

An open letter to Stripe: please come to Europe - primigenus
http://blog.handcraft.com/2011/10/an-open-letter-to-stripe/

======
tomelders
Many people may not realise this, but Europe is the largest economy in the
world according to the IMF, who know a thing or two about this stuff.

Since I saw Stripe last week, I've been wondering why no one in Europe has
managed to put something similar together. We have the technical expertise and
the world largest economy, so what's stopping us?

Sadly, it turns out that Europe is so fragmented and disparate when it comes
to banking practices that the benefits of working in the worlds largest
economy are completely obliterated by the difficulties of working with all the
countries involved, many of which are so fundamentally corrupt (I'm looking at
you Italy) that any sane legislation is unlikely to go through.

Stripe may well cobble together solutions for individual countries like
Germany, France and the UK, where there's enough money flowing around to
warrant it, but the return on investment quickly starts to diminish as you
tackle the smaller countries, which is not really a great incentive for Stripe
to "pull their finger out". I'm not saying they wont (they've already said
they will), I'm saying the incentives aren't all that great. And they're even
worse for anyone wanting to implement a homegrown solution because we don't
have competitive advantage of the US economy to start from.

It would be nice if everyone in Europe had the Euro, and everyone in Europe
also had the same banking practices, but if you rank that possibility on a
scale of 1 to 10, the scale explodes.

One alternative I can see happening however is for some savvy EU state to make
it ridiculously easy to open up business accounts, with multiple currencies
that anyone in Europe (if not the world) can open and run their business
through, with the easy transfer of cash from country to country. Other than
bureaucracy, I don't see what's stopping them.

In fact, the commercial banks could well be eliminated from the equation. The
value of the digital economy is important to any countries future growth that
the central banks could plausibly take the initiative here.

~~~
pwaring
It's a bit dubious to say "Europe is the largest economy in the world",
because it's not really a single economy, more a collection of economies of
varying sizes, with different currencies, laws and banking systems.

You also have to be careful of what you mean by 'Europe', because there's the
European Union, the European Economic Area, Europe the continent, Europe as
used in the UK (which often means 'all those other foreign countries but not
us' :) etc.

~~~
alwillis
The GDP of the European Union is about 16 trillion dollars; the United States
is about $14 trillion: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-20_major_economies>.
What's a couple of trillion bucks between friends? ;-)

~~~
nestlequ1k
Who cares? Canada and Mexico account for a trillion each as well. The point
is, European Union is not one country.

------
pc
Patrick from Stripe here. We know how important that is. I personally grew up
in Europe (Ireland), and 5 of the 10 people at Stripe grew up outside of the
US. It sucks that we're US-only right now.

We're actually working on supporting Europe right now. It's pretty complex,
and won't happen overnight -- but it's one of our very highest priorities.

If you'd like to be notified when Stripe is available wherever you live, you
can leave your name at <https://stripe.com/help/global>. We'll also announce
news at twitter.com/stripe.

~~~
adamt
Anyone that has tried it knows just how hard it is for pan-european payments
across the 'single-market'. For some reason since we've been able to define
common european legislation for the curvature of bananas(1), but not for stuff
like payment transactions.

But this is what makes your offering from being a nice friendly API and
"payments that don't suck" (which are largely just nice-to-haves) to something
that is completely compelling and truly-enabling and revenue generating (e.g.
opens up new markets)

The competitive landscape in Europe is also from the previous era. Anyone that
had integrated with something like RBS Worldpay will which looks like it was
hacked together in a bit of Perl(2) in 2000 and never changed.

Footnotes: (1) Commission Regulation (EC) rule 2257/94 states bananas must be
"free from malformation or abnormal curvature

(2) I have nothing (that major!) against Perl, but it kinda summarises the
kinda person and era that it was written in.

------
duggan
It's not like Stripe don't want to come to Europe. In fact, they tried to
start here:

    
    
      Actually, the first bank we ever talked to about @Stripe was Irish.
      They did everything short of laugh.
    

<https://twitter.com/#!/patrickc/status/119849024600801280>

~~~
epo
Ireland's banks are run by clowns, makes a change for them to be doing the
laughing.

