Ready-made Stripe Checkout for freelancers | Hacker News Reader

Ready-made Stripe Checkout for freelancers

wirize.com

63 pointsDavideP8669 comments

Stripe recently launched this feature themselves! https://stripe.com/us/billing

You can set up subscriptions/invoices and send a stripe-hosted link (pay.stripe.com) for the customer to enter their billing.

And you don't need to do _any_ coding. So, I'm not sure what the benefit of this is over using Stripe directly. Am I missing something?

Oh wow I didn't know about that, thanks!

This is a good question. I will try to align the main differences (in my opinion):

1. Stripe invoice is part of the recurring billing process and isn’t intended for one-time charges. 2. Like other services, Stripe provides a payable invoice, instead, Wirize is a pre-integrated payment checkout. 3. Stripe invoice is available in the US only at the moment, instead, Wirize supports 20+ countries.

Please let me know if you've more questions.

If you're doing this is implies you're pulling money into your Stripe account and paying out to your customer's bank accounts? Unfortunately this makes you merchant of record, so if I'm not happy with a charge made to one of the merchants on your platform I'll raise a chargeback against you. Good luck getting the money back from the merchants :-/

Your assumption is totally incorrect sudhirj. Wirize uses direct charges trough Stripe Connect, so we never touch/hold customers money. If you want, check it out: https://goo.gl/vpvBEQ

Ah, okay. The previous thread seemed to imply that this was available in countries where Stripe wasn't. I see now that you mean that the Stripe Billings feature was US only.

you can actually send one time invoices on Stripe :D

I think it's fairly clear that judging by the comments, the design and use of the word "Stripe" make this seem like a Stripe product. You could well be infringing on their trademark.

"Connect your bank account to Wirize in just a few clicks (2-minute flow via Stripe)."

This reads to me like it's based on Stripe. And in that case, I don't think it's incorrect to call it "Stripe Checkout." However, I would like this called out at the top of the linked page.

Stripe Checkout is the name of a product that Stripe offers.

Hi tom169, thank you for reporting it. It wasn't our intention to create confusion among the products! Wirize isn't a Stripe product, so we're going to perform some copy changes to clarify it.

"free till beta"

I hate this stuff. Either make it free or let me pay you for it.

What sucks is switching over to it because you think it's saving money, then having them change the fee structure and you have to switch back.

I've never seen that before, and it seems like an insult. If it's only free for a certain amount of time, it's not "totally free" AT ALL. Really rubs me the wrong way.

Hi Joelrunyon, Thank you for your comment. Precisely we're still defining our pricing model! In my opinion isn't always correct to ask something if you don't know exactly the value of a product, especially from a customer perspective. Actually, If you use Wirize, you're going to pay just a Stripe fee per transaction, and when there will be a new pricing model, it will be very transparent for the customer.

That's not the problem.

The problem is that you want people to switch and then will change the terms later.

Literally a bait + switch. If you're going to offer it for free, then make some guarantees as to what the free level will contain for the future.

Would you rather pay for an unfinished product? They see value in allowing you to benefit from any utility while giving them testing data and a canvass of the market while they fill out the product. Charging now would cause a sense of entitlement in users that they probably aren't ready to handle yet

Yes I would because then I'd know what I was buying. So would most real buyers.

Yes,

If it's good enough to be released, I'd be happy to pay for an unfinished product - if for no other reason than it would make it more sustainable long term.

Or, I'll wait until they figure out what the heck their long term pricing will be before doing the work to change a critical part of the business to run on them.

This "free to use" mindset is incredibly short-sited - especially when it comes to checkout infrastructure. That should be the one thing that people are willing to spend money on.

joelrunyon I really appreciate your comment, and just to clarify it again: Actually, Wirize is in beta, so in order to define a pricing model, we're still trying to understand the market, customer needs, and of course the product value. In my opinion, as a start-up, our first mission is to understand the customer and then find a business model. We can't just assume that a freelancer is willing to pay a fee per transaction (in addition to the standard Stripe fees), or a subscription-based service. We will try to clarify this part as soon as possible, and if you're up to help us in this regard, we would love to hear your thoughts, payment needs, and of course any suggestions you may have. If you want, this is my email: davide@wirize.com Thank you again!

The pricing part is insane: "... is totally free till beta." => what does that mean?

How could one decide to use the service, without knowing when or how it will be priced?

Hi gregoriol, It means that we're still defining our pricing model, so during in beta the product is Free. Actually, If you use Wirize, you're going to pay just a Stripe fee per transaction, and when there will be a new pricing model, it will be very transparent for the customer.

These services that are layers on top of Stripe really rub me the wrong way. I’m sure it’s useful to many people who want to take credit card payments but don’t know how to code up a Stripe integration themselves, but I really dislike the idea of having another middle-man between the user and Stripe.

