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Comment by saikat | Hacker News Reader

Hey (Saikat from Stripe) -- not cheeky at all, but certainly flattering.

Sorry we've been kind of quiet (we do read Hacker News, though). We're just working hard to implement the feedback we've been getting from our existing users, and we want to make sure our product scales well and gets better as new people use it.

Here's a question: any chance you would be interested in having us watch you integrate Stripe? We've been doing this lately to try to make sure our first-run experience is really good. Send me an e-mail (saikat@stripe.com) either way.

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Stripe was something on the article I hadn't heard of before. It just seems so logical for cardholder information to go directly from the customer to the payment processor using javascript that I wonder why it hasn't been done before and what you're doing differently. Can you explain?

Well, hosted payment is not a new thing at all - so you iframe or link to a page you don't host which the customer uses - thus ensuring that card details don't hit your servers and don't give you a PCI surface.

This is a fairly logical extension, I would guess that the reason it hasn't caught on more is because a JS requirement has typically been a red flag in e-commerce - 3% of users not being able to pay you once they got to that point of a funnel could be seen as disaster. Interesting, because we're looking at mandating JS in our new developments (background: company I work for does a lot of high end e-commerce - we're specialists).

In theory it's a good idea (that side of it at least) but I don't know how security perception and customer acceptance rates will go.

Oh, of course. I completely forgot that there are some crazy people out there who browse without javascript. I was just jumping at the idea of reducing PCI compliance issues - I've had to deal with them and it's a huge project.

I just wanted to take a moment to say that Stripe has been a joy to use thus far. I haven't switched billing live yet but integration has been smooth and your documentation has answered answered all of my questions.

I'm looking forward to flipping the switch in the next week or two (just gotta get the bank account paperwork squared away) and seeing how things go.

Hey Saikat,

Absolutely, could do it over some screen sharing or something, email on the way.

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