Hacker News Reader

Comment by dangrossman | Hacker News Reader

Spreedly, which provides a unified API for 55+ payment processors and gateways, as well as card vaulting for recurring bills. Code against Spreedly and you can change processors on a whim to whoever's cheapest at the moment, or use multiple at once.

My primary processor is a standard merchant account provider and I pay interchange plus 0.04%. Interchange is the set of fees Visa and MasterCard charge to the processor, and starts around 1.8% + $0.10 for card-not-present transactions.

I also accept PayPal as there's a large number of countries where credit cards are not easy to come by and fund, but PayPal is readily available.

Both the merchant account (1.84%+ + $0.10) and PayPal (2.2% + $0.30) are significantly cheaper than Stripe (2.9% + $0.30) which someone recommended last time you asked this two days ago.

View on HN

(I work at Stripe)

PayPal actually starts at 2.9% + $0.30 and charges a variety of add-on fees which you didn't include in your assessment: $30 per month if you want to design and host your own checkout pages, 1% cross-border surcharge if you want to accept payments from another country, 3.5% transaction fee when your customers pay with American Express, $0.30 per uncaptured authorization, a fixed fee portion of the original transaction fee when you issue a refund ($0.30 for domestic payments).

They do offer volume discounts, which is why you're at a 2.2% rate, and Stripe also offers volume discounts to businesses on track to do $1MM per year.

I'm not sure what your current processor and merchant account provider are, but we often do similar assessments against their add-on fees and come out to be less expensive.

A new venture is a lot more likely to reach PayPal's threshold for discounted fees ($3,000/month) than Stripe's ($83,333/month). There is no additional fee for American Express cards with Website Payments Standard.

The only fixed fee my current merchant provider charges is $5/month, and I pay a $99/year fee to a PCI scanning service. The merchant account space isn't resting on its laurels with startups like yours moving in; there's dozens that have moved to simpler pricing and eliminated bullshit fees to remain competitive.

Anyone accepting mostly domestic transactions with a monthly volume between a few thousand and $80,000 is probably going to save at least $30/month by choosing PayPal over Stripe, so the monthly charge isn't really a barrier even for their Pro service. Unless they go through one of your partner integrations like Shopify where you seem willing to offer the discounted rates without a minimum volume. I've set up a few people on that, it's a good deal for little shops.

Cost isn't the only factor. I'd be more than happy to pay 30 dollars more for not having to deal with PayPal antics. Stripe's API is a charm, fast and easy integration, and customer support is excellent. Not to mention documentation. PayPal OTOH, I've read too many horror stories about revoked accounts, disputed charges not to mention the pain of integrating the IPN. Lastly, there's the ugly paypal button. Not exactly professional looking, if you ask me.

Stripe is a blessinq!

Thank you Dan ! I didn't have time to read the explanation 2 days ago because due to HN outage, my post was deleted and replies too...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com