~~~
rmc
Now they are all owned by the state. So you have government beurocracy to deal
with now. Smart Economy, schmart economy.

~~~
_delirium
Only because the private owners were so bad at running a business that they
bankrupted them, though. It will be quite a trick to see if the state can run
them _even more_ badly. Quite possible, but the bar was set high.

------
LeafStorm
Guys, _they're working on it._ It's not something where if enough people write
letters, they will magically be able to set up shop in Europe. Accepting
payments in multiple countries is hard, and all the pain _you_ had to go
through to get your payments to set up, _they're_ having to go through and
more. So you don't need to remind them every forty-five minutes that you want
them to come to Europe/Africa/Asia/wherever.

~~~
gizmo
Yes we do, because companies set their priorities based on feedback. If we all
kept silent they would (justly) assume that there isn't much demand for a
solid CC provider for Europe, Canada, India, etc and act accordingly.

~~~
LeafStorm
This only applies if the company has not already set the thing in question as
a priority. After they have already announced that "yes, we are planning to do
this, it's something that is very important to us, but it's going to take a
while," you don't need to keep pestering them about it.

------
illdave
It's amazing that in 2011, launching a simple and elegant payment processor is
enough to pretty much disrupt the industry. I'm really hoping Stripe can make
it to the UK - I'd be incredibly happy to give them my percentage.

------
twidlit
Damn! i was in the middle of writing my "An open letter to Stripe: please come
to Asia" post.

Looking forward to a post titled "An open letter to Stripe: please come to
Africa" in some other blog any minute now. :)

Seriously, this is a hair on fire problem for non-US entrepreneurs.

Please become BFFs with HSBC since they are present EVERYWHERE.

------
timcraft
They're working on it:

    
    
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3056105
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053971
    

I suspect it's more of a legal/business challenge than a technical one.

------
kanwisher
When I was working on Gucci.com, Europe was always the biggest problem for
payments, each region has different tax law, different payment gateways,
shipping laws. Big opportunity to tie Europe together but I don't think its
something a startup can do, more intercountry commerce laws need to be made to
make it easier.

------
TamDenholm
I dont know why the author thinks the situation is any better in the UK. Its
pretty bad here too. A common requirement of getting a merchant account is to
have £50,000 sitting in an account doing NOTHING, "just in case". UK online
payment processors aren't much better.

~~~
primigenus
Because when we looked for payment processors that supported Europe, most of
them only supported the UK, not mainland Europe. So I assumed it would
therefore be easier to get set up if you're in the UK. I'm not saying it's
easy in the UK, just that it's probably significantly more troublesome
elsewhere.

------
okrasz
In Poland (Europe) there are plenty of Stripe-like services for several years
now. They mostly integrate all online payments (online wire transfers, credit
cards) but also offline, where you can pay in your local shop, post office or
traditional bank transfer. Virtually all banks in the Polish marked are
handled. Almost no e-shop will handle payments themselves, especially that
integration modules to most of e-commerce software are provided. Therefore I
wonder how can it be so different in other parts of Europe?

Some samples: \-
[http://dotpay.pl/index.php?content=&newlang=en](http://dotpay.pl/index.php?content=&newlang=en)
\- <http://serwis.platnosci.pl/home,462.html> \- <http://www.przelewy24.pl/en>
\- <http://www.payu.pl/> \- ... and many more

~~~
jwr
These services are to Stripe what a paper checkbook is to instant wire
transfers. Yes, it's all kind-of about accepting money. But to point out just
a few of the differences:

1) none of the existing services store credit card numbers, which means you
have to run your customers through their horrible redirects and web forms
every time they want to purchase something,

2) none allow subscription charging (see also (1) above for the reason why),

3) did I mention the horrible web forms, silly redirects, abysmal failure
handling and overall user unfriendliness? Did I mention that they display
ADVERTISEMENTS on their payment pages? I'm not kidding.

4) there is no developer API to speak of. You just redirect your customers to
their horrible sites, cross your fingers and pray. Some of them might pay,
some of them might even come back.

If Stripe were to become available in Poland, I'd switch in an instant.

~~~
okrasz
OK, I see the point now.

