Has Stripe fixed their webhooks so that they re-POST when the endpoint is down? They can't be compared to IPN until they implement it reliably... without that you have to manually reconcile Stripe's data with your own database to be sure you haven't lost a post during brief downtime, network glitch, transient application or proxy error...

> Setting up a merchant account usually takes weeks and requires hours of paperwork to be filled

That's a bit of an exaggeration... I've worked with 3 different merchant service providers underwritten by 3 different banks, and none of them took more than 2 days to approve an application, and the applications were like two pages long... 10 minutes to fill out. Names and socials of the principals of the business, estimated ticket size and monthly volume, description of your business, signature, date, send.

If you have the volume, that extra percentage point Stripe will shave off your gross sales is a lot to throw away.

They're a neat company with a neat API, but they're firmly in the "backup plan" category for me.