pc

So were Stripe and Parse, as it happens. We reached out to the owners of domains that looked unused / potentially for sale.

Ah, sorry, I should have clarified. It's in beta! You should email me or mlahey@stripe.com to get access.

Only some debit cards are covered by Durbin. (Those issued by US banks with more than $10 billion in assets.) So, sure, we could break that out... but quoting "X% for most cards and Y% for Durbin-regulated debit" isn't exactly straightforward or easy to understand/model. We calculate our fees based on the blended cost of processing. (Plenty of transactions cost more than 2.9%.)

Already in the hands of outside users! Email me and I'll add you to the list for beta access -- patrick@stripe.com.

Yeah, I agree that you need to be careful navigating these kinds of relationships. That said, I think part of the reason we've been able to do deals like this is because we're so clear that we're on the side of the businesses using Stripe. If we were pushing an ulterior agenda (our own wallet, a particular payment instrument, etc.), we'd close off other avenues. You can only work with Alipay and Visa and Apple by being neutral. (And, yeah, the bank/Visa symbiosis is indeed... nuanced.)

Thanks for the kind words about Stripe!

> In the US Stripe charges 2.9%. That's 66% more than in Australia. Do you think it costs Visa that much extra to process a payment in the US? No, it clearly does not.

The extra interchange in the US doesn't go to Visa but instead to the banks that issue the cards -- much of which then, in turn, gets passed to consumers in the form of rewards. So, whether it costs more depends on your definition of "cost" -- but Visa itself does indeed incur much higher fees in the US (since they're paying more to banks). To a large degree, it's just a different equilibrium.

That aside, I'm one of Stripe's cofounders. We're not beholden to credit cards: Stripe was the first major payments company to support Bitcoin; we support Alipay; we support ACH. We funded Stellar. And we have more in the works.

But we should acknowledge that credit cards are by far the dominant instrument today. The purpose of this partnership is to help build products that improve the experience of accepting credit cards on behalf of the businesses that use Stripe. (And there sure is plenty of improvement possible there!)

I don't believe this person posted in the IRC channel.

Oh, we do -- we've hired a few people to help users in #stripe on a full-time basis.

I wasn't in the IRC room, but I'll go take a look at what happened there -- thanks for the heads up.

Hm, I never received anything! Can you send it again?

(Two of us from Stripe, myself included, have already been in contact with disappointeddev.)

Our overall support response times are actually substantially faster than, say, 3 months ago.

Part of it is, I think, because we're growing quickly -- even for the same problematic case percentage, there are going to be more in absolute number. (And, as Stripe becomes more prominent, the cases that happen will themselves get more attention.)

In addition, the cases that get public attention generally aren't clear-cut. For example, the other discussion on HN a few weeks ago was about a marijuana-related business that most likely violated our ToS.

We care a great deal about providing great support at scale. Each of these cases triggers a lot of internal discussion about how we might have been able to do things better.

Well, the "support" here is just much more visible than everything else that we do. We provide support over as many channels as possible: we employ full-time folks in #stripe on IRC, we monitor Twitter, we send thousands of emails every day, we're rolling out phone support, we chat with customers on IM -- and, yes, we reply on HN. Obviously nobody should have to post here, but we'll certainly respond if they do.

Fraud-related cases are particularly hard, by the way. Thousands of people try to defraud us every day. (I guess it's a consequence of being highly-visible and easy to set up.) And so the support for those cases has to be handled a little differently.

Stripe CEO here. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm taking a look at what happened here.

OP (disappointeddev), if you could drop me an email, that'd be great: patrick@stripe.com.

Watch this space!

Or, really, watch the dashboard.stripe.com space. Though we'll post it here too.

Stripe CEO here: In general, selling anything related to illegal drugs is strictly prohibited by our banking partners. I wish we could be more permissive here, particularly as marijuana legalization gathers pace. That said, it's still illegal at the federal level, and the government doesn't mess around on this stuff.[1] Software is an interesting case; I'm going to go talk to our compliance team to see what we can do.

In general, we try to make our prohibitions clear[2], and we try to give a grace period (the five days referenced) in order to minimize disruption.

If anyone has suggestions for how we could do this better in a world where stringent prohibitions exist, we're all ears. (I'm patrick@stripe.com) We don't like imposing others' rules, but that's part of the reality in operating in the US and on Visa's/MasterCard's/etc. networks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

[2] https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses

Thanks very much for using it! (Feedback always welcome: patrick@stripe.com.)

Stripe CEO here: this story is false. We've never even contemplated raising such a vast amount of money.

> Seems like it would require the same amount of work to pay out $10,000 vs. $100,000.

We want our pricing to align with the best product experience, and a flat fee would encourage marketplaces to pay out less frequently. This pricing makes it easy to do daily transfers. In addition, there are actually reporting obligations and such that kick in at higher volumes, so it's not completely scale-independent.

> Does this apply to marketplaces/accounts migrating from Balanced? There was an assurance that Stripe would honor Balanced's pricing. https://www.balancedpayments.com/stripe/faq#will-our-pricing....

No; we'll grandfather both Stripe Transfers API (the old system) users and Balanced users. That said, this works out to be cheaper for most people -- most users aren't doing $100k payouts.

> If you require marketplaces to use managed accounts then it's an extra tax, no?

We don't require that they use managed accounts. Over time, I think standalone accounts will become the better option, since it's much less work for the marketplace.

Hm, apologies -- we don't have any policy against that. Feel free to drop me a note with more details and I'll investigate. patrick@stripe.com.

Hm, I can see what you mean -- edited to make clear what our involvement is. (I.e., the migration.)

You can control the transfer schedule for your recipients, which should effectively cover what you need to do. (Sorry this isn't clearer in the docs.) Feel free to email us, too. I'm patrick@stripe.com.

You can fully control the transfer schedule for any recipient with Stripe -- I think this should do what you want. (Feel free to drop us an email if you're having trouble; I'm patrick@stripe.com.)

Stripe cofounder here. I just wanted to tip our hats to the folks at Balanced. Stripe and Balanced have certainly competed against each other in the marketplace space for a few years, but we have a lot of respect for how Matin and his team executed with creatively and determination. While we're of course glad Balanced decided that migrating to Stripe was the best thing for their users, today is kinda bittersweet for us.

As far as I know, PayPal never had the part of this that I'm most excited about -- straightforward UI and APIs for training the models over time. (Both so that they can be globally better and also better-adapted to each specific business.)

The regulations actually don't require it. Under FAA rules for general aviation ("Part 91"), you need oxygen between 12,500 and 14,000 feet if you remain there for more than 30 minutes, and it's only once you climb above 14,000 feet that the pilot unequivocally has to have it. You need to get to 15,000 feet before the passengers have to have oxygen provided.

(More: http://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilotsafetybrochures/media/...)

Yep, this is what they're getting at. (I work at Stripe.)

Backing projects is going to get easier—your card details will be saved. Not only will you not have to re-enter your payment information when you back a project, but you won't even have to go to Amazon each time.

> Since we don't know, we can speculate.

:-)

Some of your assumptions are off (e.g. our liquidation preferences are 1x non-participating pari passu; there are no seniority games), but I really enjoyed your Bayesian vs frequentist statistics lecture at 6.945 back in the day!

Yes.