
Stripe Corporate Card - eloycoto
https://stripe.com/corporate-card
======
ttcbj
Well, 2% on some things + 1% on everything else is better than I am getting
with Amex now. Plus, $50k in free processing is like $1,450 in free money.

Honestly, I wouldn't believe that deal, except that I have a multi-year
history with stripe as our CC processor and it has been nothing but positive
and as-promised.

So, I submitted an application. It sounds like a great deal to me.

~~~
willyg123
If you fly, ever, business gold AmEx cannot be beaten. 4x points on the first
$150k spent on two categories of your choice. Then, 25% off(!) flights booked
with points at AmExTravel.com.

I will definitely be getting the Stripe card because the intro offers are so
good. But, the airfare discounts alone at AmEx Travel are so good it will
continue to be my go-to corporate card.

~~~
graeme
Does that apply on the corporate version, here?
[https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-
cards/business/cor...](https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-
cards/business/corporate-credit-cards/american-express-corporate-gold-card-
amex)

I'm not super clear on the difference between business cards and corporate
cards.

~~~
a13n
Biz cards are personally guaranteed and corp cards are not.

~~~
graeme
So a corp can get either type depending how they want the guarantee can go?
Like, a regular biz card can work for corp expenses?

------
brettcvz
It’s impressive to see the velocity of new products that Stripe is putting
out. I’d be really interested to see a blog post or similar on how they decide
which initiatives to invest in, how they structure those teams and set
milestones, etc

~~~
pc
[Stripe cofounder]

Thanks! We're always paranoid that we're too slow, for whatever it's worth.

We're still iterating on the supporting models and frameworks. We think a lot
about pace layering -- how do we have teams that think on multi-year horizons
(infrastructure, security, etc.) alongside teams that are rapidly iterating at
much earlier stages of development. I think a lot goes wrong when
organizations insist on too much consistency in their operating approach.

We've now identified a few semi-formal mechanisms that have helped
substantially. (For example: larger companies tend to want to aggressively
standardize roles. This makes sense when operating at scale but less so in the
early days. So, we've made it easy to hire for ill-defined roles in nascent
product areas -- we figure we can codify those roles later as needed and that
doing so sooner is a premature optimization.) We'd certainly consider writing
a blog post once we feel that they might be generalizable.

(If anyone reading this is interested in helping us figure things out, please
do apply. We're particularly interested in hiring engineers who are interested
in these questions.)

~~~
mjhea0
I really wish you'd focus time and energy on documentation and examples for
the current products. I wrote this blog post after a very frustrating
experience with Stripe Connect: [https://testdriven.io/blog/setting-up-stripe-
connect-with-dj...](https://testdriven.io/blog/setting-up-stripe-connect-with-
django/)

~~~
mjhea0
Moving from the legacy checkout to elements was complex since you do not
mention in the docs that validation checks no longer get checked on the client
and instead have to happen on the sever.

------
philip1209
Our company Moonlight was an early beta tester of the Stripe Corporate Card.
Each person on our distributed team of five has a card, and it's made things
like arranging travel or covering minor SaaS charges simple.

Happy to answer any questions about the end user experience!

~~~
hkchad
Is this card tied to an individual or the company? We use Amex and it's tied
to individuals so when that person leaves we have to do the dance of migrating
the payment to another person. Can we avoid that w/ stripe?

~~~
patio11
You can have named users or you can have (conceptually) a role account, like
saas_subscriptions@example.com.

We recommend businesses set up the latter for recurring purchases on e.g.
infrastructure that aren't tied to a particular person, for the same reasons
that you don't want your logins for all of your SaaS or infrastructure to be
under individuals' email addresses.

~~~
elithrar
That feels like a headline feature - cards not being tied to specific humans
at the org is great for the (SaaS/IaaS/Cloud) reasons above.

The 1:1 person:credit-card mapping for those without invoice billing will
continue to cause chaos for smaller orgs when people leave or cards are lost.

------
jblake
As a small business owner, what I like about the Chase business cards is
rewards come back in the form of points that I can easily transfer to my
personal cards. It sounds like Stripe applies them towards the statement,
i.e., benefit goes to the business, not to me personally.