I agree, and they've also built this themselves for people who don't know how to embed/integrate it.

i don't know what kind of freelancer you are... but even a non-techie should be able to create their own checkout page using stripe tools. seriously, it is not hard

And yet Stripe decided it was worth the effort to make this easier for people. I doubt they invested engineering hours into an offering that no one asked for or needed.

Just clarifying, this isn't a Stripe product.

But note that, strictly speaking, Stripe itself is also a middle-man.

Hi Cenk, Thanks for your comment. In order to integrate your own Stripe Checkout, don't you need a website? If so, you're going to have different middle-men like a hosting provider, domain provider, maybe a developer etc.. You're going to pay these services on a monthly basis, and theoretically just to get some payments. It's an alternative, and maybe a lot cheaper and faster than the one above. What do you think?

I agree that the value of this is not perfectly clear, considering what the Stripe dashboard, and Stripe Billing specifically, offer.

I've been wondering for a while what are good Stripe Checkout backend solutions for static / "server-less" sites?

I've been deploying many micro static sites recently (using surge.sh -- plugging them as they're awesome) and whenever I wanted to add a Stripe Checkout JS integration, I was back at the problem of "what to do with the backend".

I usually end up writing a micro Python service, hosted on Heroku, that accepts a SKU, charges the Stripe token, and returns a (CORS-busting) json success/error payload.

I've seen flatmarket [1] which also exists in a deploy-to-Heroku-in-a-click version [2] but I remember having problems with it, and it doesn't look like it has been recently updated. It almost does what I'd like though: define your products in a JSON file, set your private Stripe key, done.

WooCommerce is definitely great -- for WordPress sites. I don't want to host a WP site. :-)

Any good, simple, hosted/self-hosted backend solutions for Stripe Checkout? It's not a M$ idea/potential, but would this help other people if I pursued this? I don't want to become a middlemen/third-party/Stripe Connect "merchant". I just want to charge the token and return {"success":true}!

Cheers

[1] https://github.com/christophercliff/flatmarket

[2] https://github.com/christophercliff/flatmarket-server-heroku

Something like this will never work in Germany. 99% of business transactions are done via a simple SEPA transfer, which doesn't incur any fees.

Do you have figures to back up this claim?

I understand for regular procurement the importance of cost saving. But in product development paying everything with bank transfers rather than with corporate cards sounds like a ballache.

Even consumers hardly use credit cards in Germany. Only about 18% of payments are made with credit cards (https://qz.com/262595/why-germans-pay-cash-for-almost-everyt...)

Do German credit cards not have cashback programs? When every transaction I make gives me back 1-6%, that adds up significantly over time. It's essentially subtracting tax off of groceries and gas for me.

No cashbacks in Western Europe as far as I am aware.

How do feel about shafting all your suppliers? Because that is about the sentiment here.

This is wrong, there are cash back cards in the UK, for example. American express operates over here:

https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/credit-cards/platinum-cas...

For the grandparent, cash back cards work by charging a higher percentage to the retailer and they haven't seen much traction or support in many European countries. Effectively in the long term they simply raise prices and give a greater cut to the card processor, theoretically they're overall a bad thing for consumers.

I really wish they would pass a law in North America allowing merchants to charge percentages based on card used.

Credit cards have some great features:

* buyer protection in case of fraud * delayed payment helps buyer cashflow * instant payment for merchant * no overhead fees compared to handling cash

But, the extra percentage added for cashback is pure externality.

Right now merchants' only option is declining a card type entirely, like some do for AMEX.

Europe's economy is effectively saving perhaps 2% over North America's. I'm assuming here that 0.7% is the useful part credit cards do.

Why do we need a law to allow this? If there is a law that disallows it we would need to repeal that law. I am not aware of such a law though. I thought that merchants choose not to do this because it is seen as nickle-and-diming people, and they don't want the negative sentiment. Taking credit cards is just a cost of doing business. That said, lots of gas stations offer discounts for cash.

Here's a case in Canada: https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/business/merchants-may-soon-as...

Badically, credit card processing agreements prohibited fees. But as a matter of public interest a lawsuit was brought and fees were allowed. This is still quite recent so we haven't seen any effects.

"Just a cost of doing business" is the point. Europe saves 2% annually compared to our system. A 2% private tax is very large.

And, because they don't spend money they don't have, they spend less. But less spending means shrinkage in the economy (or so I'm told), but means poor people are less poor. And it means that rich people are less rich (that interest that poor people pay doesn't go to other poor people). Today I realized that credit card companies are the root of all evil. Save us, Bitcoin!

18% of payments are made with cards, not necessarily of the credit variety. Given the attitude to debt suggested by that article, I'd bet the majority of those card payments are debit card payments.

