Stripe launches beta in the UK
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
It's not really important, just curious if this is some kind of mod preference for TC? :)
Shitty journalism should not be rewarded, so I find it hard to sympathize against the mods decision.
Also TNW had the story first - Mike Butcher was late on stage after Patrick's announcement because he was furiously writing up the story for TC :)
It seems to make more sense to post the TC article and let them "battle it out" with votes. With no justification what's been done here certainly does seem odd and, frankly, smacks of some kind of ulterior motive...
However, if mods are going to continue such aggressive edits, it would be really nice if they had to write a quick reason/summary of the edit, or at least show what changed. Since I doubt that will happen, I wish PG would at least add an "edited" label to stories that have been changed.
As things stand now, I no longer know which stories are actually community-approved and which have been silently placed there by the powers that be.
EDIT: Interesting that this thread is suddenly at the bottom of the page...
To be clear, I don't think that there are pay-to-play relationships between YC and TC, at least not any that would lead them to actively edit HN submissions to be from TC. However, a secret group of mods are leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I hope PG will take this opportunity to clear up exactly what the mods' roles are, and what permissions/oversight they have.
Editing the title is one thing (which I largely condone), editing a URL is another thing entirely and then to blatantly attempt to hide the discussion is boardering on outrageous! The HN "mod community" has gone well down in my estimations.
When announcing it onstage Patrick said anyone interested in participating in the beta should email him:
patrick [at] stripe [dot] com
For the benefit of others in the UK, if you sign up right now, the only countries on Stripe.com are US and Canada; so this step is a necessary one.
It's finally (almost) here!
This is the most excited I've ever been about a product launch. They've done a fantastic job keeping everyone in the dark and silently hoping. The thought of being able to easily charge credit cards on my sites has given me renewed faith in new business ventures.
Not really related, but here's a picture I took of Patrick at this year's Startup School
http://bambax.smugmug.com/Other/2012-10StartupSchool/2708004...
Perhaps we should all use the title "UK beta" to help you filter them.
(sorry, if it states that in the TC article...but I don't click TC articles)
Stripe is a service I'd love to use, however I'm not yet at a stage(small revenues) where it would be worth bothering you to be part of the 'closed beta'.
With regard to timeframes -- it really depends on what we discover during the beta. There are no major, obvious blockers right now, though.
I ask this as an Israeli that would love to have a good service, but seeing as we're a tiny country I doubt we're high up on the list :)
And of course people complaining about people complaining about it not being available in their country.
Where I'm coming from is (a) I'm sure the folks at Stripe know that there is a high demand for them outside of the North America (and now the UK), and (b) Is another comment on an HN thread saying "please come to [my country of residence]" going to change the pace or manner in which Stripe is rolled out internationally? I doubt it, but I've been wrong before.
http://europa.eu/youreurope/business/starting-business/setti...
Also, "Any business legally established in an EU country may open a secondary establishment (office, agency, branch or subsidiary) in another EU country."
http://europa.eu/youreurope/business/expanding-business/open...
Now, someone should set up a web service which makes it easy for EU citizens to incorporate in the UK.
Dozens already http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/toolsToHelp/formationAgents...
I did it a couple of years ago and it literally took 15 minutes of my time and cost £15.
a) Why the hell we put up with all that crap for so long. b) Why didn't we build Stripe ourselves.
In a way, we did. There are a couple of UK developers at Stripe -- and we want more: https://stripe.com/jobs.
https://support.stripe.com/questions/3d-secure
I think if they're going to be a serious card payment service in Europe, that will need to change reasonably quickly. With the issue of transferring liability for chargebacks, saying "Well, US banks don't do it, and European banks understand that" isn't going to cut it for long with an international client base. After all, US banks don't do a lot of things, which is why we all have to use these Palaeolithic era card schemes to accept payments from US customers in the first place.
Paymill already support 3D secure - so I would have to imagine that stripe's 3D secure support can't be far behind.
We're lucky enough to be on the Beta, can't wait to dig in and start the transition.
Is it possible to use Stripe to handle third party payments? E.g. A site owner (A) creates a website. A user (B) of that site wants to sell a product. (B) creates a product page and accept payments from their own customers (C). Ideally (C) would pay (B) using Stripe, and (A) would receive a percentage of the revenue received from (C).
They'd quickly get bashed into submission by the Reserve Bank of India guidelines, which is what happened to Paypal. The RBI will force all payment processors to be regulated as banks, or conduct business entirely through banks.
RBI is just another central bank.
Stripe is way different than Paypal. And yes, paypal is still running, the loss of business is due to the fact that they still haven't worked out the tax technicalities, and their UI has become complex.
EDIT: Just want to add, that right now is the right time to invest in India, because of the market conditions in general, organised retail is picking up, credit/debit card usage is increasing again, mobile payments has been introduced, taxation policy would become unified starting April 1 under GST& other singular taxes, and the economic potential of India.
India is 3rd on Purchasing Power Parity, yet it is only the barely top 10 in terms of GDP, and it all points to a under-saturated market. Really! Entering India, can make stripe into a multi-billion dollar company, if done right
This seemed to be an already solved problem ([company like sagepay] -> merchant account -> bank account) but there's a lot of fanfair here so I must not be understanding what makes Stripe different.
* Sane well thought out APIs that let you do stuff very, very quickly and easily
* You don't have have a merchant account - so the time taken to get payments up and running drops from weeks/months to almost nothing
* Attractive fee structure - especially for bootstrapped projects (you don't pay them until you get paid)
We /might/ be able to use the UK version - let's hope that's the case. But then there's currency conversion issues (the UK uses pounds, some EU countries use the Euro, the Scandinavian countries use their own currency, etc.). On top of that there will probably be extra fees for transferring funds from a UK bank/entity to a Danish one, etc.
Only for the next 2 years.
You really need Dankort support in Denmark. A lot of people have a MasterCard and a large number of Dankorts are combination Dankort and VISA, but most prefer the Dankort. The fees are also a lot low (free I think) on the Dankort, for the customers at least.
However they lost me when they introduced a breaking change to the API without notification. We were still in the testing phase, but this is just a big NONO.
Also they did not react to request about getting a new contract because of a changed Bank account.
Happy to use stripe though.
Stellar stuff!
There is talk in the industry that this will be changing actually; as the card number is still vulnerable to javascript that run's in the merchant's web page. So if the merchant is hacked and their website is compromised then CC numbers are vulnerable. So it is likely at least some of the applicable PCI DSS requirements (and auditing of them) will eventually be required.
Presumably Stripe reduces this to the level of completing the SAQ A?
...
Oh.
Although, you know it's much nicer up North outside London. Much nicer.
You can sign up to get notified about UK launch, you could try that, I have.