Harsha from the Stripe Capital team here. Access to capital has been one of our top user asks, and users were excited about the possibility of Stripe leveraging our knowledge of their business to offer them an integrated solution for their capital needs.
As for pricing, the cost of the loan is a single fixed fee that adjusts to the loan amount, and it is paid over the course of the loan—there is no interest rate or additional fees. The effective APR is dependent on how long it takes to repay the loan. We’re priced very favorably compared to alternative lenders.
The rates don't seem extraordinarily high to me. What would you consider reasonable? It's not trivial to get an apples-to-apples comparison since loan rates are usually given as an APR, not a flat fee. Also, don't confuse their "% of sales to loan repayment" number with a rate - that just determines how much of your revenue they hold back until the loan is repaid.
IMO using the effective APR doesn't make a lot of sense in #2, since a business which isn't doing as well will be repaying more slowly and therefore see a lower effective APR...
but i wonder how this nets out in terms of:
1. do i want the entity holding my loan to also control my billing/revenue management?
2. aren't smb rates much lower than this usually? so crazy that certain usurious rates are just explicitly allowed