
Stripe has democratised online payments and reshaped the digital economy - how-about-this
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/stripe-payments-apple-amazon-facebook
======
pbowyer
Oh come on. I would rather integrate Stripe into a customers' system than any
other EU payment provider (though Stripe's "Look how simple this is" changed
somewhat once 3D-Secure became necessary for our customers), but they have not
reshaped the economy or democratised payments.

I'd award that to PayPal and the work they did over a decade ago. Also see
Braintree (not used), Square (not used) et al

~~~
Xixi
Until Stripe came to Japan, there was really only one solution to accept USD
or EUR there: PayPal. The local equivalents were all JPY only. But for
Tomotcha, since we are targeting an audience outside of Japan, we really
wanted USD and EUR. The day I heard that Stripe was coming to Japan I started
to harass them every few weeks to know when it was going to be ready...

Conclusion: it did reshape things quite a bit on this side of the planet.

~~~
dmix
If you're non-American Stripe was indeed 'revolutionary' in a product/market
sense. There literally were no good options before Stripe, even here in
Canada. Braintree was okay but limited to the US (at least early on, idk now).
The other options were absolutely awful in a technical and even often business
sense.

But that doesn't mean it 'democratized' anything. If anything it centralized
the market merely by being the only good option in a market run by "MBAs"
which was in desperate need of real software/design talent.

Nothing wrong with greatest from pure market dominance by delivering real
value to customers.

Besides Stripe apparently isn't purely free and open (ie, not holding strong
values outside of the purely commercial marketplace) to everyone, when they
are declined services to Gab.ai unless they stop 'serving adult content' which
is lawyer speak to attack them for allowing unsavoury people to exercise free
speech. As bad as some Gab users are I don't think it's the payment processors
place to enforce some terms of service or speech policy on their customers. As
long as Gab deletes illegal content (which they claim they do) then I dont see
why they shouldnt be allowed to run a service with a legitimate free speech
policy.

~~~
Hermitian909
_Besides Stripe apparently isn 't purely free and open (ie, not holding strong
values outside of the purely commercial marketplace) to everyone, when they
are declined services to Gab.ai unless they stop 'serving adult content' which
is lawyer speak to attack them for allowing unsavoury people to exercise free
speech. As bad as some Gab users are I don't think it's the payment processors
place to enforce some terms of service or speech policy on their customers. As
long as Gab deletes illegal content (which they claim they do) then I dont see
why they shouldnt be allowed to run a service with a legitimate free speech
policy._

You can't really put this on stripe, a big part of how good their product is
is that they hammered out contracts with everyone who provides debit/credit
card services. Those some companies have been blocking payments to the sex
industry for years, as well as other groups they consider unsavory (recall
Visa blocked donations to wikileaks). The financial institutions involved did
_not_ give up that clout when they signed on with stripe.

------
jrockway
The title is:

> The untold story of Stripe, the secretive $20bn startup driving Apple,
> Amazon and Facebook

I then did a control-F to look for how Apple is involved, and it only appears
two other times. Once in a discussion about a WiFi pineapple, and then as a
tag at the bottom of the page.

Do Apple and Amazon really use stripe for their payments? I've certainly never
noticed any stripe branding.

~~~
doanerock
"I've certainly never noticed any stripe branding." That is the whole point,
you are not suppose to know who is processing the credit cards for apple.
Stripe provides a white label services while paypal's convoluted service is
really in your face about who provides the 'service'.

~~~
tyingq
PayPal has their Payments Pro product if you want to accept credit cards
without the PayPal branding on your site.

------
hellbanner
Looped in with IP Infringement, regulated or illegal products and services >
Adult content and services Pornography and other obscene materials (including
literature, imagery and other media); sites offering any sexually-related
services such as prostitution, escorts, pay-per view, adult live chat features
> Products or services that are otherwise prohibited by our financial partners
Video game or virtual world credits Sale of in-game currency unless the
merchant is the operator of the virtual world

~~~
stevenicr
Indeed. This.

I saw the title of the article and had to do a lookup - the word democratised;
it's a terrible choice here. This makes it sounds like stripe somehow made
crypto send and receive easy.

They've done nothing of the sort. I'd say they have actually increased the
chokehold monopolization of the major CC issuers instead.

If they used their clout to change the game, great, but they haven't.

You made some API things easier for developers - congrats. You are like paypal
from a decade ago, but with 2.0 docs, and modern code for developers - except
that paypal is actually helping more people take payments that are in
threatened groups these days, and stripe just goes along with the censorship
upstream and makes it easier to deploy.

Even coinbase is doing more to "democratize and reshape the digital economy"
(not that they are doing it as well I had hoped they and others could).

~~~
stonecraftwolf
To be fair, I don’t think any company is positioned to take on the CC
companies and win.

