The API is simple enough and does exactly what one would expect, Stripe used to be like this but right now is a complete clusterf"#%k, they have so many "products" that they've become the quintessential example of feature creep.
I have the idea that the US is the Mecca of credit cards, how widespread is the usage of Direct Debit in the US?
Last year, the ACH network (the US's equivalent of Europe's SEPA network, or the UK's Bacs network) added more than a billion new transactions for the 4th year in a row. The system saw 23 billion transactions, of which 13.4 billion were debits.
The org that oversees ACH - Nacha - has indicated 80% of US businesses prefer to receive B2B payments via ACH debit, and 53% of consumers share this preference for recurring bills. (That said, there's still a lot of opportunity - a Goldman Sachs report found that 60% of B2B payments are still done by check.)
On the other hand, direct debit is often not an option at all for “online” subscriptions such as news sites or streaming services, or for newspaper or magazine subscriptions.
Credit cards and paper checks. A very large portion of the recurring payments in the US are still based on paper checks.