Anyone using Stripe?

Peterdalkey

Thinking of a change for online cc payments for both Euro and Stg and would really appreciate any feedback from existing users.

We are B2B and are also looking at dropping PayPal, the costs are simple too high.


Thanks

Peter

Graham

Implemented it a few weeks ago but only now at the stage where I'm about to start using it to accept payments.

I doubt you're too interested in the technical/integration aspects of it (correct me if I'm wrong Peter) other than it shouldn't be an enormous job for your tech guys to implement.

CC details and customer details can all be handed off to Stripe which removes you from the pain of ensuring PCI compliance as well as removing a point of attack for your customers data. Subscription/repeat billing is fairly decent although I understand there were (maybe solved now) issues with multiple repeat billing for the same customer. If you haven't already, sign up for an account and you can take a good look through the management interface and put through test transactions in the sandboxed dev environment.

it might be worth hanging onto PayPal as a secondary payment option, just make Stripe the more prominent one. I have seen comments that dropping PayPal completely has caused some loss of custom, that might not apply so much in a B2B environment.

Peterdalkey

Thanks Graham

We don't have recurring billing, so no issue there. Online only CC and PayPal fees are around €2.5k per month and rising, so there is meat to cut

The PayPal charges are mad, over double CC costs, so I am pretty sure we are going to dump them. We are also a long established bricks and mortar company, so user trust is less of an issue for us.

We also have € and £ machines on site doing 40K per month with some cardholder not present transactions. Do Stripe offer any solutions in this area, I wonder.

Cheers

Peter

TheBoffin

Talk to Realex or Elavon about getting a Virtual Payment Terminal. This is an online terminal which acts the same as a physical device that you can punch the card info into and it produces a receipt with Auth Number etc.....

Get RID of paypal

Graham

I don't recall coming across anything for Stripe indicating support for physical terminals or CNP transactions but at the same time I wasn't looking for either.

I know Stripe aren't necessarily the cheapest so it almost goes without saying to check there are enough savings to warrant a move. Your situation would probably warrant a conversation with Stripe to see if better rates can be negotiated.

Take a look at Paymill, they are the Samwer brothers clone of Stripe and as such have been operating for longer in the European markets. I would also imagine they are a little more flexible in terms of fees now that Stripe are attacking them on their home turf.

For a new business I'd nearly always recommend Stripe/Paypal/Paymill as they're relatively easy to sign up for (and implement) although you pay for the convenience in terms of higher fees. Your case may be one of the few where the expense and effort of something like Realex with a standard merchant account might be justified given the potential savings in ongoing transaction costs.

I'd be interested in hearing which route you decide to pursue once you've worked out the comparative costs.

Graham

TheBoffin wrote: »

Talk to Realex or Elavon

Thank you, was wracking my brain trying to think of Elavon.

Peterdalkey

How low has anyone got the charges from the regular providers, charge, rate and transaction charges, Stripe is not cheaper than our existing, it appears.

Fukuyama

What's the deal with withdrawing funds from Stripe?

Is it like PayPal in that you have to withdraw - or does it go into your bank automatically.

PayPals fees can be a joke sometimes.

Graham

Stripe remit to your bank after 7 days.

Peter you may be able to negotiate with Stripe but I suspect you will still be better off consolidating all of your card payments into a single merchant account and processing with Elavon/Realex.

Nuttzz

Peterdalkey wrote: »

How low has anyone got the charges from the regular providers, charge, rate and transaction charges, Stripe is not cheaper than our existing, it appears.

For us anyway, Realex charge €29 a month as a gateway with 12cent after 350 transactions a month (havent hit that though)

Elavon as a merchant charge 1.9% for credit cards and 35 cent for Visa & Mastercard debit cards

skimpydoo

Stripe are hoping to bring the 7 days down but they are not sure when this will happen.

Peterdalkey

Our CMS does not support Stripe so that is out!!

We have two eCommerce sites with online payments ( 1x£, 1x €) ,
We also have a Euro card terminal and the ability to process payments from PC.
We have Stg £ and € bank accounts.
We are PCI Compliant Trustwave.

Online gateway: PayPoint
Card terminal/ merchant services etc WorldPay
Total transactions approx 300 per month.

Have put it out to Elavon, Realex and Worldpay for bid. Anyone else worth trying?

