Kicking off Stripe’s private beta in India
stripe.com
stripe.com
It lets you run a local stripe API on your machine. I've got high hopes in it. This could be the cure to building resilient stripe tests on local machines.
The maintainer @brandur seems to know his stuff in regards to rest apis.
I always to rely on local tools/endpoints so when I'm offline, I can still continue working. Don't use Stripe as much as before but I definitely I wished I had this mock when implementing Stripe in applications I worked on.
I have three requests for Stripe:
1) I hope that Stripe does not come out with a limited version for India, and that it is possible to charge international customers a variable amount every month, like you can do in the US.
2) I also hope that they come up with a prompt way of issuing FIRCs for every payment received. Without an FIRC there is no way to prove that the transaction was an export and therefore you have to pay GST on it, which is normally 18% for services. This reason alone is pushing me to incorporate in some other country. I stand to lose thousands of dollars this year because I can't get an FIRC for the payments I receive via Paypal/Wire transfer/Transferwise.
Paypal and Transferwise have procedures to get FIRCs, but when you approach their banks they either don't respond or come up with hundred reasons to not issue one. Citibank absolutely sucks at this. I really hope that Stripe just charges me whatever they want and couriers the FIRCs to my address automatically.
3) I hope that Stripe has a legal setup that is compatible with RBI regulations regarding the filling up of SOFTEX forms. There are some restrictions which in my understanding prohibit Indians from using international gateways like fastspring.
If I work with them, the idea is that I've sold my product to them, so I'm exporting it to a company in London. I'll need to either pay or get exemptions for my taxes based on export rules. They re-sell it worldwide and handle whatever country specific rules are prevalent in each country, but that's not my problem any more.
You mean an EEFC account?
What exactly are the restrictions? Curious to know as I was planning to use FastSpring until Stripe made the announcement.
The bigger problem is the strict RBI regulations. Especially when dealing with FIRC/e-BRC and filing of SOFTEX forms. I don't understand why these forms are even required to be filed as everything is recorded electronically (bank wire transfers and other modes of transfer: NEFT/RTGS/IMPS). It's almost like the RBI doubts the intentions of Software Exporters.
> Paypal and Transferwise have procedures to get FIRCs, but when you approach their banks they either don't respond or come up with hundred reasons to not issue one. Citibank absolutely sucks at this. I really hope that Stripe just charges me whatever they want and couriers the FIRCs to my address automatically.
The thing is that Citibank doesn't provide FIRC (unless you receive an FDI). It instead provides "FIRC Advise". The Authorized Dealer (the Bank you hold your Current Account in) has to issue you the FIRC based on the FIRC Advise provided by CitiBank. But the AD Bank will insist on getting a NOC (No-Objection Certificate) first! So it's a long drawn out process! And once the FIRC is issued, getting eBRC from the AD Bank is another headache (as you guessed, it requires certified SOFTEX).
I just don't get the reason for all these ridiculous regulations. The real problem, I guess, lies in the fact that RBI is treating all Software Exports similar to exports for other Goods/Services. Purchase Orders are needed as proof for certification of SOFTEX forms when you and I both know that in SaaS or other software product sales there is no necessity for a PO (unless a big corporate wants to purchase in bulk) for export to take place.
Also, please sign these petitions:
1. https://www.change.org/p/finance-ministry-of-india-rationali... 2. https://www.change.org/p/shri-arun-jaitley-finance-minister-...
and if possible, do spread the word!
Honestly I don't remember perfectly, but here is what I think: the relationship between Fastspring and you is that of a payment processor. If you go through the Softex regulations and RBI regulations for payment processors, at some point there is a requirement that the payment processor must have a bank account with an Indian bank overseas. The money must be routed through this Indian bank's overseas branch. This is the only allowed way to receive money from payment processors for exports. Obviously, Fastspring is not obliged to carry out business this way and they probably route money through a bank account of the country they are established in.
The workaround is to say that Fastspring is not your payment processor but your client, and then raise invoices against Fastspring for the amounts you receive from them, and declare those in SOFTEX. So instead of 1000 transactions of $10 towards a thousand customers, you show a single transaction of $10,000 towards Fastspring. But this approach seems wrong on so many levels. For one, you may end up raising those thousand invoices and mailing them to your customers anyways even if you don't account for them internally. Secondly, I think the wording of the contract between Fastspring and suggests that of a payment processor, and you are the entity liable towards those 1000 customers, not Fastspring.