~~~
CharlesW
Keep an eye on Apple, who has active, direct financial relationships with a
billion+ consumers[1].

Services like Apple Pay, Apple Pay Cash, Apple Pay on the Web, and iPhone
Upgrade Program are pieces of a larger (if relatively slow-moving) strategy.

[1] In early 2014 Apple boasted of having 800+ million iTunes accounts, most
of which have one or more associated credit cards. In September 2014, Bono
leaked that Apple had shared a figure of 885 million.
[https://9to5mac.com/2014/09/22/u2-bono-apple-
itunes/](https://9to5mac.com/2014/09/22/u2-bono-apple-itunes/)

~~~
triodan
Apple has always and will still market themselves as "family-friendly",
recently they announced that they will not produce any adult content for their
original content lineup.[1]

[1]: [https://9to5mac.com/2018/09/22/apple-tv-adult-content-
origin...](https://9to5mac.com/2018/09/22/apple-tv-adult-content-original-
shows/)

------
perpetualcrayon
I recognize that Stripe was maybe the first to create a modern JSON-based API
for financial transactions. At least maybe the first of that kind that gained
traction. But to say they "reshaped the digital economy"?

I would say reshaping the digital economy would definitely entail direct
competition with the big players like Visa and MasterCard. Lower the
ridiculous percentages that these corporations fleece merchants with and then
maybe I'll think differently.

------
sebleon
Ha, I wonder what PR firm Stripe hired to get this story published. This piece
is less subtle than the "The Suit is Back!" of yesteryear. [1]

[1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

------
jtl999
Stripe is a good product. But it unfortunately does nothing to avoid
censorship of "controversial" projects by CC processors, etc.

------
ilaksh
When they got to the part about how 402 payment required is an HTTP status
code it made me start thinking about crypto currency.

My strong personal belief is that cryptocurrency is not just an experiment for
a small percentage of nerds but will in fact become the normal mode of payment
on the internet. When cryptocurrency payments become practical and popular
that will start reducing Stripe's market share or whatever.

I am putting a lot of faith in the efforts to scale up Ethereum.

------
ksec
On the Subject of Stripe, ( Sorry for being off topic ), how does one accept
Micropayments online? Micro being Sub $10 transactions?

If I sell things for $10, and only making 10% profits, that is $1. If Stripe
charges me 3% + 30c, that 30c is like 30% of the profits gone.

~~~
dannyw
You pass on these fees to thr customer.

------
lgleason
I'm sure the people at Gab would disagree with this assessment.

------
Dowwie
I can get on just fine without reading another PR upvoted story about Stripe
for a while

------
dgrnbrg
What about the 3rd founder? He got written out of the narrative early on, but
he built the original platform and was bought out in the first few years.

~~~
dhnsmakala
Really? Can't find any info on this.

------
sonnyblarney
Anytime someone uses the term 'democratizes such and such' in the context of
Valley startup I have to chuckle.

But honestly - isn't Stripe just a really clean and useful set of API's for
transactions? I mean, a 'developer first' mentality towards payment systems?

All the power to them, I've used them and like them ...

But can anyone tell me why this is revolutionary/democratizing?

~~~
dasil003
Because you used to have to get a merchant account from a bank, and that was a
nightmare for inexperienced individuals with no business credentials.

~~~
sonnyblarney
A 'merchant account' can be had by anyone relatively quickly at almost any
bank. It would only be a hurdle for the tiniest of 1-2 person operations and a
minor one at that.

I think Stripe did a good job, but I don't think it's anything but a better-
mousetrap here, and not one that's going to change anything fundamentally,
architecturally etc.

AirBnB, Uber, Facebook, Twitter - for better or worse they really changed
things. Even Dropbox lead a new kind of 'persona cloud storage' movement,
which is a change. Stripe ... not so much.

~~~
wolco
Going to a bank? That mean't you had to be all in (business registered) and
pay high fees.

Stripe did change the way smaller companies did business. But Paypal allowed
anyone to accept payments.

~~~
sonnyblarney
"That mean't you had to be all in" if your business is not registered, you're
not a business. Seriously, that's a small hurdle. I'll bet the long tail of
unregistered business revenue from Stripe is very small, and likely
overshadowed by just a few large enterprise accounts.

------
moltar
Didn’t find anything untold. Just a long article with many examples of
businessses using Stripe.

~~~
dang
Ok, we've swapped "The Untold Story of Stripe" for the subtitle.

~~~
airstrike
Not sure the subtitle is any better fwiw

~~~
dang
If you can suggest a better title we can change it again. Better means: more
accurate and neutral, preferably using representative language from the
article.