------
philipDS
It's sad that we live in 2011 and still have to use something like PayPal to
do "easy" payment processing. Unless you process a reasonable amount of
transactions, forget simple payments. Stripe, where art thou :(

~~~
Iv
Considering this, I don't understand why bitcoin does not get more followers.

~~~
tomcreighton
Does the 'average person' even know Bitcoin exists? Could you explain it to
them in a way that doesnt't make it sound super-dodgy? That's why.

~~~
Iv
To someone that want to understand it : "It's a currency that is entirely
electronic and works thanks to crypto-magic that experts agree is solid. It
has the advantage of not being controlled by any central bank and has a
guaranteed scarcity."

To someone that just wants to use it : "it charges transfers from and to
dollars but unlike paypal charges zero for transactions."

~~~
tomcreighton
You're assuming that the phrase "crypto-magic" is reassuring instead of off-
putting. 'The general public' and 'readers of HN' are basically non-
overlapping sets.

My mom has a credit card. Would she use Bitcoins? Not in a million years.

~~~
Iv
"military-grade encryption" works in the same way.

------
jamesmoss
At the moment you can only sign up with a US address. As a stop-gap solution
could they enable European addresses but with the caveat that you'd only be
able to take payments in USD? This would be fine for me.

~~~
Symmetry
I imagine that converting between currencies is by far the smallest part of
the problem. Much more important are complying with the various regulatory
regimes that exist for credit card transactions in different countries.

------
revorad
Open letter to non-Americans: Build your own Stripes.

~~~
patrickk
" _Many of us at Stripe are from outside the United States, and we understand
just how broken the international payments landscape is._ "

<https://stripe.com/faq>

So non-Americans are in fact building Stripe itself. Plus America is a single,
relatively homogeneous market, whereas the EU and Asia are far more fractured,
complicating things massively. So it's much easier to launch in America first.

~~~
revorad
You get my point though, don't you? It's not about Stripe or the specific
problem of payments. It's about solving our own problems, instead of waiting
for some American startups to do it for us. Fractured and complicated things
are opportunities, not just problems.

~~~
patrickk
_" Fractured and complicated things are opportunities, not just problems."_

Maybe, but when you are talking about dealing with different currencies,
banking regulations, languages, laws, cultures etc. it's mainly just
problematic.

From pg's essay on "Why startups condense in America":

 _8\. America Has a Large Domestic Market.

What sustains a startup in the beginning is the prospect of getting their
initial product out. The successful ones therefore make the first version as
simple as possible. In the US they usually begin by making something just for
the local market.

This works in America, because the local market is 300 million people. It
wouldn't work so well in Sweden. In a small country, a startup has a harder
task: they have to sell internationally from the start.

The EU was designed partly to simulate a single, large domestic market. The
problem is that the inhabitants still speak many different languages. So a
software startup in Sweden is still at a disadvantage relative to one in the
US, because they have to deal with internationalization from the beginning.
It's significant that the most famous recent startup in Europe, Skype, worked
on a problem that was intrinsically international.

However, for better or worse it looks as if Europe will in a few decades speak
a single language. When I was a student in Italy in 1990, few Italians spoke
English. Now all educated people seem to be expected to-- and Europeans do not
like to seem uneducated. This is presumably a taboo subject, but if present
trends continue, French and German will eventually go the way of Irish and
Luxembourgish: they'll be spoken in homes and by eccentric nationalists._

<http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html>

So a payments company like Stripe (or any other type of company really) could
be commercially viable in the US by capturing a certain percentage of the
market there. But to achieve the same level of success in Europe, that same
startup would have to gain a foothold in multiple countries. So expansion
takes more time and is more complex and difficult.

~~~
revorad
"Where there's muck, there's brass."

