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Comment by ianhawes | Hacker News Reader

This is a beautiful user interface, but in my business, ~40% of our payments are through PayPal. To integrate Stripe Checkout, we would have to ask the customer whether they're paying with a card or using PayPal prior to displaying the Stripe UI.

While that is not the worst option, our current UX is similar to Shopify, where there is an accordion component with multiple options: PayPal, Credit Card, Apple Pay, etc..

Stripe wants to fetch a premium with this feature. As such, they should bite the bullet and allow merchants to integrate PayPal as a secondary option (similar to how Apple Pay is displayed).

I will say that this is a pretty nice improvement from the modal Stripe Checkout that has been around for several years.

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> Stripe wants to fetch a premium with this feature. As such, they should bite the bullet and allow merchants to integrate PayPal as a secondary option (similar to how Apple Pay is displayed).

I expect this is not Stripe's decision. PayPal own Braintree, a Stripe competitor, whos unique selling point is that they also support PayPal through one API. I suspect PayPal want to keep this distinction.

Without support from PayPal, I'd expect the most that Stripe could do is implement a way for you to provide extra non-Stripe payment option buttons, which would just redirect to some URL provided up front. Not a great developer experience, and not much of a UX improvement.

Before PayPal bought Braintree, they were a separate company that provided the same service (cards & paypal as an option). Presumably they did this using PayPal's APIs - I'm familiar enough with them to think it should be possible for anyone. However, those APIs are horrible and PayPal's technology platform is a trainwreck, so I can understand why they might not be rushing it out.

You're 100% right, what Braintree does can be done using PayPal's API directly, even what Braintree calls their "in-context" PayPal payments. This is pretty much exactly what we've done at https://processout.com (shameless plug!)

The APIs may be available, but I'd expect the terms of use of those APIs will say something about not using them for competing businesses or some language that could be used to exclude Stripe from being able to offer it as an integration.

There are rumours that Stripe _are_ working on PayPal integration, but I expect this would only launch with PayPal's blessing through some business deal, not just from Stripe's work.

Recently PayPal stopped allowing Adyen, one of the biggest payment service providers, to integrate with their platform. I'm not quite sure that integrating with PayPal is an option for Stripe, and even if it technically were an option, I'm sure it wouldn't be an economically viable one.

I think it's just a matter of time before people switch from using PayPal.

We thought this and killed our PayPal integration (went Stripe only) and lost double digits in sales (and received constant emails asking for PayPal).

Unfortunately people want PayPal for whatever reason. Everything about PayPal from the merchant side sucks (bad API, bad recurring billing features, slow, no refund of fees for refunds from May, 6 months for someone to do a chargeback!, etc etc)

I use PayPal for random sites that I don’t know because I don’t like handing my credit card info to random websites. Now I would personally trust Stripe Checkout (especially on a stripe.con domain rather than in a modal) but that’s because I know Stripe. The dislike of PayPal among techies is not common the population at large in my experience.

Another thing I use PayPal for is any kind of subscription, because I know I can cancel it from the PayPal side without having to worry about jumping through hoops.

As devs, we know in theory Stripe and PayPal are roughly equivalent in terms of protecting a card number. But the streamlined Stripe UI with the subtle branding doesn't drive home to the customer that Stripe is keeping your card number safe vs. random merchant storing all 16 digits in a hackable database somewhere.

The friction in the PayPal UI of making you log in to PayPal to make the payment is a pretty big trust signal IMO.

Stripe isn't as safe. PayPal collects my details only on paypal.com, Stripe collects my details on all sorts of domains, where who-knows-what JS might be present.

Are you speaking about real threats that cannot be mitigated by best practices, or theoretical threats of the future? I guess in other words, I’m under the impression using Stripe and following OWASP and script signing that my customers are safe. If I’m incorrect please pass me a clue.

As a customer, how do I verify that the merchant is following best practices and hasn't by mistake forgotten some ad script enabled on the payment page?

With PayPal as long as I only enter my password on paypal dot com I know I'm safe.

If you’re very careful and copy/paste the PayPal URL into an editor and verify you didn’t get sent to PayPal.com.evil.domain, then you’re very likely to be safe.

I don't need to do that, browsers carefully show the actual domain in ways to avoid that problem since a few years now.

I'm with you. I hate paypal, and I love stripe. But I am not going to hand my card number to a merchant I don't know. I broke this rule once in 2016, and regretted it.

If merchants would display a "Processed by Stripe" early on, I'd let up a bit.

This is it exactly. I think for Stripe to really succeed in consumer space and not just among techies, they need to have a manageable back end for consumers to log in and be able to stop payments any time and allow for storing of cc info so people are not asked to enter it on a random website.

The advantage of PayPal is that I can make one-time purchase at random vendor whom I have no prior experience with, without having to trust them to protect my Credit Card info.

Isn't this the same benefit you get from stripe?

Further being famously bad at developing software anyone would want to use doesn't necessarily mean that someone is incompetent in all aspects but it would decrease my trust in paypal just a little.

From an end user perspective, Paypal is a service which magically sends money over the Internet, and you're near-permanently logged into it, so you can pay for anything with almost no friction after you use it for the first time. A Stripe dialog is just a form/modal you see on a website asking you for your credit card details.

They're similar services when you break them down, but Paypal is almost more like a social network for users, with accounts people may re-use dozens or hundreds of times over a year to pay for things. Many end users probably have no clue what Stripe is and just see a generic Web 3.0-looking credit card form (probably ignoring reassurances about how the merchant website doesn't actually receive the card data; that stuff goes over many people's heads, or they just don't even notice it).

