Hacker News Reader

Comment by tnolet | Hacker News Reader

I hope their API and SDK got better. It was a pain to implement and use some years ago. Stripe was light years ahead and we ended up switching. Also the capital demands from Adyen were much higher than Stripe.

View on HN

I would say they’re ok now. But that being said, I feel like we’re putting too much emphasis on the ease of integration anyway. Sure, it’s your first interaction with a payment gateway. But it’s also something you really only do once... I believe other criterias are a lot more important.

Management: "Hey guys, we need to implement some sort of payment system". Developers: "Ok, we'll see what's out there." Developers: "This one isn't well documented, this one isn't either... Oh hey this one is." Developers: "We suggest Stripe." Management: "Ok"

I think you vastly underestimate the importance of ease of use.

Well it is a hard problem, isn't it? First impressions do matter, sure

Management might also have a problem later in case of non-payment/chargebacks etc

But, in general, people need to look past the first impression

Accurate, appropriately detailed, and up-to-date documentation and references are about way, way more than "first impressions".

I really don't see how it's a hard problem either? How often does a payment gateway API really need to change? Just spend the resources necessary to get it right. If you really need to, hire (another) FTE on docs.

I feel like stripe changed their api every day. They support legacy apis forever but you could definitely have a full time job keeping up with the latest version of stripe.

Yes but you'll only know how good it really is once you try it

At first glance some docs look good but when you go to use it, it's confusing/incomplete/outdated

I don't think anyone argued that great docs are sufficient for a great API. They are a requirement, though.

Stripe also has much better transparency for troubleshooting. You can see exactly what happened to a payment, when and why. In the Adyen UI, it's not even simple to find a given payment. Stripe also has much better docs, and their API makes more sense and gets in your way less. As a developer, I much prefer integrating and dealing with Stripe, over Adyen.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com