[HN Gopher] Stripe launched 10 years ago today ___________________________________________________________________ Stripe launched 10 years ago today Author : tosh Score : 142 points Date : 2021-09-29 19:27 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | euoia wrote: | What happened to capture the flag? I still have my t-shirt. But | let's talk about the product. As a business owner and a | developer, I would prefer suppliers that can make their invoices | / receipts available via an API. It's such a mess and would save | so much data entry. Someone please make this happen! | agustif wrote: | Wow, hard to believe how much the team lead by the collison's | have achieved in only a decade... | poszlem wrote: | It is hard to overstate how much influence Stripe had on the | financial services online. Great job Stripe! | KorematsuFredt wrote: | It also had immense influence on eng part as well. Stripe | despite being a fintech startup set benchmarks of what we can | expect in terms of developer friendliness. | newsbinator wrote: | I have to admit, there are zero competitors that I would | seriously consider using instead of Stripe. | | They've got a moat the size of an ocean. | sourcesmith wrote: | And yet to have a card payment go through successfully via | them... | markdown wrote: | Hard to believe I've been waiting a decade to find out when | they'll add support for my country. It's been almost two decades | since Paypal did. | | A decade has gone by and all they've managed are: | US, Canada, Mexico UK, EU UAE India | Singapore, Malaysia, Philipines, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan | Australia, New Zealand Brazil | | Not a single African or SIDS country supported. Only one in | Brazil and the Middle East. | | There are billions of people who stand to benefit from greater | access to participation in ecommerce, but who are left out in the | cold because banks won't give them merchant accounts. I once | spoke to a banker who didn't know what a merchant account was. | | Congrats on your success, Stripe. Please consider doing good with | it. | Klonoar wrote: | It's not like they haven't looked at the region (re: Africa, at | least) | | https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/paystack-joining-stripe | | Both having invested in the Series A, along with eventually | acquiring 'em. | markdown wrote: | It's a pity Alipay was hamstrung by an impotent Winnie the | Pooh. It could have been a great catalyst in the belt-and- | road region, waking US payment companies to the opportunities | in this region. | | I'm glad Stripe is a making small steps. | adamrezich wrote: | I'd heard about Stripe for years but earlier this year I was | finally given a solid opportunity to utilize it for a small-scale | contract web development position. I was very pleasantly | surprised at how easy to use it was, I expected a ton of | boilerplate and dependencies but for a simple, straightforward | PHP app, setting up secure payments was an absolute breeze. it's | very satisfying to go in expecting headaches and edge cases and | come away with a streamlined, efficient experience! | xsc wrote: | Patrick and John - you solved a real pain point for our | community. Thank you. | | https://twitter.com/xsc/status/106149101720186880 | ivyirwin wrote: | Congrats to the Stripe team. I can't believe it has only been 10 | years. I actually had to go check my inbox to see when I started | using Stripe and it looks like I received my account notification | on 8/30/11! | | As other have said here, Stripe was one of those things that just | made sense. As a web developer I was tired of jumping through the | many hoops of authorize.net or praying that people would complete | the purchase path on PayPal. When Stripe came out I (apparently) | jumped immediately on it and haven't looked back. It is the only | payment solutions provider I offer my clients or use on my own | projects. | | But the larger impact it has had on me is that it gave me that | much more faith in HN as a source of emerging technology | solutions. I still comb through batch announcements or check out | Show HNs to see what's coming, because I feel like there's a good | chance another Stripe is launching today. And it's just as cool | that Patrick Collison still is involved in HN. Thanks pc and the | rest of you all at Stripe! | jedberg wrote: | The launch thread: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883 | | Interestingly, unlike most HN launches, the majority of the | comments were actually positive, instead of "why not just do X | instead?". | mbesto wrote: | I think you're saying this, but wanted to expand on this. I | find positivity/negativity of Show HN a useless heuristic. | What's important is how constructive the comment is: | | - "This is dumb and it'll never work" | | vs | | - "I'm you're target audience and I would never use this | service because XYZ" | | Both have negative sentiment but one is FAR more useful and | should be encouraged. | jstummbillig wrote: | Not really. If you are my _actual_ target audience you use my | product, because despite my solution being shit, it 's still | filling a desperate need you have. | | Then you come to talk