
Facebook Is Partnering With Stripe to Power “Buy” Button - whyleym
http://recode.net/2014/09/25/facebook-is-partnering-with-stripe-to-power-buy-button/
======
jsingh
Perfect timing? I just wrote a post on why Stripe is becoming the transaction
layer of the internet.

[http://blog.thinkful.com/post/98406708378/why-stripe-is-
beco...](http://blog.thinkful.com/post/98406708378/why-stripe-is-becoming-the-
transaction-layer-of-the)

Some highlights:

\- Agility in adopting new technologies

Whether it’s Bitcoin, Stellar, or 139 other currencies, Stripe is able to
rapidly roll out developer kits and support for new forms of payment and
protocols. To give context around this speed, the company announced support
for Stellar, a decentralized protocol for sending and receiving money in any
pair of currencies, just hours after its announcement. While this was
obviously behind a curtain, it speaks volumes about Stripe being regarded as
the first choice for these types of adoptions.

\- Landing key deals

Within the span of 4 months, Stripe announced partnerships with Alipay,
Twitter, Apple, and most recently Facebook. For a company of 160 employees,
and just under five years in age, these are huge wins to add to their gallery.

\- Developer support and evangelism

The company extensively blogs, holds office hours and maintains an active IRC
channel to help companies integrate with their services. For a startup looking
to gain market share, this is crucial. However, the real challenge lies in
their ability to sustain this level of support as the company grows. Another
area still largely untapped by Stripe is hackathons. By having mentors on-site
and getting their client libraries in the hands of as many budding developers
as possible, they can solidify their name as the go-to tool for online
payments.

~~~
hkmurakami
I was at a Stripe Hackathon as far back as 2012, and afaik they let many OSS
projects use their office space for meetups. Unless they've slowed down on the
hackathon front (in which case I imagine for good reasons), I don't think
hackathons are an unexplored area for them.

Out of curiosity, what do they cover in their office hours? Basically any
questions developers may have with their API and platform?

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blakerson
If anyone from Stripe is watching the thread: any chance of this supporting
subscriptions?

~~~
pc
Good question; lemme check...

~~~
pc
Looks like the answer is "not currently". Sorry :(.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Pity. :(

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xasos
Stripe is really killing it this year with getting Apple and now Facebook on
board with their service

~~~
alexgrist
Have you tried using the PayPal API? It's no wonder, Stripe is heaven in
comparison.

~~~
adriand
And PayPal's API is heaven compared to what the banks provide. Here in Canada,
Moneris, PSIGate, Beanstream, etc., are so freaking terrible and developer-
unfriendly - and customer unfriendly! - it's incredible.

I'm selling a fairly small e-comm web project to a new company that will be
doing "adventure tours" right now. They'd been told by their bank to use
Moneris (probably Canada's biggest POS company), but of course, they were
experiencing all sorts of hurdles getting approved because they were told
"travel companies are risky", etc. They couldn't process any payments before
their website went live, because Moneris insists on inspecting everything.
Etc.

I told them to use Stripe. Like really strongly advised it. And they kept
coming back with stuff like, "Okay, so, would you advise that we apply with
Stripe now so that they can approve us due to the apparently more risky nature
of our business?" And so on. My responses were always, "I don't think that's
going to even be a thing you have to think about."

And it hasn't been.

Another Moneris story: I had a customer all set up with integrated payment
processing through their gateway. Then we were informed that they needed to a
security scan on the server. They outsource this to some other company.

So they run this scan, and it fails - and why? Because the server is equipped
with all kinds of countermeasures (firewall stuff, port scan blocking,
whatever - that's not my area of expertise). So they tell us that in order for
their scan to pass, we need to disable all of the security measures that are
currently protecting the server.

You really can't make this shit up. After that experience I swore I would
always, always try to talk my customers out of using the banks and to use
Stripe instead. And it's working.

~~~
mikegioia

        So they tell us that in order for their scan to pass,
        we need to disable all of the security measures that
        are currently protecting the server.
    

Ha, what could they possibly be scanning for, malware? The sad thing is that
I'm sure companies are doing that.

~~~
thmorton
It's probably a PCI compliance scan. They check for a lot of things like
(basic) XSS, CSRF, insecure versions of PHP/Apache, unprotected folders named
"admin/", backup files which could leak source code, and so on. It's mostly
just for show, but can catch some stupid mistakes. Typically you'll have to
whitelist their servers so that they don't trip your firewall/IDS/whatever.

~~~
aianus
> backup files which could leak source code

Would an open source app not be PCI compliant?

~~~
thmorton
Nah, that would be fine. It's not a problem with the source being available,
more the fact that the file could contain sensitive information like passwords
(like say in a config.php file).

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dotcoma
Am I the only one who's interested in seeing how this plays out because I'm
sceptic about people buying not even 0.1% of the time they "like" something?

~~~
blumkvist
People are not going to buy what they "like". They are going to buy what they
truly like in real life. Something they think is very cool, perhaps haven't
seen it anywhere else.

It would be exactly the same thing like with fb ads and fb pages. Some people
just complain and complain about everything, other are just quietly crushing
it.

~~~
dotcoma
I'd love to have a list of people or companies who are crushing it with FB
content marketing (not FB ads, which is different). Could you please help me
with that?

Because the people who were crushing it with Twitter, you know, it turned out
to be just bullshit (the revolution in Iran, Dell, Zappos, for example).
Thanks.

~~~
blumkvist
Fuck it. I'll play along.

Buzzfeed and the other a hundred or so copycats. Searchengineland.com,
sejorunal.com, smashingmagazine, ColledgeHumor, NatGeo, Scientific american,
goodhousekeeping.com to name just a very FEW. I've written for some of those
and have seen the actual traffic numbers. There are thousands of pages which
promote something and do very well. Those are the ones I saw in 2 minutes
browsing my feed.

I can go in a lot more detail, but this is just not the place. The reality is
that marketing and PR is fucking hard. It's like me saying "I tried to build a
spaceship, but Boeing's parts just suck big time, so I couldn't".

I just don't get why people think they can just wake up one day and be
rockstar PR specialists. Just because you can click a few buttons on a web
page doesn't mean people want to read your shit.

~~~
dotcoma
I'm talking about companies _selling_ products (or services), not about
companies giving out content for free.

Facebook is a feed-reader (and many other things rolled into one). Not a good
place to sell, that's my point.

~~~
blumkvist
Some of those sell products and services. Some do lead generation for b2b
services and products. Selling on facebook is a terrible idea. Creating
content and using facebook as distribution channel is a great idea. If you can
execute it of course.

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untilHellbanned
Sincere questions: So what was FB doing with Paypal before? And hasn't FB
already had a buy button which wasn't popular?

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kylelibra
I wonder what this means for Soldsie, the service that allows users to buy
within the comments section. Seems like the best UX should ultimately win and
that puts Facebook at a big advantage.

~~~
jval
Unfortunately that's always a risk when you develop for FB or any platform. If
it is bad for users (like most of the Zynga notifications were) or something
they want to pursue themselves (like birthday gifting), then bad luck. You get
the advantage of their distribution at the cost of platform risk.