However, the 50k free processing is very enticing as thats way higher than any
other signup bonus I've seen. But again, credit goes to business, not to me.
With a typical chase card, I'll get ~$1,000 worth of points (tax free) added
directly to my personal points balance for simply switching a few business
expenses to that new card for a couple of months.

~~~
icebraining
I never had a corporate CC, so I'm curious: do those rewards count as personal
income for tax purposes?

~~~
koolba
Credit card rewards do not get a 1099 as they’re a rebate/discount on spent
monies.

Banking sign up bonuses usually do as they’re classified as interest.

~~~
icebraining
Yeah, but the _company_ spent the monies, and the employee got the rebate.
Seems like an employment benefit to me.

~~~
likpok
Travel status/miles are sort of similar. It’s a basic racket: the airline
rewards you for steering your company’s money to them. It seems to be broadly
acceptable but I agree looks pretty sketchy when you boil it down to the
basics.

------
AlphaWeaver
The thing that sticks out to me as a core differentiator here is the "real-
time expense reporting" feature. It looks like it allows employees to SMS a
receipt the moment they make a transaction and it'll automatically match it.
That's a marked improvement compared to how serious of a pain point expense
reporting is for so many employees.

~~~
DanFeldman
FWIW, Brex also offers this. I use my corporate card and immediately get a
text reminding me to snap a picture of the transaction.

However, it almost never correctly identifies the transaction on the card and
pings me immediately with another text "Could not match a transaction". I
usually just ignore that though.

~~~
fro0116
They have an app now, works much better than the text receipt feature in my
experience so far: [https://brex.com/mobile/](https://brex.com/mobile/)

------
Scirra_Tom
1-2% cashback is highly appealing from here in the UK but shame to see is US
only.

Anyone shed any light on why getting cashback cards in the UK is rare compared
to elswehre? Personally I found Tandem which gives 0.5% cashback which is nice
but not much.

Business wise we decided to use Amex as the rewards are OKish (comes out to
like ~0.5% again I think?) and being able to pay for US services on our USD
card is nice and does save money. Benefits overall not great though, probably
save ~£1k per year compared to just using a bank issued debit/credit card.

~~~
collision
[Stripe co-founder]

As multiple commenters note, UK and EU interchange is significantly lower than
that in the US. So the rewards market tends to be different as a result.

That said, launching this in the UK would still be attractive to us. We don't
think rewards are the _primary_ thing businesses are looking for.

As we talked to founders, it seems like they all want a corporate card early
on for their business spending (to get it off personal cards). As the business
adds employees, they need a sensible way to keep tabs on spending without the
expensing process being really painful. I think that's just as relevant in the
UK, with the added detail of multi-currency spending being more relevant.

~~~
Scirra_Tom
Thanks for reply!

From our point of view, a card where we could use our USD and EUR balance to
make USD/EUR payments would be one of the biggest pulls if possible. I think
recurring USD charges for UK based businesses are probably quite prevalent.

I don't think many UK startups realise how much they lose out on being charged
in GBP on these transactions (especially with debit cards). There's likely an
opportunity here to educate UK businesses and use that to promote this sort of
card.

> all want a corporate card early on for their business spending (to get it
> off personal cards)

I'm surprised by this, been a while since we were an early business but didn't
have any issue getting a corporate debit card which is more than adequate
early on.

~~~
porker
> From our point of view, a card where we could use our USD and EUR balance to
> make USD/EUR payments would be one of the biggest pulls if possible. I think
> recurring USD charges for UK based businesses are probably quite prevalent.

> I don't think many UK startups realise how much they lose out on being
> charged in GBP on these transactions (especially with debit cards). There's
> likely an opportunity here to educate UK businesses and use that to promote
> this sort of card.

That's what we use Transferwise and their Borderless Account for.

The challenger banks have similar offerings, with multi-currency accounts
behind them. We don't have enough in other currencies to need that (yet, it's
on my TODO list) . Not being stung for foreign currency transaction fees is
why we put all non-GBP expenditure through Transferwise

------
aquark
Nice, I assume this give Stripe the ability to shortcircuit Visa/MC on a
payment between a Stripe card and Stripe as the processor and capture more of
the revenue without needing to share it.

~~~
grey-area
Yep, Stripe are also investors in Monzo. This is the obvious long term play
and there is no way the incumbents can keep up. It would also allow massive
innovation in payments too.