It is dramatically easier to send someone a bank transfer in Europe (and I'd imagine, the rest of the world) than it is in the US. All you need is the recipient's IBAN (and sometimes BIC, which is usually already in the IBAN), and boom, you can initiate a transfer from your bank to theirs, for free. It blows my mind that banks in the US still haven't figure out how to do this.

It blows my mind that you think it's a matter of "can't" over "don't want to"...

Do you really just need one number to initiate transfers in Europe?

US banks do have IBANs, but you still need an account number in order to finish up the process.

In my online banking account I type in a name, the IBAN, the amount and optionally a description. That's it.

Regular business transfers with trusted partners is almost 100% done by regular bank transfer in Western Europe ( I am talking about NL, but I am pretty sure it applies for DE/DK etc as well ).

You order a bunch of X, get the invoice, pay the invoice within its term ( usually 30 days ).

It is not even cost-saving : we had to conduct businesses before creditcards were widely available.

If it uses Stripe Elements for this (the v3 api), there is support for a SEPA dialog in there.

Problem with this is that it's SEPA Direct Debit. That means you can charge other cards, most companies will never agree to something like that. They prefer sending it themselves.

Hi Nik, You're totally right about Germany. I'm European too! Within domestic markets, a solution like SEPA is definitively convenient and fast, but from my personal experience, the game is totally different if we talk about international transfers. A bank wire from the UE to the US (for example), has high fixed costs, so it can become pretty uncomfortable and expensive for small and medium transactions. In a real scenario, if you require up to $1000, a tool like Wirize can be cheaper than a traditional bank wire. Please let me know if you've further questions.

I don't like being negative, and I applaud Stripe's initiative here, but this will never fly in Canada. We have Interac e-mail transfer up here which is easier and better at just about everything.

This isn't a Stripe product. It only uses Stripe's APIs.

Hi caiob, Thanks for your comment. We are aware that Wirize can't compete against a domestic solution like Interac, but in several cases, freelancing is also about international payments. Is Interac convenient for no-domestic payments?

Being a freelancer, why on Earth would I accept credit card payments? Extra fees, charges etc...

Except Interac e-transfer is a debit, not a credit. Therefore if someone wants to pay by credit card, Interac option is not available.

Stripe checkout is so easy that I find it very few reasons to use services like this. I do appreciate convenience and I am not a person who likes to build everything by itself, but this is not a problem I or many of my friends have.

If others feel different, please chime in and explain your situation.

Hi desireco42, Thanks for your comment. The main difference is that if you go with Stripe directly, you need to integrate the checkout on your personal website, and it requires some code skills, and of course a functional website. Instead, Wirize is a ready-built tool (basically you don't need anything I pointed out above). Anyway, you're totally right, Stripe is very easy to use, but if you've just some one-time payment needs, maybe you don't need to set up a website just to integrate a checkout. What do you think?

Again, didn't mean to put down your service. Thank you for explaining.

Is there supposed to be an animation on the example checkout in your header? If so it's extremely choppy for (new MBPr, i7, 16gb ram). It looks like it's unintentionally growing in size.

Cool! I found the bank Azlo through Stripe Atlas's new LLC system, and it looks like they support invoices with Stripe payments just like this for freelancers.

Does the LLC version of Atlas give you an account with Azlo instead of SVB?

According to Patio11 on a previous thread - yes:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16960480

How is this different from WooCommerce+Stripe except for another middleman?

edit: the beta is free, what will the pricing be?

Hi The-dude, Thank you for asking. If you go with WooCommerce+Stripe, you need a functional website, and you've to install WordPress, WooCommerce and at the end integrate Stripe Checkout. Instead, Wirize is a ready-made tool: You can have your own payment checkout in minutes, without a website or anything required above. What do you think?

What's wrong with a normal bank transfer? Or the many payment apps like pingit?

Do many staff have authority to make bank transfers? Are you suggesting they go to finance for every purchase?

Most don;'t have the authority to make large CC payments either if you're talking big corps.

SME to freelancer payment is much better with bank transfer. Way less skimmed off the top than CC.

Hi h3cate, Thanks for your comment. There is nothing wrong with bank transfers, and I use this method myself. As explained in another comment, a bank wire is a great solution for domestic payments, but it can be very expensive for international ones. In a real scenario, if you require up to $1000, a tool like Wirize can be cheaper than a traditional bank wire, because it doesn't have fixed costs, and you pay just a small fee per transaction.

Why does Stripe get a % of my income?

Why isn't this capped at, say, $10 or at most $50?

No other bank does this (they only take interest).

I think stripe accepts credit cards. Credit cards charge a percentage.

If your client pays with a credit card, you either pay the fees yourself or add them to the customers bill. You always pay this, just the % amount changes.

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