Stripe: Alipay support
stripe.com
stripe.com
But for Stripe, it's a huge step forward into tapping in a massive market. Most Chinese people can't (or won't) use card to pay online; they simply have Alipay connected to their bank account or use prepaid cards. Good move Stripe.
http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/internet-trends-201...
The pricing for Alipay transactions is the same for credit/debit card transactions: https://stripe.com/pricing
As an aside, we also get a load of client requests for PayPal as an alternative simply because many people don't have a US-based credit card. If you're making the moves to support global markets, it's tough to side step them.
I really wish PayPal brought back their digital credit card which you could preload with cash and use online like a real credit/debit card. It would solve all of our problems with users who don't have a CC!
The Alipay integration with Checkout works just like Stripe.js, in that it will return a token that you can charge instantly, or attach to a customer and utilize for subscription, invoicing and recurring payments.
I'm asking because our checkout is completely devoid of Checkout or Stripe.js, i.e. the "building the whole payment form" route you mention on the checkout page: https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/forms.
I suppose the main barrier is how annoying their UI is? And your ability to get a share of the interchange?
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/paypal-payments-pr...
Please make that happen! If I never have to deal with the PayPal API again I would be very happy.
1 - Will you handle micropayments (i.e. not rake 30 cents on top of 3%)? Alipay excels at this.
2 - Can some/all of the RMB sent to the Alipay account not get exchanged to USD and auto transferred to the Stripe account holder's bank account? This is a common use case to pay for China-side costs and not have RMB exchanged to USD and exchanged back to RMB to pay partners/vendors.
3 - Will you have servers inside China? If you don't you will need some incredibly fault-tolerant javascript and page load magic as some of your interactions with non-China servers will fail.
Currently I'm integrating with the API directly to do this but I'd have preferred to use a page hosted by Stripe, especially considering they are starting to open up to other payment methods.
Stripe would need a page that doesn't have its branding but instead only has yours.
This is going to make things so much easier. I'm excited to try this since we had to pay $1000USD to open an Alipay account.
I think you may ask for a higher limit but usually you just use family accounts.
Paying with a multi-currency credit card has nothing to do with this limit.
In your example, if you have RMB in your China bank account and withdraw RMB overseas, these are no currency exchanges at all. It's not relevant to the $50k exchange cap.
How often do you actually buy things online with interac? I think I've maybe done it once, and the redirect-to-the-bank flow is pretty awkward. My sense is that this isn't ever a barrier to conversion for Canadians (except maybe for very large purchases?), but I'd be curious to hear otherwise.
I'm thinking of the average person who buys with Interac to avoid debt, and feels an impedance to buying online because of credit-card-only. I'd love to have the ability to enable those people's purchases through Stripe.
(I agree that the bank-redirect flow is awkward slash awful. However, you solved exactly that problem with your Alipay integration! :) )
Obvious feature request #1: Support it via stripe.js and the usual APIs as soon as possible.
Obvious feature request #2: In the meantime, provide a version of checkout.js that is (a) stable and (b) simplified to support Alipay only (so those of us who prefer to accept other payment methods can still do so via stripe.js without winding up with multiple confusing options and bad UX).
Can you say more about "(a) stable"? If you mean that you've had problems with robustness or availability, I'd love to hear about that, because in general we believe it's been very good on those fronts.
If you mean that it the UI changes from time to time, then (for better or worse), that's a fundamental property of Checkout: we are continually iterating and optimizing and adding new features (like Alipay!). We do understand that it's not for everyone, but a lot of people use it for exactly that reason.
However, it's possible that we could do a special alipay.js, which I think is what you're getting at with #2. This wouldn't be Stripe Checkout, exactly, but a standalone Alipay product where we provide the UI is certainly something we'd think about down the line. We don't have any specific plans here but feel free to email me at avi@stripe.com if you want to talk more about that.
By stable, I meant something that doesn't have the unpredictable UI variations of checkout.js, which for some of us is a significant concern. (See various previous HN discussions about Stripe, particularly around the time the phone number/remember me changes came in.)
When there was always the alternative of using stripe.js (as also repeatedly mentioned in previous HN discussions) this wasn't a huge deal, because anyone who wanted stability could just go the other path. I think some of the concerns before were more about how many of us didn't realise that Stripe sees checkout.js as an ever-evolving test bed.
If that no longer applies then there is now a need to choose between instability with checkout.js and losing features with stripe.js. When I first joined this discussion today, I was happy at the idea of Stripe starting to support a broader range of payment options. As I'm reading more, my joy is turning to concern that checkout.js is becoming the preferred integration method with significant downsides for those who don't comply.
I do understand that there may be good reasons for locking in your choice of payment UI. On the other hand, this is not the first time I've dealt with a payment service where you can't cleanly integrate the whole process into your own brand/UX, and interrupting that flow rarely turns out happily for conversion rates or, sometimes, brand reputation.
With that in mind, if proper support isn't available for Alipay, then some sort of alipay.js as you mentioned would certainly be welcome, particularly if it allows at least basic styling customisation to match the colour scheme and typography of the merchant's site.
Each new payment method comes with its own constraints. We'll always try to give our users as many options as possible while working within those constraints. The constraints with Alipay are particularly tight, and for now the only way we can satisfy them is through checkout.js - but over time, if we can relax that, we will. We're definitely not moving to a model where Checkout is always the first or only way to integrate a new feature. For example, the two other alternative payment methods we have in beta right now are ACH and Bitcoin, neither of which are built into Checkout. We do hope to eventually support both of these in Checkout, of course, but in those cases, it was easiest to do the API first; in the Alipay case, it was by far the easiest thing to do Checkout first.
That's good to know. FWIW, I hadn't heard anything about that change, which would have been of immediate interest to at least one team I worked on that was still relying on checkout.js at the time.
Each new payment method comes with its own constraints. We'll always try to give our users as many options as possible while working within those constraints. The constraints with Alipay are particularly tight, and for now the only way we can satisfy them is through checkout.js - but over time, if we can relax that, we will.
Understood, and thanks again for taking the time to explain.
PS author misspelled the link to Stripe Checkout https://stripe.com/chekcout (missing a c)