Visa and mastercard should be very worried about being displaced.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Visa might be the best business model ever made, I don't think it's going
anywhere soon.. Extremely high barrier to entry, extremely low marginal costs,
infinite scalability.

~~~
blntechie
Look at China, India and other Asian countries. Visa and MasterCard never had
that much of a strong foothold there and now debit and credit cards are pretty
much antiquated by wallets and QR codes.

~~~
muks
This isn't true for India. Until last year, all the cards I'd seen in India
were either Visa, Mastercard or AMEX. This year my bank tried to send me a
"Rupay" card which is an Indian processor; on speaking to the bank staff, it
appears that the central bank (RBI) are asking banks to promote Rupay by
default to avoid transaction data from leaving the country. But it's still
possible to change to a Mastercard or Visa card.

Many businesses and individuals would still prefer to have a Mastercard or
Visa at this time as most international websites that sell services and goods
don't accept Rupay.

------
seibelj
Direct attack on Brex, good to see competition.

~~~
xtracto
Also on TeamPay.

------
jpalomaki
I’ve been dreaming of corporate card that would also collect the PDF receipts
from vendors.

Here the credit card statement is not enough for accounting, you need to have
detailed receipt for each charge. Hunting these every month for various SaaS
services and other purchases takes time. And it’s not easy to outsource since
in many cases the billing stuff is only visible to service admin.

~~~
amfeng
We're working on it! (;

------
taurath
This looks great. The integrations to finance software already built in are
killer. The spend controls and categorization are the most interesting part -
will it be possible to reduce the amount of overall credit you need to get?
With Amex you have to have a full sized limit available for each employee with
a card. If this pulls from the same pool and respects spending limits, it
could allow you to have a lot more flexibility with your credit as a business.

Consistently impressive stuff from Stripe.

------
deepGem
Just the real time expense reporting is a reason strong enough to get this
card. Even with expensify and all expensing tools out there, the friction for
reimbursements is still very high. This card removes that friction.
Essentially, I just spend and upload my receipts. No need to reconciliate
transactions, create an expense report, submit that etc. If only this
integrated directly with LDAP or something like that to automate the approval
workflow.

~~~
icelancer
>> real time expense reporting

Agreed. This is huge if they get it right. Definitely going to sign up for the
trial.

------
herostratus101
Wait, let me get this straight. You get $5000 of AWS Credits that don't expire
and don't require any minimum level of spending by signing up for this card?

~~~
amfeng
Hi there! There is no minimum spend requirement to take advantage of the AWS
credits. They are promotional credits and will eventually expire; see Amazon's
terms:
[https://aws.amazon.com/awscredits/](https://aws.amazon.com/awscredits/).

~~~
miguelmota
After how long do the credits expire?

------
ccjnsn
Stripe want to be a fullstack business bank.

Stripe Payments. Stripe Capital. Now a card.

I welcome it, business banking is huge and needs pushed forward!

------
julianozen
Does anyone know how similar this is to Brex? Related: what make Brex so
special as a credit card for startups?

~~~
vertoc
My guess is that Brex is more geared towards Silicon Valley VC funded startups
- they look at how much money you have in your bank when setting your credit
limit (it’s essentially a charge card if I’m using the terminology right -
your credit limit is basically what’s in your bank account). The rewards are
also more appealing than this iteration of the Stripe corporate card - 7x
rideshare, 4x travel, 3x restaurants. Again, my guess is that Stripe is aimed
to businesses that don’t fall into the traditional VC startup model - but
maybe the rewards will become enticing enough that they will be competitive
with Brex in that area in the future as well.

You also can’t discount Stripe’s Connect API - could see this being used in
tandem with that for some interesting ideas

Edit: taking a closer look - they also integrate into services like Expensify
and if you use their card, first $50k of payment processing is free so that’s
also interesting. If you’re paying sticker price, that comes out to something
like $1500

~~~
fro0116
Brex also has a Ecommerce card that's based on projected monthly sales:
[https://brex.com/ecommerce/](https://brex.com/ecommerce/)

That might be more directly comparable to the Stripe card.

------
woodhull
How do the Partner Benefits work?

Are they only valid if we are not an existing customer of the partner, or is
it for any spend with those vendors we put onto the card?

Do we work with the Partner to get that discount or is it automatically
applied on the Stripe side while processing charges we make to the card?