One could also say that you are Fastspring's customer and you are importing their payment processing services, and so even after complying with other regulations, you need to pay reverse GST of 18% on their commission as import of services if they are not paying the same.
Saying all that, I am a programmer and hate to wear the legal/accountant hat. But this is just what I could make out.
> The thing is that Citibank doesn't provide FIRC (unless you receive an FDI). It instead provides "FIRC Advise". The Authorized Dealer (the Bank you hold your Current Account in) has to issue you the FIRC based on the FIRC Advise provided by CitiBank. But the AD Bank will insist on getting a NOC (No-Objection Certificate) first! So it's a long drawn out process! And once the FIRC is issued, getting eBRC from the AD Bank is another headache (as you guessed, it requires certified SOFTEX).
So many acronyms! Way too complex for me. But thanks for clarifying and connecting the dots for me. I think I finally understand the process. However, in my experience, every bank I have dealt with has shown me circular SPL-09/2016 from FEDAI [0] that unconditionally says that " FIRC may be issued only for inward remittances covering FDI/FII." So they will not issue an FIRC no matter what, even if you take the SOFTEX out of equation. SOFTEX only compounds the difficulty. I am convinced that none of the banks are going to issue me an FIRC no matter what letter or document I show to them. I can't even get an FIRC or an eBRC for a wire transfer.
I have personally given up. I will wait for the government to rationalise the SOFTEX requirements and bring back the $20k transaction threshold below which you did not need to file SOFTEX, and somehow make the FIRC process automatic. Till then I am just paying the 18% GST which I should not have to, and classifying my services as "other engineering services" to avoid SOFTEX. I haven't registered with any STPI for SOFTEX yet.
I will sign the petitions you shared.
[0]: https://www.icicibank.com/managed-assets/docs/business/FEDAI...
The state of payments here is sub-par; while providers are still coming up, the documentation is just not sufficient (at least not up to Stripe's standards), the APIs are a bit convoluted, and the whole thing feels shaky. Plus, Stripe is trusted by customers, so I bet at least a few of them would be more comfortable if they see the familiar Stripe payment form.
This is the statistic that will change the world more than a little bit. This is partly because the richest man in India has spent $25bn on telecom infrastructure and acquisition of new customers.
Here's a related article - https://www.economist.com/news/business/21718495-jios-100m-n...
The canonical url for your page is set to http://localhost:4000/payments/simplyguest-payments.html . That is not the best option for SEO :)
Did something change in relation to that? coz if not then stripe is gonna have a hard time finding customers
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonet...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/12/14/inside-i...
As businesses realize cash is not easy to scale, and if they are ambitious enough, they will push their customers towards credit/debit cards and other scalable channels.
https://www.quora.com/Would-Y-Combinator-invest-in-a-company...
* Clean API
* Support India-focused payment options (netbanking is huge here. And Razorpay also supports digital-wallets)
* Easy to get started fast with less paperwork
For every other payment gateway, you had to go through a papertrail before you could even tryout the sandbox API.
I remember Razorpay (initially atleast) required only PAN and allowed individuals to start accepting payments. This IMHO is huge indie-friendly. And back then, for every payment gateway you had to be a registered company. Not sure if that relaxed rule translated to an uptick in growth.
If it's going to be restricted in some major way, then there won't be any difference between Stripe and say PayPal which makes it a non-starter.
RBI really needs to loosen up a bit, especially when it comes to over-regulation of the Software sector.
All processors are required to do 3D Secure verification. Local processors have integration for NetBanking. International ones are card only but may have better developer experience. Apple Pay uses 3D Secure too but bypasses two-factor verfication by tokenization.
Reliability/sucess rate is no longer as big of a deal with most competent processors. We've found the need to build custom tooling and abuse data more important for the Indian ecosystem.
Currently using Safecharge, which is quite good, however the setup process requires submitting 10+ documents with details on the company structure, UBOs and nature of business.
While Stripe supports this feature beautifully, it wasn't supporting in India. Now I'm excited to hear this news.
0. I have to say that I have not looked into this in detail in the last 12 months so if things have changed with the RBI I would be very happy to know.