazon hires 100,000+ workers
how many small businesses are shuttering for good?

Stripe is one of the “good” tech companies in this respect by helping to level
the playing field for smaller businesses, but it’s not going to be enough.

~~~
malandrew
I don't understand this idolization of small over large (or vice versa for
others). The thing that matters most is that businesses best satisfy their
customers, whether they are small or large.

There's no benefit to having a small business that provides inferior products
or inferior service relative to a large company.

I buy from small companies all the time and many of those that I do will
likely survive because they provide better goods and services than any large
company.

~~~
core-questions
> There's no benefit to having a small business that provides inferior
> products or inferior service relative to a large company.

Sure there is - in terms of where the profit goes. The profit in a small
business goes to the owner(s), who usually live somewhere in the local
community, and in turn that money stays within the community to be spent on
other businesses there.

When a Walmart comes along, the profits all move up the chain to a corporation
that is nowhere nearby, effectively sucking the wealth out of small towns in
exchange for slightly reduced costs thanks to efficient logistics.

The happy medium would be to find a way to have logistics as good as Walmart
without having to actually be Walmart.

~~~
asdfadsfgfdda
By that logic, car dealerships in America are a positive because they keep
profits locally. In reality, they just increase prices to consumers and limit
competition through lobbying.

The cost advantage from Walmart is not just in logistics, it is specialization
of labor, superior negotiating power against suppliers, and diversification of
geographic risk. A small business will be less efficient and give up more
profits to suppliers.

~~~
eloff
This is true, but are lower prices for consumers better for everyone in the
community than keeping the profits locally? I don't think anyone knows. My
guess is it creates different winners and losers.

------
remote_phone
I hope they are letting the employees cash out at these rounds. Otherwise they
will end up like Uber, Lyft and other unicorn employees that not only got
screwed by the IPO, but the subsequent taxes because of that. I know many Uber
employees that need to sell at these low prices just to pay taxes and their
RSUs leaving them with very little actual gains.

~~~
bagacrap
Are employees supposed to make gains on their equity based compensation when
their company underperforms? Isn't this a risk you take when joining a
startup? Thus far the only thing Uber has ever proved successful at,
financially, was taking VC money. So it sounds like what you're asking for is
that startup employees be allowed to siphon vc funds into their personal bank
accts.

~~~
juped
This is a ludicrous comment unless you believe that "employees" deserve to be
second-class citizens. Lots of people cash out during funding rounds. It may
be the status quo, but no one deserves their equity being a scam.

------
littlethings
Stripe user here (Stripe Singapore) since 2016 and processed a loooot of money
which was a life-changing thing for me and many other people.

Patrick, I appreciate how supportive you are here so I hope you don't mind
this turning into Q&A/support type of topic :D

1) Do you plan to lower the currency conversion fees for Singapore? We charge
customers in USD but we are forced to convert to SGD and conversion fees adds
up. On 99USD charge, with the current conversion, we get around 138 SGD but
the net for us is 133 SGD because the processing fee is ~5.20SGD. That fee was
lower before. There is no problem for us getting an extension of our account
in USD currency so we could avoid unnecessary conversion USD->SGD fees.

2\. Chargebacks. A real pain in the ass. I shared a post on IH about it.
Basically there is no way for us to issue someone a refund if they are doing a
chargeback. This is a real problem that is relatively easy to solve. PayPal
does it - basically, if the customer submits dispute, PayPal first tries to
contact the seller to voluntarily provide the refund and only if they refuse,
the dispute is being reviewed. Why Stripe cannot work this way? That would
save a lot of drama and stress involved running the business for both sides -
you and us, your customers.

3\. Pricing info. It's still very confusing on your website to understand what
and how you charge for particular add-ons and whether we are grandfathered and
have these add-on services included free of charge (since we have been with
you since 2016).

~~~
dylz
For 2, a dispute is not a cb - on paypal if someone chargebacks _on their
card_, there is an entirely different workflow

~~~
littlethings
When I say "dispute" I mean chargeback. It's the same in Stripe.

------
toptal
Adyen:

$25b market cap, with 2019 full year net revenue being $538m, up 43% year-on-
year.

[https://www.adyen.com/investor-
relations/news/h2-2019-financ...](https://www.adyen.com/investor-
relations/news/h2-2019-financial-results)

Stripe:

Significantly less than Adyen, as many have reported.