~~~
amfeng
(Amber from Stripe here. For folks following along, we're talking about the
"Additional Benefits" section on the page.)

Anything that says "cash back" is automatically applied to your card spending
and for both new and existing customers. For everything else, we'll give you a
discount code to type into the partner's site directly!

------
hosiukeung
And remember that Stripe just launched Stripe Capital
([https://stripe.com/capital](https://stripe.com/capital)) last week to offer
lending services, I cannot wait to see these new services to launch outside
US.

~~~
19ylram49
Was there a HN thread for Stripe Capital?

~~~
kevinbowman
Yep, 4 days ago -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888817)

------
graeme
Do you need to be incorporated to use this, or can a non-incorporated business
use it?

The fee rebate and partner credits are very compelling.

~~~
amfeng
Your business doesn't need to be incorporated to apply. Sole props are
welcome! It's worth noting that the personal liability changes, though: the
individual behind the sole prop will be personally responsible for charges on
their account.

------
jbverschoor
Stripe is doing some great stuff. But I’d be weary to put all eggs in one
basket.

~~~
Scirra_Tom
Tend to agree but I don't think a card is that big of a deal as in this case
it's less Stripe owned as it's a Visa card so pretty sure you'd have some
additional protection there.

~~~
jbverschoor
Let’s say you have an issue because stripe suddenly you’re business is
fraudulent (read: you got great coverage on HN and suddenly have 1000 extra
customers) Stripe flags you and blocks your account. Done. Now your income and
money to spend depends on their customer service.

Many people have had the same with PayPal, and some with regular banks.

So yes, take the card, but also take 5 other cards.

~~~
gzer0
Stripe has been receiving a suspicious amount of praise from HN. Really
beginning to wonder if this is all organic at this point. Obviously lots of
employees in the comments which they are not hiding that fact. But still makes
me want to dig deeper than the surface (as everyone should).

~~~
poxrud
If you've ever had to setup an ecommerce site before Stripe was around you'd
understand why they get so much praise. Your only options were either
navigating the complex and expensive world of merchant accounts or dealing
with PayPal's horrible API and customer service.

------
nsedlet
I wonder why companies prefer to use a corporate credit card over debit cards
(which are very easy to get)? Do they just like having the line of credit? Is
it really worth the extra complication/hassle/thing to worry about just to
push off payments by ~15 days (Stripe seems to require that the balance be
paid off each month)? I also wonder how that is enforced (by reducing credit
limits as a company's bank balance starts to decrease, or by charging
interest, or by just eating the defaults)?

Or is it about managing/reporting expenses better across groups an
organization? Or do companies just like the rewards?

I understand that interchange fees are higher for credit cards - so are
corporate credit cards basically a way to extract additional fees from
merchants and distribute them in the form of rewards/cash back to the
cardholders?

~~~
graeme
It can be up to 55 days free, as payment is due ~20 days after statement.

For debit, you would need a bank account for each employee/team and keep them
funded. Credit cards let you make employee cards with set limits.

You also get stuff like chargeback protection and whatever else comes with the
card. Amex tends to have various insurances for example.

Note that I don't work in a corp, am just thinking through what debit would
require.

This is one of amex's corp cards: [https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-
cards/business/cor...](https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-
cards/business/corporate-credit-cards/american-express-platinum-corporate-
card?intlink=US-Acq-GCP-CorporateCards-ViewAllCards-CardArt-PlatinumCard)

------
gnicholas
I'd be curious to know if the AWS credits are available to people who have
used AWS before, or had AWS credits before. In my experience, once you're a
customer, they won't let you use any more credits (regardless of size, or how
many/few credits you used the first time around).

------
H8crilA
I'm worried about the proliferation revenue-based credit in Silicon Valley.
Traditionally credit needs one of the following (ideally two): 1) established
history of profit, not just revenue, and 2) collateral. How else are you
supposed to convince creditors that you have the capability of paying it back?
Stripe Capital, Brex just look at revenue streams.

