pc

We still haven't built most of the stuff we want to build. We're not available in most countries; there are countless payment instruments we don't support; there's a lot of functionality we'd like to add. We want to do this as quickly as possible, which is expensive, and we assume that every round we raise might be our last ever.

That said, we've generally erred towards raising less rather than more -- most companies raise much more money than this in multi-billion valuation dollar rounds.

Yup, we're working on a number of other payment methods. (We have ACH charges in beta -- let me know if you'd like access. patrick@stripe.com.)

I'm very sorry about that! The support team has expanded a lot this year; we're working on it. Feel free to email me directly if I can ever help -- patrick@stripe.com.

> It seems impossible that they could raise money like that without some serious legal documents stapled on.

The terms were almost identical to our previous rounds.

> Also, does this mean Stripe is looking to IPO?

Not any time soon!

Well-deserved. Tobi is one of the most impressive CEOs I've ever interacted with.

I think it's his browser width. Here's what it looks like for me: http://cl.ly/image/0I2T2G3F0B3I

I work at Stripe. Some details in the article aren't very accurate.

But, more broadly, we actually work hard to push against the rules in many cases. (Cindy Gallop, mentioned earlier in the thread, can attest to this -- we spent ages trying to figure out a way to accept payments for her startup.)

> My understanding is that stripe has always done some level of fraud protection (e.g. Monitoring to ensure someone isn't incrementing through card numbers to find one that works)

Yeah, for sure. We (Stripe) power many commerce platforms today[1], so we've been able to accumulate a decent amount of training data. It's probably also worth pointing out that our functionality for platforms like these protects the platform from risk losses, and has from the start. But, more competition is good for users, and congrats to WePay on the launch.

[1] Twitter, Facebook, Wave Accounting, Shopify, BigCommerce, Freshbooks, GoDaddy, Wufoo, and more.

Looks like the answer is "not currently". Sorry :(.

Good question; lemme check...

> If I'm reading this correctly, it looks like most things are encrypted while on iCloud. [...]

If that list is accurate, that's great.

I couldn't find anything that describes whether Apple can access your iCloud data in response to a law enforcement request. (I.e., whether it's encrypted in situ.) Does anyone know?

This supports recurring payments too -- you can associate an Apple Pay-originated Stripe token with a Stripe customer object as normal, and then create charges for that that customer. (This means that the Lyft use-case also works largely unchanged.)

No; this is now out-of-date. (I work at Stripe.)

Your Stripe pricing is the same if you use Apple Pay -- there are no additional fees. (And no 30%.)

(We should update the page to say this...)

You can't use Apple Pay directly: you have to use it with a supported payment platform. (List is at https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/.)

> For instance, I said, "Jed is also on the Stellar board, too, one of only three members -- and so wields a considerable amount of influence." Then you said that "the board is composed of Jed, Keith Rabois, and me".

Sorry, mostly I was just alluding to the fact that most of the board is composed of external members.

> In any case, I'm more interested in hearing about how Stellar is or isn't like Ripple. Is it essentially the same technology with a different governance structure on top of it? If not, in what way(s) is it different?

There are technical differences (like the inflation), and they'll diverge more over time, but I think the technical differences are of secondary importance relative to the issues around coin distribution and governance. If a distributed financial network is going to succeed, I believe that it has to be run by an impartial organization.

The inflation doesn't go to the foundation. The mechanism is described at https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/. (Search for "inflation".)

Yeah, the image issues were unfortunate -- but the tech is good, and Jed and David have a lot of promising ideas about how to make it even better. Jed and Joyce have been scrupulous about being fair and transparent in how the Stellar Foundation is structured. There's more about this (including governance documents) at https://www.stellar.org/about/.

It's actually not a bug -- it's because the client never sends the password to the server. (It decrypts your wallet locally.)

Patrick Collison here. I think that Stellar's governance is going to be one of its strong suits. (And something that we thought was lacking in other efforts.)

Stellar is a nonprofit organization and will have public financials and governance documents. It will also hold just 5% of the stellars -- 95% is being given away as quickly as possible. The board is composed of Jed, Keith Rabois, and me. A number of other advisors (http://stellar.org/about) are ensuring that everything is run well and fairly.

Yes; it's because your wallet is decrypted by the client and your password is never sent to the server.

This is actually for security -- your password is never sent to the server, and so the client needs to decrypt your wallet again.

We actually launched our Danish beta earlier this morning: https://twitter.com/stripe/status/491224812958650370. You can sign up for an invite over at https://stripe.com/global.

I've enjoyed reading the various strategy memos that emerged as part of the DoJ's antitrust case.

This phishing concern is part of why we decided to use one-time SMS tokens with Checkout -- there's no password to steal.

That's unfair -- not all platforms have IETF specs (iOS, Android, AWS, etc). You might prefer platforms that have proper specifications, but the presence of one is not implicit in the term.

> Doesn't sound like a good idea? Then shut up.

Your comment is needlessly mean-spirited. The top-voted comment on the recent Show HN thread would seem to apply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7984826

Stripe launched this way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883. We didn't do any press or anything like that. (We didn't think of adding the Show HN prefix, though.)

Not for now. Part of the reason Alipay was comfortable with this new flow is because it's served as part of Checkout. If we were to provide Checkout-less APIs, we'd probably have to go back to the old redirect model, which (among other things) just doesn't work well on mobile. I expect we'll always offer APIs for "standardized" instruments, though (ACH, Bitcoin, cards, etc.).