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Comment by klelatti | Hacker News Reader

I just listened to a podcast with Patrick Collison in which he listed the ways in which Stripe's market seemed unattractive when they started out. Dauntingly complex, highly regulated etc.

Anyone looking to compete with Stripe will have the same thought process and probably won't bother.

And if they do then they will have to execute as successfully as Stripe over an extended period.

Edit: Just to add that the podcast was "The Knowledge Project" [1] - just a fascinating conversation.

[1] https://fs.blog/knowledge-project/patrick-collison/

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sure that was then, but that changed over the years. stripe is not cheap, i'm pretty sure if somebody came with the same UX many would switch, us including. We are B2B and with postpaid so the customers are using Stripe to pay Invoices. There are zero charge backs or fraud but still have to pay high fees.

You'll notice I didn't mention price!

Sure you'd like an identical service to Stripe for a lower fee but the moat is that doing what Stripe does isn't easy at all. You're paying for that fact.

Sure it is not easy, but it is also not impossible. We accepted card payments before stripe came. There are a couple of clones. Most of our customers pay with bank transfer and not online. If we would have all our invoices paid with stripe i'm sure we would try the other solutions. Don't get me wrong i'm not trashing stripe and they captured huge part of the market that is growing daily. But i'm not sure most people care about stripe, and if somebody else came along people would use the that other provider. In europe a lot of alternative payment methods are popular.

Don't disagree with anything you've said and if your margins are low and volumes are high enough it will be worth trying to shave off some of the fees.

But for a lot (the majority?) of businesses probably want to focus on other things.

Stripe has better pricing at volume.

It's expensive when you're small because it's replacing significant engineering resources in a company.

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