IIRC stripe checkout remembers login info.

In that case I might be wrong. I've only ever used Stripe as an end user, and each time I used it it just appeared to be a credit card form, with no accounts and no memory of previous credit cards I've entered (which is what I would want anyway).

While it's similar, I think there's hesitation since the customer might not know that it's similar in this regard.

Plus the act of re-entering the credit card number and/or not being able to use a recurring PayPal balance to pay off something might be a non-starter for some.

Maybe with the new checkout, which seems to use dedicated domain.

If I remember right, the older checkouts were hosted on vendor's website -- and you would not know if the cc info really goes to stripe only, or if vendor grabs a copy as well.

Not really, how does the end user know that the credit card number they're entering isn't being stolen by the merchant they're buying from? In theory the merchant should never even get the credit card number if they're integrating with stripe honestly and correctly, but the end user won't know that unless they're inspecting the traffic.

Losing a lot of sales is not surprising if you're forcing existing customers to change payment method. It's enough hassle many will just leave if your service isn't special enough to them.

Beyond that, a big reason to use PayPal is that simply, a lot of people don't have a (internationally accepted) card they can use. PayPal is a useful middleman for those people if they support a payment method they do have.

I won't claim my reasoning is the what's keeping people asking for PayPal, but here is why I prefer to pay via PayPal:

My biggest fear of paying via Stripe is not having the ability to cancel payments on my own or to cut random company access to my credit card without having to talk to my CC company or bank.

PayPal gives me a bit more piece of mind because I know I can log in and find subscriptions and cancel them right from the back end and payments will be stopped. With Stripe, I can't do this. Not to mention Stripe dashboard is a UX nightmare from the consumer perspective. I don't think any consumer would log in to Stripe to manage their payments (assuming they could) as things stand right now. I think this is a missing feature that Stripe has to integrate in order to finally let PayPal die. That and time.

As a consumer, I want to be able to go to Stripe, easily log in, see all of my subscriptions / payments and be able to stop them with a click of a button. As long as this is missing, I would rather use PayPal's shitty UI and hidden subscription management area.

Paypal is just another "you pay for convenience" service. Not having to type in your card details for every site means you can impulse buy any time you want.

Another draw of Paypal I remember 5-10 years ago was being able to use money obtained on consumer-to-consumer markets. If you were to use any other p2p service (be it venmo, cashapp, etc) you would be required to have a bank and your money almost certainly will end up hitting your bank account. With Paypal, you can receive money from people then turn around and use that "paypal balance" for many real online storefronts without it showing up in your bank (or without having a bank account at all). Note - this may no longer be true as I believe Paypal has changed how it verifies accounts.

Maybe Stripe should create a paypal-like service for consumers where you can they can pay via "stripe balance" and use a single saved card everywhere.

> Not having to type in your card details

And your shipping address. That's the killer app for me.

One email/password combo is all it takes to get whatever random thing I'm looking at into my office. It's a real convenience.

I'm an European and always pick Paypal over credit card. Credit cards aren't really a thing in Europe. I also much prefer Paypal's direct debit options, where the transaction is immediately visible on my bank account instead of coming in aggregate a month later.

Euro PayPal is a real bank and can't get away with the shenanigans that US PayPal does.

Can u explain ?

Do u mean Euro Paypal accounts cant be just frozen unilaterally etc ?

> Credit cards aren't really a thing in Europe.

It is country dependant. The UK is majority credit card.

Not majority debit card?

I wonder if this could have been mitigated by offering a coupon to customers who tried the new stripe checkout option for months leading up to switching over?

If the cost of discount is less than the cost of supporting paypay it might be worthwhile.

Or if you pay more to use paypal for example raise prices slowly while offering a discount for using stripe.

I wonder why Stripe doesn't offer an option for this kind of service. In the end, people just want it to be simple. If Stripe provides the better business side tools and integration and an ability to have to trust only Stripe with my payment info, it seems like a win-win.

Is that in a B2C or B2B setting?

I run a B2B SaaS and have so far had exactly zero requests for PayPal. I keep wondering if I'm missing out.

Anecdotally as a person who often evaluates / purchases software for a smallish business, I don't care at all what payment methods you support as long as I can try the functionality without going through the payment flow. Businesses have bookkeepers and bank accounts, we'll mail a paper check or even make a wire transfer if thats what we really have to do to get a service that provides value - it'll be more annoying than a credit card, but by the time we arrive at the point where I'm annoyed, the purchase decision is probably already made based on other merits.

As an individual consumer, I'm much more fickle since I'm usually buying commodities and convenience matters.

I think PayPal might be the Kleenex of online payment providers

Maybe integrate with Braintree instead?

I specifically prefer using PayPal. I like going to another site so I don’t have to trust the implementation on the site I’m buying from, and I like having my transaction history in an account that I can sign into. I have turned down many purchases because PayPal wasn’t supported.

PayPal might be neither very cheap nor very trustworthy, but it sure is easy and quick.

I wind up using about once or twice a year when I pay for a foreign hosted server... My CC usually declines the charge and makes it a mess.. paypal to the same CC just works.

Not going to happen. As devs we forget that PayPal is THE fastest and most safe way to pay online from a customer's POV. The login is a click or two. You never have to distribute your credit card details.

> ~40% of our payments are through PayPal

There are far to many horror stories about PayPal for me to trust them as a business partner.

Removing the option that 40% of your site's customers are trusting to complete the transaction sounds like a terrible business move. Even with the horror stories.

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