\----

Same business model, with Adyen having a higher operating margin.

This should be interesting to see how this plays out. Either Adyen will
skyrocket in value, or Stripe will decrease in value.

~~~
uyuioi
Isn’t adyen cheaper too?

~~~
adrr
They also return interchange fees on refunds.

------
GhostVII
This is not a new valuation, is an extension of their series G from last year
which also had a 35B valuation.

~~~
pc
That's right; this isn't new. We just decided that it was prudent to extend
the round a little given the economic uncertainty.

~~~
jacquesm
In which book is $600M 'a little' :) Really, that's boatload of money by any
standard.

~~~
pc
Fair :-). "A little" relative to market cap. But, yes, $600M is a staggering
amount of money in absolute terms.

~~~
criddell
Please tell me it's to fund a massive expansion of Stripe Press! I want more
books like _The Dream Machine_!

I just looked at your site and saw a book about Prince of Persia I hadn't seen
before. I'm trying not to buy any more books because my stack is already too
big but it's really tempting...

------
chops
I just want to say thank you to Stripe for being amazing.

I'm just now dealing with canceling service with a traditional merchant
account (I switched completely over to Stripe back in August), and the
experience has been terrible and stupid.

Around 2003 or 2004, I was working on my first startup. I signed up for an
authorize.net account through a merchant account called Capital Merchant
Systems (later acquired by EVO Payments). At the time, the process required
filling out a pile of paperwork, including writing an actual cover letter to
get approved.

Things were fine until recent years, business for this particular service had
slowly dropped to the point where it was no longer feasible to run through
authorize.net. So I decided to finally make the switch over to Stripe (which
I'd used for a number of years on another project).

Signing up for Stripe is so painlessly easy, straightforward, and friendly.

After switching my system over, I called and emailed my merchant account to
cancel (this was in August). Then I called and emailed again in November. Then
I called and emailed again in January.

All the while, they've been withdrawing from my checking account.

Then I emailed again in April, and filed reports with the BBB and FTC. Only
then have I heard back from them, and they're claiming my January request is
the first request.

So the short of it is, use Stripe. They are amazing, open, and transparent,
their API is a joy to work with, and their dashboard is great. I wish Stripe
was around 16 years ago when I first got started processing payments.

And DO NOT, under any circumstances, use EVO Payments. Cancelling with them is
like cancelling a shitty gym membership - at the end of the day, you'll have
to file complaints with every 3-letter organization you can think of, and file
transaction disputes to cancel your account.

------
simonsarris
That's much higher than Square (25.2B) but lower than Shopify (60.5B)

(Square and Shopify have 4.71B and 1.58B in revenue, respectively)

~~~
adrr
Shopify is going to pull back payments from stripe. It's the only logical
thing for them to do for them to boost revenue. They already ramped up the
Shopify Pay branding and removed the "powered by stripe" cobranding on Shopify
Payments. Stripe helped it along by not refunding payment fees on returns.
Shopify's largest merchants are apparel companies who have high return rates.

------
ryanmccullagh
So with Stripe, is it industry practice to keep the fee when refunding
customers?

For example, if I return something to Best Buy, are they still paying that
2.9% fee to their CC processor?

~~~
notatoad
i don't know about best buy, they might be able to negotiate something better.
but for small fish, it's standard practice to keep not just the fee, but twice
the fee: when you charge a card, visa charges you 2.5% on the purchase amount.
and then when you refund the card, visa charges you 2.5% on the refund amount.

as far as visa is concerned, they're both just transactions, regardless of the
direction, and they want their fee.

~~~
lisper
IMHO it is time to start promulgating the idea that electronic money transfer
should be considered a basic human right just like free cash transactions have
been since the invention of money. It already is that way in many advanced
countries where electronic money transfer is a service provided by the
government. It is only in the U.S. where a private monopolistic cartel is
allowed to impose a private tax on all retail transactions.

