
Stripe: Relay - coloneltcb
https://stripe.com/relay
======
efuquen
We've been looking at a few other players to do exactly this, i.e. TwoTaps
([https://twotap.com/](https://twotap.com/)) and Cosmic Cart
([https://cosmiccart.com/](https://cosmiccart.com/)). The big problem we've
seen is:

1) Having pricing and inventory data keep up to date.

2) Reliability and speed, TwoTaps has robots that fill in an order on
retailers sites and checkout is slow as a result. Aside from the ugliness of
it, I'm sure a lot of retailers don't like this process or necessarily are
approving it.

3) Lack of wide number of retailers. Cosmic Cart does direct integration but
the the numbers of partners they have right now is severely limited, Target
being the big one.

Getting these direct partnerships integrations is hard, but to make this
really compelling you really want a wide range of retailers. It will be
interesting to see if Stripe, with the relationships it already has, will be
able to do a better job of this and getting retailers to buy into losing the
control of the full shopping experience.

~~~
spolu
Very thoughtful analysis! (Stripe engineer working on Relay here)

Getting retailers on-board is definitely core to the success of Relay. As
announced today Saks and the SAP Hybris platform are live on Relay and we're
working with numerous other retailers as we speak.

For apps, getting retailers to sell on their platform is a huge pain (custom
integration to their APIs and payment systems) convincing them to do so. For
retailers as well it's a pain. They have to create technical integrations with
as many channel out there. That's why we think Relay make sense. We help both
side of the equation.

Also, the relationship between a retailer and a channel app in Relay is opt-in
today. This is literally a Stripe Connect (think OAuth) connection. But once a
channel is onboard, it's nothing more than clicking a button for a Relay
retailer to start selling there.

Also I wouldn't say they are losing control on the full shopping experience,
they're merely enabling a better one on mobile. When you think of the shopping
experience, a lot happen after the purchase (support, shipping, loyalty) as
well and I think there are new experiences to create there, especially once
the customer receive the receipt from the retailer.

~~~
prbuckley
Can I request a Shopify platform integration? My company (www.dodocase.com)
would love to sell our products in mobile apps. Feel free to reach out to me
at patrick at dodocase dot com.

~~~
monkeymeister
Hey Patrick. We've just finished building a Shopify to Stripe integrator -
it's in beta, but we're happy with how it's performing. Check it out:
[https://www.shoptorelay.com](https://www.shoptorelay.com)

~~~
shoobydoo
Hey.. Does Stripe not offer a direct way to integrate with Relay for Shopify
shops? Is there a page that describes this process?

Thanks.

------
agency
Somewhat unfortunately name conflict with
[https://facebook.github.io/relay/](https://facebook.github.io/relay/)

~~~
elsurudo
Meh, there are only so many words. The two things are in quite different
segments, so it should be fine.

~~~
sehr
Funnily enough, a new blogpost about Facebook's Relay was just posted. It's
about 3 submissions below this one!

------
dublinben
The animations on this page were not well tested. They run at about 0.5 fps in
Firefox, but are completely smooth in Chrome.

~~~
ryanSrich
People use other browsers than Chrome?

Kidding - but in all seriousness it's very hard to test in FireFox. I
constantly find that things run super smooth in Chrome and then I test in
FireFox and everything dies.

~~~
r00fus
I take it you don't use a Mac, Chrome is a battery hog on OSX and I'd love to
hear it isn't because I might try it again. For now it's Safari+FF for me.
It's been a while since FF sucked.

------
BinaryIdiot
Blog post: [https://stripe.com/blog/relay](https://stripe.com/blog/relay)

This is interesting. How does this work with Apple not allowing purchases
unless they go through them?

Edit: deleted the part where I confused square for stripe. My bad =/

~~~
jonknee
Apple doesn't allow purchases of _digital_ products that don't go through the
In App Purchase system and its 30% tax. Physical goods are just fine (hence
the Amazon app where you can buy a book, but not a Kindle book).

~~~
ilurk
I wonder if along the line Apple would make it mandatory for all payments,
made physically (eg: Apple Pay) or digitally (eg: Stripe), to go through by
then. I mean, since they are interested in the payments area, why shouldn't
them?

~~~
omarchowdhury
30% will kill margins on many goods.