------
wyuenho
Please come to Asia too. Start with Hong Kong/Tokyo/Singapore and then go from
there.

~~~
wiradikusuma
Not fair, in Indonesia we have more people than those countries combined. But
I guess if they _do_ cover Singapore, then for me it's just a matter of
opening a branch there no?

------
kashif
If one looks at the latest FB and Google surveys one will find that one of the
biggest untapped markets is India. Unfortunately, all these startups that
really want to grow big aren't seeing the big picture - and I don't mean just
the ones that have started recently. There are many that have been around for
a really long time and haven't even tried capturing the upcoming markets.

------
thibaut_barrere
Two points would have to be covered for me (and others I know) to be
interested:

\- handle VAT like Recurly does it (<http://docs.recurly.com/advanced/value-
added-tax/>)

\- sign Safe Harbor (<http://export.gov/safeharbor/>)

------
lvh
HK++, HSBC++. We're a HK company with HSBC/Hang Seng. HSBC is pretty much
everywhere. I'm sure they would love your business...

------
5hoom
Just a lone voice in the wind, but on the other side of the Earth Australia is
in desperate need of rescue too!

~~~
alexhawket
And while you're at it.. New Zealand please!

------
colin8chSE
If your non US based, you may be interested in Simplified Ecommerce.

We cover the entire payments stack- gateway, vault, PCI compliance, recurring
subscription management and Affiliate Marketing.
<http://SimplifiedEcommerce.com>

~~~
twidlit
Anyone tried this? Customer testimonials on the website would be very
helpful...

------
rayhano
Hi Rahul,

I definitely agree with getting better technology here… but have you seen
gocardless.com?

They seem to have a much better (read effective/innovative solution).

Let me know what you think in comparison to stripe.

Rayhan

~~~
estel
It's pretty hard to form an opinion from a website with absolutely zero
information on it.

~~~
rayhano
Sorry, you are right - their system essentially cuts out the need for credit
cards and therefore merchants can take payments over the web without the
massive servicing costs traditionally charged for propping up bloated credit
card processing.

The system basically taps into the interbank transfer system.

From what I have seen, they respond well to all the security concerns too.

------
makira
What about Canada ? Should be much easier...

~~~
fstephany
What are the current options in Canada ? I'm moving to Vancouver next month
(coming from Belgium) and wonder how the tech/startup looks like there...

~~~
alexhawket
Well Beanstream is in Vancouver for one (<http://www.beanstream.com/>)

------
bvdbijl
Problem in the EU is that there are a lot of different payment systems, in the
Netherlands we have iDeal for example which works great, but is only usable
here. Dutch people also almost never pay with creditcard

~~~
guruz
Yep, same here in Germany. Most people use "Bankeinzug" which is pretty
similar to credit card, but you actually don't use a card but just your
account number.

The EU payment thread some days ago
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3056714> mentioned Adyen. They seem to
support all the country-specific stuff. Does anyone know if you need some
minimum revenue? Because I don't see a signup form on their page, only a sales
e-mail address.

------
james33
Maybe I'm missing something, but the fees seem way too high for this to be a
viable option for anything of scale. Even PayPal's fees are lower, and I get
credit card fees of only 2.15% + $0.25 from a company offering a similar
service. Yes, Stripe is beautifully designed and simple to use, but since I'm
already setup somewhere else with significantly lower fees, I don't see the
appeal. Are they specifically targeting small developers?

------
brackin
I want Stripe for my startup. Paypal has caused huge problems for us, as we
sell in 24 hour periods we get an influx in sales and our Paypal is constantly
locked for a few days meaning we can't pay any merchants and it all becomes a
lot of work for something which doesn't have too. There's a whole list of
other reasons but Stripe seems much better. We're a UK startup though.

------
fastspring
FastSpring and SaaSy work with developers as well and support payments in
Euros, Pounds, USD, AUD, CAD, and Yen, have order pages that are translated
into 18 languages, and handle global tax management for desktop and SaaS
developers.

------
armandososa
Forget Europe. Come to Latin America _. It's mostly e-commerce virgin.

_ And by Latin America I meant Mexico.

------
darylteo
I am slowly waiting for Stripe to become a ubiquitous global CC processor. :)
Don't let me down! (Australia here)

------
pagehub
I really hope Stripe can make it happen in Europe, we are really crying out
for a full stack service!

------
braindead_in
And India too.

------
llch
love this! now this is an awesome product/market validation.

------
msinghai
Come to India. Please.

------
d3x
Stripe is really awesome. I started using it yesterday on i.crowdfunded.it and
I have never had such an easy time w/ CC processing etc...

------
Iv
DEar fellow European, please help spread bitcoin's adoption.

