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Comment by reisse | Hacker News Reader

I don't know how Stripe can justify these pricing, except for "oh we can extract more money, let's do that!". In other (non-Western) countries pricing for local payment systems can be less than half of what Stripe charges, e. g. Alipay (one of the biggest Chinese payment services) charges about 0.55% merchant fee without per-transaction cost.

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Even in the EEA if you only care about payments, nothing stops you from going to a cheaper alternative. For instance https://www.stancer.com/en/pricing

And I don't know the rates big players negotiate with Adyen but it's probably similar.

I got hit by the same price increase today - I assume they're prepping up for the IPO.

Yeah but it's not the same economy of scale, you'll reckon. Alipay is also completely systemic in China and cant exactly be considered a private entreprise anymore: they're "more famous than Jesus" in their own way.

I barely ever heard of Stripe as a European, and now that I live in China, it's almost mandatory to have alipay.

The old rules of supply and demand, competition and vendor lock in?

As long as they do not lose customers / don‘t miss out on new customers, it was the right decision.

Why don't Stripe customers shift to Alipay? I don't know anything about the service, but that seems like a pretty straightforward win, if they're as similar as you suggest.

The key part of the parent comment was 'local payment systems' - that rate is for Alipay payments from China-issued payment instruments, it's not for accepting Visa or Mastercard. It wouldn't be enough for Stripe customers (merchants) to switch to a cheaper payment system, the actual consumers would have to do it as well.

Because countries where both work are not completely overlapping. It'd be very interesting to compare Stripe market share in countries where there are strong competitors.

More work to support multiple payment providers (and their respective APIs, conflict resolution procedures, fraud prevention systems...).

Different regulations probably.

Higher costs of compliance in the EU perhaps?

EU has limited the fees credit card companies can apply on transactions in Europe, doesn't that mean Stripe should have lower overhead costs there?

That only applies to the card networks not merchants or processors, but there is also a dual rate system that the EU are obsessed with where intra EU is much cheaper, they mandated the same for voice calls too, it's very dumb and just insulates the EU further (which is their plan it seems)

It doesn't apply to the card scheme, it applies to interchange, i.e. the part that goes back to the card issuer.

I don't see how that is dumb, the EU cannot do anything about issuers outside of it, and PSPs have to reflect the huge difference in interchange fees one way or another.

Correct, merchants do not charge interchange, banks/networks do, and its dumb because it increases the costs of doing business in the EU (which as I said, makes it more insular)

How does lowering fees increase the cost of doing business exactly?

The only businesses suffering from the cap are issuing banks.

Fees are not the only cost of business, compliance is too - and things like if you want to enjoy lower intra-EU costs then you need to be in the EU which is an added cost as a non-EU business, etc - it's not as simple as "fees more eu bad"

That's true pretty much everywhere on Earth.

Some countries smaller than the EU bloc have more complex regulations regarding online payments.

The EU managed to cut fees in half for its population and businesses, if you want to stay outside then why do you care?

You're kind of agreeing at this point, despite what the EU believe they are not self sufficient and require international business - the only people who lose out by that not happening are citizens and there are already enough reasons doing business (or even buying) stuff from outside the EU is a tedious and expensive chore

Yours is a rare anti-EU comment arguing that the EU should extends its regulation beyond its borders/citizens.

It is neither an anti EU comment nor arguing for extending regulation beyond its borders, but alright

That is the case. Stripe will be charging the American businesses with American customers 2.9% + 30¢, and their European businesses with European customers 1.5% + 25¢.

Fees in the EU tend to be considerably lower than in the US

Everyone is increasing prices in Europe. Inflation in the UK is crazy. I'm standing in my local coffee place and a basic Americano went up £0.50 overnight

It's crazy and a lot of gouging is happening (not so much these smaller companies. They do have it tough. The owner does drive an expensive BMW though)

> Everyone is increasing prices in Europe. Inflation in the UK is crazy.

Yes but payment processors generally take fees as a share of transactions. That naturally shields them for inflation.

Raising their percentage fees is just a naked cash grab.

I wasn't attempting to justify it. The opposite.

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