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Comment by pc | Hacker News Reader

(I work at Stripe.) This limitation is a large part of why we've kept Stripe in beta in Australia. We figured it's worth allowing the people who find the current product useful to do so now, but we fully agree that not being able to charge in USD is a major limitation. We're working on it as fast as we can. Unfortunately, it's not entirely in our control.

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I don't understand how this is the case when younger competitors like Braintree and Pin are able to offer it.

Braintree was founded in 2007, Stripe in in 2010. As an Australian company, Pin may have an easier time with Australian banks and regulations than Stripe. It's real easy to assume things are a lot simpler than they are when it comes to businesses that work with money, especially across borders.

Both have been up and running in Australia longer than us, actually. And we want to launch multicurrency support in Australia properly: as a default part of every Stripe account with no paperwork. We could probably get a half-baked version out the door faster, but I don't think that's fair to our Australian users either.

It's seeing answers like this that make me choose products.

Nicely done.

Can you elaborate further on what restrictions are preventing multi currency support? If I'm not mistaken NAB are your acquiring bank, surely they would be able to assist you as they did for pin?

Curious to know, what's the hurdle or bottleneck in the process? Is it a regulatory issue or a technical one?

Been following-up with @sw (at Stripe Australia) on USD support for months now, but still waiting to see any indication.

Stripe is a bit younger, except Pin (which was operating in Australa first though). Pin did mention somewhere that they had a very special partnership with one of the 4 pillar banks that would have been difficult to create.

Pin Payments is owned by the big four Australian banks. They have a vested interest to make sure it is harder for competitors to enter the market, not easier.

This is not true.

Where do you come up with something like this?

Both Pin and Braintree go through NAB; they seem to be the only bank that's willing to deal with international payment gateways (not sure why exactly). I know you can go through their API directly, but I'm not sure anyone would want to.

collision / dangrossman - sorry I had my facts wrong there.

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