~~~
Znafon
In what countries can you do free electronic transactions?

~~~
tialaramex
If you're a business basically nowhere. Some of the sibling comments are
suggesting e.g. the UK where I live. Modestly sized transactions (maybe not
the price of a new car or home but from pocket change to a nice family
holiday) between individuals are zero cost and typically near instant. But a
business can't access those rates.

However the EU forced the payment services sector to cap charges for
businesses so you're maybe paying 0.5% or less on a transaction not 2.5% and
that's why you don't see amazing cashback card deals or big discounts for cash
in the EU normally.

------
ryanackley
Stripe has great and interesting products but this valuation seems very high.
They are competing with companies like Global Payments and First Data but they
aren't disrupting them.

First Data has a lower market cap than this with $9B in annual revenue and $1B
in annual profit.

~~~
anonanon43
I'm aware of a large org actively moving the bulk of $3bn in volume from
FiServ (formerly First Data) to Stripe. Stripe's valuation is higher because
of their trajectory. FiServ isn't innovating- at all. Just more attempts at
lipstick on the pig.

~~~
ryanackley
$3bn in volume equates to around $90M (~3% of volume) in fees. Not an
insignificant amount of money but when your revenue is approaching $10B, it
doesn't move the needle.

Also, this money is divided up among all the players. This includes the
network (Visa, Mastercard, etc.), the Bank (every credit card has an issuing
bank), and the acquirer (Stripe).

------
rconti
I think I've tried to use Stripe stores with ApplePay and discounts, and it
never works. A couple local breweries, a coffee roaster, and another place I
ordered car parts from. As soon as you enter a coupon code, the ApplePay
option goes away. I am trying to remember why, I want to say, the ApplePay
option shows up BEFORE the checkout page where you enter coupon codes, then
once you enter a code you can no longer ApplePay. Anyone else notice this?

------
kashura
If they are so successful, why do they need to continuously raise money?

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Because they're aiming to be even more successful. $36B is still a tenth of
Visa, and I think Stripe believes they can eventually become an equally
important part of the financial ecosystem.

~~~
adrr
It’s larger than Adyen who has a arguably a better platform and bigger
customers like eBay and Microsoft. Stripe has Shopify but with their misstep
of not refunding processing fees on returns, that’s going away quickly as
merchants pressure Shopify.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Stripe's forward looking goals seem to be mostly about expanding and changing
the nature of online commerce, rather than capturing the existing payment
processing market. I agree it'd be dumb for them to expect to grow based
solely on stealing customers from existing processors.

~~~
Silhouette
_Stripe 's forward looking goals seem to be mostly about expanding and
changing the nature of online commerce, rather than capturing the existing
payment processing market._

This seems to be a recurring pattern in the more innovative online payment
services. GoCardless is similarly trying to shift how people pay for things
online away from the fragile and unreliable card networks.

Unfortunately, at least for some of us, the problems these services are
solving are becoming secondary. The biggest pain points now, as a business
selling services online from the UK, tend to be about regulatory compliance
issues that increasingly conflict with clean, user-friendly payment processes
and about the increasing complexity of global VAT/sales tax rules (and the
ever more hostile rhetoric combined with often unrealistic demands from many
governments in connection with the same).

I'm looking at setting up a new business at the moment, and our initial
assumption is that we won't be using services like Stripe and GoCardless at
all any more, even though I've built modestly successful businesses with them
in the past. We just don't have time for all of the compliance and tax hassle
in every country in the world where someone might buy from us, and while
Stripe's new samples and guides have helped with showing how to get their new
PSD2-friendly API to work, they also serve to show how horrifically
complicated the once-simple process of charging a card online is now becoming.
In the near future, I suspect this will push many of us into using marketplace
or merchant-of-record arrangements and just outsourcing the whole shebang to
businesses large enough to deal with those issues properly, who will no doubt
take a larger cut of the revenues in return.

You'd think governments would have been solving these problems at an
international level decades ago, but many of them aren't even following the
general OECD guidelines they've theoretically agreed. It's bizarre that in
2020, it's actually becoming _harder_ for an honest business to sell a decent
product or service to a genuine customer online.

------
therealmarv
How about opening your business to new markets. Stripe feels like you have to
have your business in the top first world countries only. It's unusable even
in some EU countries nowadays.