~~~
sulam
That didn't stop them with e-books.

~~~
rimantas
Yeah, making a copy of e-book is very labor and time consuming.

------
callumprentice
Forgive my stupidity but can someone explain why this is so neat?

I see examples that appear to be a links from a Tweet to a product buying
page. Is that what's new?

I'm obviously missing something or maybe just not clever enough to get it...
Thanks in advance.

~~~
awfycooper
If you view this tweet:
[https://twitter.com/WarbyParker/status/643472513297682432](https://twitter.com/WarbyParker/status/643472513297682432)

You should see a buy button within the tweet itself allowing you to buy the
product directly from the tweet.

~~~
callumprentice
Ah - thank you. I'm so used to viewing Tweets in an App which doesn't support
that feature yet so I was just redirected to a Web page.

Many thanks for taking the time to answer.

------
tomasien
The amazing thing about this to me is realizing how massively undervalued
Stripe is if things like Relay are actually successful. The networks effects
created by Relay would be massive.

~~~
pbreit
"Massively undervalued" at $5b?

Stuff like this generally doesn't work because shoppers are less comfortable
this far out of context. But I would never bet against Stripe.

~~~
tomasien
Hard for me to imagine Stripe at anything short of a $20-$30b company, so yeah
$5b seems super cheap. To me though, I'm bullish on them though I understand
that.

------
callmeed
This is pretty cool (I'm working on an ecommerce app now). What I'm not clear
on is this:

 _Can apps selling relay products get a cut of the sale?_

What incentive is there for a "product discovery app" (or whatever) to sell
other products? Can they define some sort of fee %?

UPDATE: Chatted with Stripe on IRC and they clarified that there's currently
no way to share sales revenue or let apps define a % commission.

~~~
spolu
(Stripe Engineer working on Relay here)

Indeed there is no way to do so at the moment. But we have that on our radar
and we'd like to construct something that makes sense for apps and sellers.

Some questions related to that: How would you see it working? Isn't ads the
new affiliation in the app world?

~~~
matthewarkin
Its pretty common for Stripe Connect integrations to charge an application
fee. With Relay, Stripe would allow some apps that use connect to "move" their
products database from their own database to Stripe. Also it allows merchants
to sell on more platforms. It just becomes "You can use Relay and Stripe to
sell on our platform, however we'll take a 1% transaction fee"

~~~
spolu
Following in up on this we just rolled out `application_fee` on the Order Pay
endpoint
([https://stripe.com/docs/api#pay_order](https://stripe.com/docs/api#pay_order)).

It'll behave as expected if you're familiar with the connect
`application_fee`.

Thanks for the feedback and hope you'll make good use of it. Let us know how
we can help with anything help!

------
sharoonthomas
Does not seem like this works off the box. One of our customers tweeted with a
stipe buyable product link [1] (from stripe relay) and the buy buttons are not
there on twitter.

Support from stripe on this has not been great either with one of their
support staff confirming and the other asking us to write to twitter about it.

Has anyone else had success with buyable tweets and stripe relay ?

[1]
[https://twitter.com/lienielsen/status/646708462043402240](https://twitter.com/lienielsen/status/646708462043402240)

------
noahr
What's the difference between Relay and the Enterprise version of Shopify?

~~~
spolu
(Hi Stripe Engineer here)

Relay is a way for merchants to route products to channels. We certainly don't
want to replace Shopify (with whom we're pretty close) but just give merchants
an easy way to expose product information to apps and accepts orders directly
from there. In particular, Relay will not provide you with store front, or
complex shipping and taxes calculations and integrations.

Ideally Relay should work seamlessly with Shopify, and Shopify users should be
able to start selling on Twitter and other apps directly from Shopify through
Relay without even necessarily hearing the name Relay (as it is ~the case with
their payments currently processed by us)

~~~
monkeymeister
We've actually just finished a Shopify to Stripe integrator - check it out:
[https://www.shoptorelay.com](https://www.shoptorelay.com) \- we're listening
to feedback to at support@shoptorelay.com

------
function_seven
tomasien: For some reason your comment is being marked as a [dupe], even
though it's the only one of yours in this thread. There's another deleted
thread[1]. What's going on here?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10216136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10216136)

~~~
spolu
Feel free to repost your comment here!

~~~
tomasien
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10216153](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10216153)

------
williwu
We've made an mobile shop on iOS with integration to Shopify. We are planning
to open source it once we release our own shop. Let me know if anyone is
interested in trying it out.