Easy credit is an obvious predictor of trouble. 2008 to bring a memorable
example. Anyone here has plans for shorting corporate credit? Best I could
come up with is LEAPS puts on $BKLN. I'm holding some small amount, will
double down if things start going south. Wish I could short the revenue-based
Silicon Valley style credit. That one is quite ridiculous.

------
boltzmannbrain
Brex user here. Anyone run a direct comparison of the benefits (cash back,
partner deals)?

------
belthesar
The spending controls look attractive to me. I have an org that might be a
good candidate, as we have several teams that need to manage expenses.
Historically, we've used business pre-paid debit cards to control maximum
spending, with individual authorizations managing how much folks can spend.
It's okay, but it doesn't scale well.

Regarding the controls on the Stripe cards, do they have a concept for Roles?
I'd like to be able to say "Managers have a monthly/yearly spending authority
up to X, and Directors have a spending authority up to Y", and as we onboard
new folks, to put them into a role to manage that quickly and easily.

~~~
amfeng
We love the idea of having roles for spending controls. It's not currently
part of the product, but we're planning to work on this very soon!

------
rolltiide
Oh nice a competitor to Brex!

Brex is also only charge cards so you have to pay them off every 30 days or in
other boutique arrangements where the default is not carrying a balance.

------
jakelazaroff
On top of the more normal percentage cash back, the partner benefits (like 5%
off DigitalOcean) make this really appealing.

Potentially interesting wrinkle: you're not allowed to carry a balance (from
[https://stripe.com/docs/corporate-
card/faqs](https://stripe.com/docs/corporate-card/faqs)).

~~~
astura
>you're not allowed to carry a balance

This type of card is called a "charge card" (not "credit card") and is
extremely common in business card land.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_card)

AMEX's best known cards are charge cards as well - Green, Gold, Platinum.

------
Liron
Now Brex has to up their UI/UX game

------
jasoncornwall
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but the response to the invite
request currently has a typo. It says "We've received your invite request and
we'll be touch soon." Instead of "we'll be in touch soon." Just an fyi.

~~~
amfeng
Thank you! Fixed. (:

------
cyberferret
Anyone know of a similar card on offer for Australian startup founders?

I see a plethora of these types of cards hitting the market lately, but nearly
all for the US market only (understandably, given the strict banking rules in
each country).

~~~
pypypypypypy
Hey, I work at DiviPay where we are trying to solve these kinds of problems
for Australian businesses. Shout us a message at
[https://divipay.com/](https://divipay.com/) and someone will be in touch to
help you and your startup out.

------
juped
This doesn't seem that compelling compared to Amex Plum, to me. Signup bonuses
are alright but nothing startups aren't showered in from all sources already.

------
AlexMuir
This is going to be an absolutely massive business. I wouldn’t be surprised if
in five years it’s bigger than payment processing.

------
ngngngng
How is this different from Divvy?

------
clementmas
Would the money be taken directly from the Stripe balance or the linked bank
account?

~~~
amfeng
Right now, you pay through a linked bank account. We are planning to let you
pay from your balance in the future, though. (Most of our early users
preferred the former.)

------
cloudytoday
interesting move....they are like a whole new financial system where millions
/ billions of $$ are flowing from all the online/app transactions to the new
financing thing they did and not the card...

------
elorant
I hope this will be gradually available outside US too.

------
fortran77
Plus you can carry it in your wallet or your pocket.

------
donalhunt
US-only for now...

~~~
amfeng
(Amber from Stripe here.) We're definitely planning to expand to other
countries—this is just the start.

~~~
ttul
Canada, s’il vous plait.

------
freediver
I wonder what would it take for the user (company) to choose the materials of
the card (like wood etc)?

------
hoffmann530
This is the second time Stripe has been at the top of HN in the last week. Any
theories on why? Is this really that novel of a business?

~~~
mises
Because stripe is essentially in the business of fixing broken, old stuff in
the payment business. It made a really good core product that developers love,
then branched out to other payment-related products and applied that same
excellence to those products, too. It is user-friendly, has helpful support,
and can be easily integrated. In short, it solves real problems without making
itself one more head-ache for people.

~~~
simplecomplex
Stripe was first to market with a simple payments API. It established their
brand. But I don’t think anything else they’ve done is different than the
status quo. Getting a credit card, loan, or incorporated is more or less the
same at Stripe vs elsewhere.

