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Comment by helipad | Hacker News Reader

This is good news, and hopefully websites will vote with their feet.

Stripe may work out more expensive than PayPal, but that extra cost is probably offset by the amount spent on heart medication.

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(I work at Stripe)

For a more detailed cost comparison with PayPal:

Stripe's pricing starts at 2.4% + £0.20 per transaction + VAT. Stripe charges 2% for foreign conversions (i.e. charging in EUR, when you want to be paid out in GBP).

PayPal's pricing starts at 3.4% + £0.20 per transaction. In addition to their published rate, you'll also pay:

* £20 per month if you want to design and host your own checkout pages.

* If you process in other currencies other than your local currency, PayPal will charge you a fee of 2.5% above the wholesale exchange rate (https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/cross-border-and-conve...).

* If you receive payments from customers outside of the UK, PayPal will charge you a fee of anywhere from 0.4% to 1.5% (https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/cross-border-and-conve...).

* If your customers pay with American Express, PayPal will charge you a fee of 3.5%.

* If you issue a refund, you will pay a fixed fee portion of the original transaction fee.

Any plans to roll out in Norway soon? All alternatives here have a very poor technical offering (bad docs, SOAP, errors, downtime) and are expensive for low volume.

We are looking for a payment provider we can integrate in http://makeplans.net but it has to be with no fixed costs as our clients are small businesses. Please get in touch if you need someone to be part of the beta rollout here in Norway: espen@makeplans.no

Norway is on our roadmap, but have no immediate ETA. I've added you to our beta notification list at https://stripe.com/global. (I work at Stripe)

I think I have added myself to that list three times already. Thanks though :)

Great comment. I had to laugh at this:

   "extra cost is probably offset by the amount spent on
   heart medication"

One of my top comments [1] on SO says much the same:

   "Enjoy PayPal's sandbox test environment! It's about
   as fun as extracting one's teeth with a pair of pliers."

It looks like Stripe could really start to push back on PayPal in the UK as well. About time if you ask me.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/67394/which-should-i-impl...

Stripe has flat pricing:

https://stripe.com/gb/help/pricing

Paypal has tiered pricing:

https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-receiv...

So, it depends on which tier you're on for PayPal, it may go either way. However, I suspect most people are sitting on 3.4%+20p on PayPal will find Stripe cheaper.

Never mind PayPal, they're more expensive than the commodity players in the UK, like SagePay.

Stripe's strategy is all about developer-led adoption, and their approach to their tech belies this. Unfortunately, in reality, developers have as much say as to which PSP their client uses as the cabin boy does what course the captain should sail.

I run an eCommerce firm - we've mooted stripe to all of our customers, as we like the look of their approach - but none will adopt, purely on the basis of cost.

For what it's worth, a lot of our bigger users (from MoMA to Walmart) ended up using Stripe because their developers successfully pushed it internally.

Could you drop me a line? patrick@stripe.com. I have an idea I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on.

Sure, done.

If you're doing typical e-commerce -- as opposed to, say, SaaS -- the cost of payment processing seems especially important, since it might eat into your (typically low) margins. Why would you recommend Stripe over an established, cheaper processor?

Reliability and redundancy. We always recommend that each client has at least two PSPs enabled, with PayPal typically as the fallback/secondary. SagePay have a long and sad history of "we broke it", which is only just made up for by their low costs. You lose way more margin being unable to transact than you do on processing fees.

I've actually had a different experience where clients are now requesting Stripe. My situation is unique in that across various sites clients got to experience PayPal, Braintree and Stripe. Due to a range of reasons with the flow of PayPal subscriptions to the phone nature and fee structure on Braintree (they might have simplified it now), Stripe is turning out to be the favorite even with the 7 day transfers.

There are also cases where developers do have some say, especially since many clients don't even care as long as they can accept payments--the fee is more or less on par. It's a favorite for me because when you look at Stripe.js + the API you can tell it was developed for use by other developers and not as an after thought.

Aye - our clients tend to be of the bigger, more established ilk, and as a result tend to either bring whatever odd solution they've selected along to the party. Regularly find ourselves integrating with Barclays and HSBC's Arcot-driven house of horrors, even though we'd never, ever, ever recommend either of them under any circumstances.

We have a few clients who are smaller, and therefore more willing to listen to recommendations and suggestions, but the big guys just steamroll on with whatever the advertorial in the trade journal told them to do this month. Very hard to convince a 40 year veteran FD that you know more about payment solutions than him.

Hmmm. Shameless self plug here but you sound like some Spreedly customers' we have. Your developers just work with our API's to avoid the arcane payment gateway API's but your customer doesn't have to change their processor/gateway relationship.

For stripe to be more expensive than Paypal I'd need to bill 15,000 a month.

That is a nice problem to have (and in fairness it's a .5% different or about about 75 quid).

On 15,000 billable I'll take a 300 a month hit to never have to deal with PayPal again.

Broken sandbox, flaky API, customer service reps from the Hannibal Lecter school of customer service, payment frozen, ridiculous demands on holding cash and proving you are who you say you are, high pressure sales.

Screw PayPal, I'll drive to my customer and take cash before I use them again.

If you're billing £2m a month, it's a big difference.

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