~~~
pc
We're still working hard on this. (We just expanded our beta in Bulgaria last
week!)

~~~
pgo
The Indian rollout has been extremely slow, Stripe launched the beta in
December 2017 and still hasn't come out of preview. What kind of challenges
did you face that delayed the launch by more than two years?

------
ttoinou
I wished I could use Stripe but when selling worldwide you need to send the
V.A.T. / G.S.T. to each country and US state you're dealing with. With
customers all around the globe it means something like minimum 50 tax invoices
to fill and send for me

~~~
kmoriarty
Hey! I'm a PM at Stripe working on solving VAT/GST/sales tax pain points for
our users. Would be great to connect and hear more about what you're looking
for. Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like your main pain
point is around specifically handling the collection, and then remittance and
filing of tax for all countries/jurisdictions you have nexus in? Or is it
actually the difficulty with issuing customers compliant invoices across all
countries you sell to (e.g. ensuring VAT ID is shown, language is local,
etc.)?

Either way, would be great to connect -- kmoriarty@stripe.com

~~~
ttoinou
Email sent !

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tewwi
My biggest concern is data leaking, via web hooks, from other platforms into
ours.

Most of our clients use Stripe for payments on our platform. They are
connected via Stripe Connect. However a handful of them use other services
from other providers as well also with Stripe Connect.

We are seeing web hook events not just for our own platform but also the other
platforms too which obviously includes details about the transaction but also
often with personally identifiable information such as name, email, address,
telephone number.

Your support team acknowledged that they are aware of the issue. The response
was:

"Because of how the design of the connected accounts are, any events from that
connected account will be sent to all Platforms that the account is connected
to. We do understand and see how this is a potential security/safety issue,
and we have made note of this to our Connect team.

While we do not have any current plans to adjust this, we are going to discuss
things with our Connect team to see if there is a way to we can make this
better for our users."

I personally consider this a massive data leak because potentially sensitive
information about customers is being shared to companies who have no right to
access that information.

I really hope you can look into this.

Regards, Will

------
pm_me_ur_fullzz
I want a bot that translates these advertisements to the equivalent phrasing
used in public equity markets

"Someone bought 1,000,000 shares of a company at a price of $20 in a secondary
offering. Company's marketcap is now $36B"

Private equity market lingo is dumb. Many companies don't state the valuation
after a round and the ones that do deliberately do it for clout. It is
confusing and counterintuitive because people wonder why the "valuation is
stretched" when literally just someone bought some shares, its not really news
that someone bought shares at a high price. "Jonathan bought 1 share of Amazon
for $2,000 for a valuation of 1.5 trillion" doesn't matter if this was a
secondary market trade, or Amazon doing a 1 share secondary offering "raising
$2000", it is a completely non news story, except in how the private equity
world chooses to warp the language.

In private equity, the "rounds" have to be a higher valuation, and a "down
round" is bad - an instant death knell and death spiral for the company solely
because of how the PE world chooses to broadcast clout.

~~~
abhorrence
Down rounds are also bad news for previous investors (and other shareholders,
like employees) due to how liquidation preferences typically work.

~~~
xenocratus
This article was an eye-opener for me on how that works:

[https://www.economist.com/finance-and-
economics/2020/04/08/w...](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-
economics/2020/04/08/why-a-lot-of-startups-will-come-to-regret-their-unicorn-
status)

------
aloukissas
Naive question: why? Aren't you already profitable and making more money as
even more transactions happen online?

------
glintik
Oh.. May be Stripe will hire Frontend Developers who use Firefox to fix
numerous bugs?

------
joking
I get that stripe is easy and convenient, but once your business is running, I
don’t get how many people doesn’t switch to bank provided payment gateways, at
least in Europe the savings are huge (like 0.40% instead of 1.4%)

------
rbreve
Why would a very successful company need $600M? this is pure speculation now.

~~~
aloukissas
I have 100% the same question. Esp. since they make money from the very first
customer.

~~~
dbancajas
privatize the gains, socialize the losses?

------
bitxbit
Stripe is the only company worthy of its lofty valuation. I love their
products. Not sure how Shopify market cap is nearly 2x Stripe. Makes zero
sense to me.

------
saadalem
if HNers are asking specifically for how to beat Stripe, Paypal in business I
would say quite simply process more transactions or offer more flexible rates
or services. Both are great companies that have grown into larger players.
However, they still only account for a non material portion of total
transaction value and volume when it comes to commerce. Therefore, they can be
caught to in many areas. Take for example stripe. They are almost exclusively
online and offer a bundled transaction rate. By simply focusing on areas like
offline payments or more flexible/customizable rates a company could easily
beat them.

For PayPal, they are much larger, you could do the same. You will not beat
them over night but you can easily find niches where a more tailored approach
would benefit the businesses rather than the broad strokes a company of that
size has to take.

One area to look at for both would be online sales. Neither do that well at
all. Another area to consider would be embedded experiences that require micro
transactions. Stripe and PayPal are all but wedded to the payment networks at
this time.