to me about all your pain points | afterwards. | hihihihi1234 wrote: | No, if I use your product it's because I'm in your | _audience_. If I 'm merely in your _target audience_ then | there 's no guarantee that your shots will hit the target. | afarrell wrote: | Sure, but what I'm in the audience you _say_ that you | intend to target, but I can see that I wouldn't use the | product? | | That means you have a problem that you'd want to know about | early. | | A. You aren't filling a need I have. | | B. You aren't showing that you'll fill a need I have with | enough clarity to motivate me to invest a bunch of time | into the product. | | C. Your description of your intended audience is low- | specificity enough that I'd waste your sales time talking | to them. | | D. Your description of your intended audience is low- | specificity enough that if you give it to half your | engineering team, she will spend lots of effort building | something misaligned with the other half. | blocked_again wrote: | I am pretty sure the vast majority of comments in Show HN | projects are mostly positive. | peanut_worm wrote: | Probably because Stripe solved a problem to which there was not | a great existing solution for | hunterb123 wrote: | PayPal did that, Stripe was a good alternative with better | documentation. They later expanded to many more features that | are nice for small businesses. | | CTR+F "paypal" in the launch thread. I don't view Stripe as | visionary or a break through in payment processing, that goes | to PayPal, but Stripe has a better user experience. | codegeek wrote: | I disagree. I use both Stripe and Paypal and Stripe is not | just "better documentation". The APIs are far more reliable | and stable, customer support is better with Stripe (in my | experience) and overall, it is very friendly to developers. | Paypal could HAVE eaten Stripe for lunch but considering | their shitty way of doing things, they never bothered to | improve. They are the incumbent but Stripe is far better. | hunterb123 wrote: | > They are the incumbent but Stripe is far better. | | This was my point. PayPal disrupted the banks and ACH | processors. Stripe perfected the UX/DX. | | PayPal is much larger than Stripe, afaik it's net worth | is more and it's revenue is 3x. | chrsstrm wrote: | I signed up on 9/30/2011 and the registration form was sparse and | a little confusing to the point that I ended up emailing support | to make sure my account was set up correctly. Got an email back | from some dude named John Collison who helped me out. Of course I | had no idea who he was at the time but instantly recognized the | name several years later when I came across the email again - | Gmail had automatically put him in my contacts and I kept | thinking it must be a mistake bc there's no way I have John | Collison as a personal contact. Stripe has been good to me as a | developer over the years and I hope they continue to innovate | well into the future. | handrous wrote: | I still like them because their support folks sent me a t-shirt | in, I dunno, maybe 2012, when I posted a slightly-clever | workaround on their forums, for some subscription-related | functionality they didn't have yet. Fairly cheap way to keep me | feeling positive vibes about them, nearly a decade later. | freetinker wrote: | Nice story - thanks for sharing. | | I think thoughtfulness sticks because it requires effort, and | injects humanity in an otherwise efficiently transactional | culture. | | Thoughtfulness may be inexpensive to exercise money-wise, but | it ain't cheap. ;) | alberth wrote: | Accepting payments and starting a business has never been easier | ... and Stripe is a major contributing factor to that welcomed | change. | | I do wonder what Stripe's financials look like given they have | raised more funding than most startups ($2.2B raised [0]). | | Given these extremely favorable market conditions, I have to | imagine they are accelerating an IPO very soon (no inside | knowledge). | | [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/stripe | cm2012 wrote: | Apparently the founders are anti-IPO. | dont__panic wrote: | How does that affect engineer comp? I imagine folks are | granted a lot of equity, but if the founders don't want to | IPO... is there a buyback scheme in place for internal | holders? | | Mind you, I'm also pretty anti-IPO -- I think that going | public usually has a negative impact on a company's products | (more push towards profit at the cost of quality and employee | QOL). But if you're stuck with a lot of stock that you | haven't exercised 10 years on, I can see the engineers | getting really frustrated. | n00bskoolbus wrote: | The company can offer something called a Tender Offer or | Liquidity Event (I've heard them used interchangeably) | where when they're raising new funding the employees can | put up the shares they hold as a part of the sale. | Alternatively a share buy back. | torgard wrote: | The Stripe docs are a master-class in API documentation. I strive | to write APIs that reach the knees of the height of theirs, all | while keeping the docs simple and understandable. | | Amazing. No surprise from me the success they've had. | codegeek wrote: | I, like my other devs dreamed of starting my own SAAS product | when Stripe made it so easy to start accepting payments. No | hyperbole here. I remember their tagline used to be "Payments for | developers" back in 2012 when I found them and I remember setting | it up within few minutes even back then. | | Well deserved success to the Stripe team and we have been a happy | customer in production since 2014. They even reached out to me | once to discuss dashboard/UI change feedback. I know they have a | few criticisms lately as they have grown but overall, if I could | use the word "disruptor" (which usually is overused and cliched | these days), it truly applies to Stripe. Kudos for not making me | deal with Paypal and the others for the most part. | jbschirtzs wrote: | I am very sorry to hear that because of this: | https://www.jbschirtzinger.com/post/stripe/ | | I don't think Stripe deserves to be a major player since they are | acting like the Gestapo. | slownews45 wrote: | A took a quick look through your email thread. | | From your first communication it's a very combative | communication style and it continues that way to the end. | | "By the way, lest you think Kelsey was being super considerate | above, she made sure to time several of her messages so that | they arrived at three and four AM to make it rather harder to | reply. Sometimes timing can be a quasi-malicious act." | | Business may need to determine if its worth doing business with | a customer. For stripe, it may simply not have been worth | trying to business with you. The good news - TONS of other | providers in this space, including for very high charge back | industries (adult, tatoo, strip clubs etc) so you should be | able to get services if needed. | jbschirtzs wrote: | If they had said it isn't worth doing business with you say, | four years ago, your point might persuade me. | | As to my communication style, you are entitled to your | opinion. I won't cut your credit card off because you voiced | it. | nuclearnice1 wrote: | It was odd that they came back telling him used books sales | was crowdfunding. They seemed to get that wrong. After that | it was a bunch of useless corporate spam emails of the like | you get from an App Store review or similar. | slownews45 wrote: | We don't know that they considered used books crowdfunding. | It may have been other stuff on the site. | | It also looks like the site changed from the initial email | to later emails but the author is confused as to why stripe | is confused. | | http://www.beitesheldonate.org/ was maybe first website? | Then a books website? | | What can happen is they look into things more closely and | see they are doing donations perhaps without a clear exempt | entity (ie, not setup as a charity) or any number of | things. | | Anyways, to say that stripe should be shut down and is the | "Gestapo" seems a bit misplaced. The crimes and methods of | the Gestapo were truly horrific if you pay attention to | WWII history - I'm still having trouble connecting stripe's | behavior to the Gestapo. | Edman274 wrote: | They probably thought you were crowdfunding when they went onto | the website and it said "Money. We always need money. Right now | our funding goal is $50,000." | jbschirtzs wrote: | Stripe is the processor here: | https://givebutter.com/blog/free-fundraising-sites | | I fail to see how they might have gotten confused. They | clearly allow fundraising or else they wouldn't be a partner | with givebutter. | ranguski wrote: | A decade of developer love, its 10 and never been binary with | them. | improvemewrong wrote: | I don't use Stripe but my understanding is that it has dominance | in its space. What are the competitors? BrainTree? Google Pay? | Why haven't those services eaten Stripes lunch? | mLuby wrote: | Stripe focused on, built, and has amazingly mostly maintained | goodwill and good word of mouth among developers. The others | haven't focused on that. | | BrainTree was decent a few years ago, but PayPal acquired them | and that seemed to drain the quality away. | | There are other, older competitors that have much worse APIs | and docs and support, but my impression is they survive due to | implementation lock-in. | arnvald wrote: | Payments business is huge and there is a lot of space there. A | few global competitors are: | | * Braintree (acquired by PayPal) * Checkout.com * Adyen (more | enterprise oriented) | | + there are a lot of local players, e.g. Mollie is popular in | the Netherlands, Payu and Przelewy24 are large providers in | Poland, in China people pay with Wechat and Alipay, and in | Indonesia with GoPay by Gojek | | Stripe provides a lot of services besides payments, but if you | just need a payment provide for your on-line shop, whether you | go with Stripe or Braintree is not a very big difference. I | mean sure, quality of documentation and customer service | matters, but the 2 most important factors for people are | pricing and support for the payment methods popular in your | country (e.g. iDeal in the Netherlands, fast bank transfers in | Poland etc.) | sandes wrote: | Awesome job patrick and team ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-09-29 23:01 UTC)