There is a lot of misinformation and confusion in card processing. The industry tends to obscure pricing while building the appearance of inflexibility and exclusivity into their services. All of this confusion serves to take control and transparency out of your hands. SwipeSum is here to return the power to you and give you the
control. There is a lot of misinformation and.
Stripe is potentially a very good credit card processor for online-only businesses. It's fast and easy-to-implement for someone with developer experience, and also relatively inexpensive. You would be able to build your own e-commerce environment with Stripe’s API.
Excellent developer tools
Predictable flat-rate pricing
Advanced reporting tools
Ideal for international merchants
Excellent marketplace tools
Exceptional subscription tools
Multi-currency support
Account stability issues
Not suitable for high-risk industries
Needs technical skill to implement
Contract & Early Termination Fee
Sales & Advertising Transparency
Customer Service & Support
User Reviews
Summary
Stripe is a third-party payments processor built around a simple idea: make it easy for companies to do business online. It’s not just about processing credit cards — that’s boring to most people. The fact that Stripe accepts credit cards is often secondary to all of its developer tools. Regardless of what anyone might think of Stripe’s reliability or customer service, there’s no question that the developer features are industry-leading, and the documentation exceeds just about anything else out there. Whether yours is a SaaS business looking for a subscription billing option, a marketplace looking for an easy way to split payments, or an online retailer looking for a way to enable in-app payments, Stripe has you covered. Its feature list is impressive if a tad overwhelming for the uninitiated. And since mid-2018, Stripe has begun making some significant changes to its business: new pricing, implementing 24/7 customer support, and even some game-changing features.
There’s no question that Stripe is a media darling. With its hip, trail-blazing co-founders, its focus on empowering internet businesses with a developer-first focus, and flexible solutions for almost any kind of online business, that’s not surprising. We haven’t even gotten to all of the big-name online businesses that Stripe processes payments for, such as Lyft, Under Armour, Blue Apron, Pinterest, Wish, TaskRabbit, and more. There’s a lot of talk (and a lot of news articles) about how Stripe wants to change how the entire internet does business, and all the innovation the company embraces. And Stripe claims there’s an 89% chance that any card a merchant might process has been seen on the Stripe network previously (even if the card is new to your business). With its massive array of clients, Stripe’s reach is right up there with the titans of industry.
Stripe offers standard pricing for handling online credit card payments. The company charges the same rates we see with companies like Square or PayPal – 2.9% + $0.30. Where you may start to see differences between these platforms is at higher volumes. Stripe begins providing volume discounts to companies making over $80,000 USD in sales each month. By contrast, with Square you need $250k in annual revenue and an average ticket size of $15 to be considered for volume discounts. If you’re operating a high-volume business, it’s worth exploring quotes directly with a few different companies to see if you can get more affordable processing elsewhere.
Bottom Line: Stripe is a great online-only credit card processor that charges fair processing rates and has very few added costs. The free and simple API is great for businesses whose developers can build a custom online e-commerce experience. Unfortunately, businesses without technical resources will have to pay extra for a separate e-commerce solution.
Stripe’s basic offerings are deceptively simple, but underneath, you’ll find tools you probably didn’t even realize existed. Everything gets broken down into two categories:
Payment Processing:
Stripe gives you instant access to processing, much like Square or PayPal does. It’s a third-party processing service (also known as an aggregator). That means the company will approve you almost instantly and scrutinize your account more closely as you continue to do business. That tends to lead to more terminations than a traditional merchant account, which does its vetting in advance and offers more stability. Stripe’s processing services are available in 34 countries at the time of writing this (including beta tests). It currently accepts more than 135 currencies.
This is the part of Stripe that most users really sink their teeth into, especially if they’re involved in eCommerce. These APIs (application programming interfaces) provide an incredibly reliable and well-considered framework for developers to quickly and easily integrate the Stripe payment platform using a variety of supported languages/frameworks (Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, Node, Go, etc.). Achieving the minimal amount of functionality is as easy as pasting in a few lines of code, but you’ll want to follow along with the walkthroughs to get a sense of everything you can do. It’s a solid foundation to build on and expand your business, and Stripe updates its features and the documentation constantly. The API is testing-friendly, providing different security keys for tests and live code. Stripe even gives you some fake credit card numbers to play around with. Keep in mind that you’ll have to have your PCI compliance validated annually. That can be done with a Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) provided by the PCI Security Standards Council.
