Changes to Stripe Billing | Hacker News Reader

Changes to Stripe Billing

support.stripe.com

67 pointsmik3y53 comments

This is the text I received in an email just now, which is for people on the 'Starter Plan' and easier to understand than the linked article.

1. Today we’re deprecating the Billing Starter plan (your current plan) and moving all customers to a single, comprehensive plan that includes all of Stripe Billing's features. Your pricing will change from 0.5% to 0.7% of Billing volume. However, we'll maintain your current pricing for one year, until June 30, 2025. Pricing of one-time invoices through Stripe Invoicing is unchanged.

2. We’re also introducing subscription-based pricing for Billing. This can make your monthly costs lower and more predictable compared to pay-as-you-go pricing. Learn more and switch plans in the Stripe Dashboard.

> Your pricing will change from 0.5% to 0.7% of Billing volume

That's a 40% price increase. I've never seen such a drastic increase, not even from Paypal.

as a years-long customer for whom prices keep increasing while product keeps getting worse (fraud detection and dispute handling in particular), I'm really hopeful that a decent competitor shows up soon.

We swapped to AirWallex but note card acceptance is limited to companies that are controlled by directors with the same residence.

Eg US LLCs not owned by US residents can't get card acceptance.

  > Eg US LLCs not owned by US residents can't get card acceptance.

Not owned by US residents, or not owned by US citizens? E.g., could a US citizen residing abroad accept credit cards with AirWallex?

The AirWallex website doesn't seem to mention Subscription Billing as a feature?

Starter pricing was 0.5%.

Scale pricing was 0.8%.

Both plans were consolidated into a single plan which is 0.7%.

This is good news if you were a Scale customer and bad news if you were a Starter customer.

I love Stripe, blah blah blah, Stripe has "good" le docs and good dev experience and w/e.

But now that they have market share they are seemingly becoming more greedy.

I think they are overplaying their hand. There's no reason that these charges should be %-based. And I'm almost certain for large enterprise customers they're not; there's probably custom negotiated contracts for those cases.

I hope we get more players in this space that can force them to be more competitive on pricing.

They are in a valuation trap based on forward looking fundamentals.

I don't get why every tech company wants to IPO especially profitable ones. I'd much rather stay private with my money factory, and if I need some loans to expand, then so be it. Microsoft did it for Azure, look how well that worked out. I feel like a lot of companies do worse after going on the Stock Market. The stock market is where long term companies go to be screwed on a whim.

When you IPO, you’re getting wealthy off of Other People’s Money flowing in creating liquidity. When you have to buy out existing cap table folks (either through enterprise cashflow or financing), it becomes harder. An artifact of ZIRP evaporating after entire businesses were built on the VC IPO flip model (and profitability becoming king over growth at any cost).

Very similar to the PE crunch currently in progress for the same reason: interest rates that rose fast and will remain higher for longer.

It will take time for everyone’s expectations and actions to reach the new macro reality, with current participants attempting to "find a way out" that is most favorable for the circumstances.

Because the employees at these companies don’t share in the “money factory” mentality. Personally I’d rather work somewhere and get paid well and have stability, but unfortunately most businesses just pay “market” which is on par with those who offer options.

When you're a VC, you expect 9 out of 10 to utterly fail. So you need that 1 out of 10 to turn into a high-growth Unicorn.

Most employees expect an IPO exit if a business is successful. I suspect that "if we hit it, we will share profit with you" would be a lot less attractive for an employee.

Most of the world runs on engineering done by folks not expecting an IPO payday (and instead, base, bonus, work life balance, etc). >90% of startups fail and never have a payday [1]. Employees will find opportunities elsewhere and expectations will need to more closely align with reality for those holding out for the "before times" that are unlikely to exist again [2].

[1] https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40363262

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11112367

Of course, but a small portion of the employees, disproportionately concentrated at startups, are willing to take a bet on an eventual exit. They accept a 90+% chance of a company going belly up and a 7-digit payday if it becomes a roaring success.

But without an IPO it becomes a chance for a small royalty payment, and this is a lot less attractive success.

I agree, these folks will have to make do without these previous opportunities existing or exit the industry if that is not palatable. Lottery tickets drying up.

But what is the reason for no longer selling those lottery tickets? Some employees really want them and they are a very good deal for the employers -- cash strapped early startups. What drives the drying up?

Interest rates rising providing a risk free rate substantially higher than the last decade, making it less necessary for investors reaching for yield to get VC asset class exposure. No VC funding, no startups issuing lottery equity tickets.

The situation will improve as the Fed cuts rates, but zero interest rate policy that fueled the previous economic exuberance is unlikely to return due to structural economic changes.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

https://www.goingvc.com/post/how-rising-interest-rates-impac...

https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/high-interest-rates-cr... | https://archive.today/DPlzm

I guess if those tech companies are VC-funded... isn't the whole point to IPO?

I'm saying that's neither right nor wrong but there are examples of the good on both sides; Jetbrains and Crowdstrike seems to be doing fairly well despite staying private and going IPO, respectively.

>The stock market is where long term companies go to be screwed on a whim.

What data do you base this on? "Long term" companies that do not choose to become publicly listed go out of business all the time. Some of them even get obviated by competitors who do choose to go public, and as a result, have a ton more money to outcompete the non public ones.

> But now that they have market share they are seemingly becoming more greedy.

Of course. Go read Theil's "Zero to One" again.

This sounds like a pretty significant increase. This is like 40% (or 60%?) increase, no? The new pricing seems to bundle 'volume billing' and 'invoicing', was the latter previously free?

The real question is what payment providers handle ACH well for a reasonable price. Say lots of $500 invoices. Underlying costs on the ACH platform is pretty low. Would love to find a $3 capped provider. Intuit is uncapped, so a $10,000 payment costs $100 per payment on their platform. Ouch!

For ACH I previously used Vantiv (now part of worldpay iirc) I remembered they had good service and price.

Pricing hard to find online for this one.

https://gocardless.com/pricing/ is 1% below 500, then fixed for payments between ~500-2000, then its cap+0.3% over 2000

Looks like a $5 - $7 cap in the US. Good to know.

Curious what people use besides Stripe (or Paypal) or if they are planning on moving away from it.

Adyen if you're big enough.

AirWallex

There is no reason why this feature is % based. What alternative we have? 0.7% just to trigger a charge every month it makes not sense.

For international card is 0.7%+3.9%=4.6% fee for payment!

Yup. Keep testing out those alternatives, I pay way too much money to Stripe every month.

> What alternative we have?

A monthly plan: https://stripe.com/billing/pricing

Ranges from ~0.62% (up to $100k/mo) to ~0.57% ($1M/mo).

It’s things like this that make me disappointed crypto didn’t find favour as a payment option. I can transfer a million dollars instantly for ~free on (good) blockchains. Vendors aren’t at the mercy of Stripe closing their account. They’re not at the mercy of payment processors deciding they’re not allowed to sell porn. The UX has improved considerably. It’s not quite ‘there’, but much better than before.

Yes as a user I don’t get chargeback disputes. That’s why I pay with crypto if I trust the vendor or if it’s for a small amount. Sometimes the savings even get passed to me. If I want protection, I use my credit card.

Stripe seem interested in this too given their push for crypto payments that’s supposed to arrive soonish. I’m curious how much of the savings will get passed on to users. But maybe it’ll just fizzle out again.

Anyone have any experience of alternatives and competitors?

Adyen is probably the closest one. Had no issue integrating and theirs docs were good

I used worldpay in the past. they were ok.

perhaps time to pass costs to customer.

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