Nuttzz

Elavon deal with the following gateways


WorldNet – www.worldnettps.com
Payoffshore – www.payoffshore.com

Sagepay www.sagepay.com
Global Collect – www.globalcollect.com

Realex Payments – www.realex.co.uk
Retail Decisions – www.redplc.com

Adyen – www.adyen.com
Datacash – www.datacash.com

Cybersource – www.cybersource.co.uk
Eurocommerce – www.eurocommerce.ie

Credit Call – www.creditcall.com

Netgiro – www.netgiro.com
Secure Trading – www.Securetrading.com

Optimal Payments –

www.optimalpayments.co.uk

Ogone – www.ogone.com

Peterdalkey

The gateway bit only represent a couple of % of the total monthly cost, yet there is loads of competition!! Weird

AIBMS_eComm

Hi Peter,
I would love to talk to you about AIB merchant services offering Authipay , If you want to message me i can see what we can do , from what you are saying with your Paypal charges i am sure we can help you out.

Peterdalkey

we have had a quote from AIBMS and it is quite a bit more expensive than Elavon. Streamline, our existing provider, is more expensiove again.

AIBMS_eComm

Hi Peter,
If you want you could private message me your quote number or other info so I could follow up on it and see where it could be improved.

Peterdalkey

PM sent.

fg10291

Hi peterdalkey, make sure that you are getting the merchant rate on your paypal account, you need to be doing over €2500 a month to get this, you set it up through your account, but u must have a business account not personal......you might be paying higher rates than you need to be. Just beware of dropping paypal altogether, have a friend who was running a tshirt site and dropped them over rates but lost a lot of custom, ended up putting them back on with a credit card gateway just can't remember which one but I can find out

Peterdalkey

Will check it out, thank you.

Cheers

Peter

Peterdalkey

We are b2b, so PayPal should be less of an issue . Rather than dropping it completely, we are now looking at ways of making the PayPal option a little less visible on the checkout page by using another tag like "other payment options" below credit/debit cards and bank transfer.

fg10291

If you gave a shopping cart on your site and you implement a payment gateway, say stripe or sage pay or whoever is built into it they usually appear on top of one another, the order in which hey appear is usually predetermined, but you can customise some of them so you could make the credit card option the more obvious one

Peterdalkey

Our CMS is Bluepark, so may need them to edit text. Depending on option selected it then goes to bespoke secure Credit account/PayPoint/bank transfer/Paypal page .

Silverbling

Hi

I use Worlnet via Cashflows, the support is based in Dublin and always friendly and helpful. I pay €30 a month fees plus a % and €99 a year for PCI compliance which they test for me.

I have recently moved to an ECWID/Yola site which there is no plug in for so they are writing one, no charge and no hassle

fg10291

Blue park is easy enough to work with, think it supports stripe as well, quick google will confirm that, have a look at sage pay as a card option as well, seems to be popular no idea of costs

Peterdalkey

Have two quite large sites (4000+ products) with them and are really happy with them and all the features and integration with our ERP/CRM systems. They don't support Stripe yet but it is too expensive for our volume in any event as it turns out.

Will see what they can do with the PayPal issue, they are normally very on the ball with customer service/ etc.

fg10291

https://www.paypal.com/ie/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_fees-rate-about-outside

Details about the merchant rate

Peterdalkey

Thanks to all for the most helpful posts, we will end up making meaningful savings across the board on these costs thanks to all the advice and target information.

Cheers

Peter

Trojan

Stripe is fantastic, lovely system from a techie point of view.

fg10291 wrote: »

Hi peterdalkey, make sure that you are getting the merchant rate on your paypal account, you need to be doing over €2500 a month to get this, you set it up through your account, but u must have a business account not personal......you might be paying higher rates than you need to be.

Yep, PayPal will lower their fee as far down as (1.9% + €0.35) if you're meeting transaction quotas and you ask them to do it.

Info: https://www.paypal.com/ie/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_fees-rate-about

If you receive more than €2,500.00 EUR per month, you're eligible to apply for PayPal's Merchant Rate - which lowers your fees as your sales volume increases. Your fees can be as low as 1.9% + €0.35 EUR, based on your previous month's sales volume.

Edit: oops, I see fg10291 already linked to this, didn't spot that

If you're doing big numbers, having a US based account might be worth it for the 1.9% + USD $0.30 fee which could work out a lot better than Euro based.

johncollison

Hey folks, John from Stripe here jumping in a bit late. If you've any questions on using us, feel free to drop me an email: john@stripe.com. Specifically with regards to pricing: if you have large enough payment volume such that pricing is a major concern, you'll be glad to know that we do discounts at volume. Happy to help you out there.