~~~
mtm7
I love Stripe and have been a happy customer for years. But to piggyback off
of this comment, one thing I've always wanted from them is plug-and-play
subscription management, similar to Memberful[0].

[0]: [https://memberful.com/](https://memberful.com/)

------
adamqureshi
I wish stripe would offer some relief for the pandemic to their customers. I
use them for my business to process CC's but they have not provided anything.
I can't get a PPP loan. I'd accept an interest free loan if they would offer
it to my business. They did approve me for a loan but want a fee upfront + a
slice of daily sales until its paid back.

~~~
pc
We've been working with various government agencies behind-the-scenes and are
about to pilot our first PPP loans. (Since so many banks have had troubles
with the SBA application process, we want to make sure the process is robust
and scaleable before deploying anything broadly.) Feel free to email
brayden@stripe.com if you're interested in trying it out.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Thank you for this. It doesn't impact me personally, but every contribution
helps.

------
novask
Anyone at Stripe do security or pentesting or redteaming? What's the
hiring/requirements like for that?

------
agustif
I want to use stripe but we sell travel, and 1.5% for a +1500Eur ticket is way
too much compared to what integrating with my regular ol' bank costs 0.15%, no
fixed fee.

I would love to use stripe because of DX/UX, but honestly as a SMB, can't
really justify it.

------
j_m_b
What's the story with paying people through Stripe? PayPal is dead easy, give
me an email address and I can pay them. I would really like to replace our
PayPal system with a product from Stripe, but it's not straight forward how
you would do that.

------
break_the_bank
Congratulations to folks at Stripe!

------
2OEH8eoCRo0
>Stripe is an American technology company based in San Francisco, California.
Its software allows individuals and businesses to make and receive payments
over the Internet.

They're worth how much!? Forgive me but how is this worth that much?

------
ptrenko
I remember seeing a graph (from Paul I think):

graph1: linear + exponential s curve

When you zoom out the first graph, the exponential part starts looking linear

graph2: linear + slightly less linear + exponential

Oh wait, it is an exponential curve right? D'oh

------
tschellenbach
Anyone know Stripe's revenue and the multiple this 36B valuation represents?

~~~
progx
Revenue? Zero. Why should they need $600M?

~~~
xenocratus
Have any sources on that zero?

------
eric_b
Would be nice if Stripe decided to lower their processing fees a bit for small
businesses getting crushed right now. Ours just went up in fact. A big slap in
the face really.

------
ramanathanrv
Best wishes to Stripe. They deserve to succeed. I speculate that the biggest
competition for Stripe is going to be Amazon which will use AWS to rollout
payments API.

------
buf
I just wish Stripe figured out how to integrate with PayPal. I'm stuck using
Braintree because I want a single payment provider for CC and PayPal payments.

~~~
mgbmtl
Just curious: what field are you in, and what's the % of PayPal payments?

I work with non-profits in Canada. PayPal used to be omnipresent, but in the
past 2-3 years, most of our clients dropped it. I never found any good data to
back whether we should still support it or not. (payment method FOMO)

~~~
buf
Consumer saas. 60% of our payments come through PayPal.

------
joejoejoejoe1
Is it easy enough to integrate multiple payment vendors- stripe, braintree,
paypal and switch between them as needed in your application?

------
chrisstanchak
When Stripe goes public they need to let customers participate in IPO just
like Square did. That was awesome.

------
ML_Clockwise
It's been really fun and inspiring to see what Stripe has done. Well done and
well deserved!

------
obilgic
Didn't they recently start out giving loans to SMs?

~~~
addedlovely
Yes based on incoming revenue from payments, Stripe Capital:
[https://stripe.com/capital](https://stripe.com/capital)

------
tomerbd
Can Israel be supported? (as a seller)

~~~
gpu_explorer
כן כן כן

------
joshuaschmidt
why is stripe looking for funding now, instead of before the pandemic? it
might have increased their valuation.

