Any reviews of Stripe

[Claire H]

Hi, I have recently launched an online site selling homeware and gifts. I'm starting to realise I may have made an error by choosing Worldpay as my online merchant as they are hammering me on monthly charges. My sales are modest but currently not enough to justify their monthly costs. I just wondered if anyones had experience of using Stripe (good and bad). I would be interested to hear your experiences as I'm considering replacing Worlpay with Stripe.

Thanks

 

[globby]

Hi

I can't provide first hand advice on Stripe but I know of 3 other ecommerce sellers who are more than happy with it. Very fast to integrate, good CS and cheap!

I personally use Braintree (their module integrated into my magento store easier than Stripe but Stripe wouldn't have been hard had I tried)- they work in pretty much the same way as Stripe and similar costs too. I can say that Braintree works extremely well, as well - the only downside being that it is owned by Paypal which is owned by eBay - and anything owned by eBay should cause concern

(it troubles me that I sell on eBay have a magento (owned by eBay) site and use braintree as a processor).

In summary cancel with worldpay at the soonest possible time and move to either Stripe or Braintree. You won't be disappointed.

As far as I can see:

Pros:

Less PCI compliance necessary. I think only an SAQ is necessary
No monthly costs

Cons:

More expensive per transaction (assuming higher volume - although they also do discounts on volume transactions)
Higher dispute costs (chargebacks etc.)

 

[Claire H]

Thanks Globby, very useful. Do you know how long it takes for payments to be transferred from both Braintree and Stripe? The good thing about Worldpay is payment is v quick.

Thanks

 

[globby]

I don't really pay much attention but usually its a few days at most. I think 2 days if memory serves correctly.

I cant post link so google "braintree vs stripe" and click the wikivs link. Should give more info

Just be warned you'll need SSL on your checkout page as far as I am aware - although this is easy to get and cheap

 

[JPMiddleton]

Just be warned you'll need SSL on your checkout page as far as I am aware - although this is easy to get and cheap

This should be done as a matter of routine (personal opinion) - an SSL should be standard for ecommerce businesses.

We started out small with Stripe a few months back (small orders, UK only) as they don't work with 3D secure but have found they are really very easy to use and work with. In combination with Maxmind fraud prevention, it's pretty useful to quickly and easily see the country of origin for the card also. (OpenCart extension shows a flag in the order history panel).

 

[Payment Expert]

What I like most about Stripe is that it is easy to use and what is more, it allows accepting payments from anywhere in any currency. So if you have customers all over the globe it will be one of the best options for you. Stripe is a great solution for small and mid-size merchants, because it won’t be very difficult to get a merchant account (if the business is not classified as high risk) and their processing costs are not very high.

As far as I understood the main reason why you want to replace WorldPay with Stripe is that you want to avoid monthly fees. There are some Stripe alternatives which you also may consider, for instance, Skrill, PayPal, 2CheckOut . If you tell some more information about the functionality you need I probably will be able to recommend you something more specific.

 

[MattCollins]

Hi Claire,

Regarding your question about payment time, Stripe transfer earnings to your bank account on a 7-day rolling basis (see https://stripe.com/gb/pricing -- the wiki mentioned earlier refers to a 2-day payout which is correct for US accounts).

 

[Jon_B]

I use stripe and I'm more than happy with them at this time.

 

[LMDServicesUK]

Thanks Globby, very useful. Do you know how long it takes for payments to be transferred from both Braintree and Stripe? The good thing about Worldpay is payment is v quick.

Thanks

Hi Claire
Normally settlement by Stripe is 5 - 7 days post authorisation but I would check also whether it is paid directly to your Bank account or to a holding account (like PayPal for example).
I agree that until you are trading at least £ 400 - 500 PCM through your website Stripe would be more cost effective in spite of its higher transaction fees as you have no ongoing monthly fees to deal with.

Mark

 

[JPMiddleton]

Hi Claire
Normally settlement by Stripe is 5 - 7 days post authorisation but I would check also whether it is paid directly to your Bank account or to a holding account (like PayPal for example).
I agree that until you are trading at least £ 400 - 500 PCM through your website Stripe would be more cost effective in spite of its higher transaction fees as you have no ongoing monthly fees to deal with.

Mark

I don't understand your remark about holding accounts- neither Stripe or Paypal pay to anything but a bank account? I believe Paypal do hold funds in certain circumstances (30 day rolling) but it stays in your Paypal account not elsewhere.

Stripe - as has been mentioned above - release funds to UK businesses 7 days after the original payment.

I also disagree that it isn't worth using them over "£400-£500PCM". Yes they will cost a little more for merchants with a higher turnover, but in our experience Stripe makes everything easy for customers checking out and for merchants in the back end. From experience, my opinion is tha easy is not something that typical merchant services could be described as.

 

[LMDServicesUK]

I don't understand your remark about holding accounts- neither Stripe or Paypal pay to anything but a bank account? I believe Paypal do hold funds in certain circumstances (30 day rolling) but it stays in your Paypal account not elsewhere.

Stripe - as has been mentioned above - release funds to UK businesses 7 days after the original payment.

I also disagree that it isn't worth using them over "£400-£500PCM". Yes they will cost a little more for merchants with a higher turnover, but in our experience Stripe makes everything easy for customers checking out and for merchants in the back end. From experience, my opinion is tha easy is not something that typical merchant services could be described as.

Last time I checked PayPal you only get funds paid directly to your Business account if you use the PayPal Pro service, otherwise you have to draw them down manually.

I also said I was not sure re Stripe so tx for the clarification, having said that a conventional ecomm Merchant account normally settles in 4 business days after authorisation, sometimes quicker..

Finally I know a lot of people love Stripe for its ease of integration, BUT it does not support 3D secure and as per other recent posts on the Forum this massively reduces a Merchants security and increases their Fraud Risk.

The issue in many cases bluntly is down to lazy coding by web Developers when they install the payment gateways onto shopping carts or choose the path of least resistance ( e.g. transparent redirect..), so yes I know Developers love Stripe as it is very good, but commercially not so much for the Merchant currently fighting Charge Backs as a result of Fraudulent activity on their website, that 3D Secure would have helped prevent.

Also they cost a lot more to operate post £ 400 - 500 PCM by virtue of the fact that the Merchant is charged a flat rate % fee irrespective of the transaction type. Whereas as a conventional account charges pence for a Debit card transaction or a % for a credit card. Usually these fees are way lower than the 2 - 3% charged by Stripe & PayPal irrespective of card type..

The point I was making was that commercially above this level of CTO Stripe, PayPal etc are all far more expensive to operate than a conventional Merchant account. And as for Customer Service, Stripe I know have a good rep, PayPal the Jury will remain out for a long time..

 

[LMDServicesUK]

Re my previous post, I should have better qualified my comments re Web Developers, and just say some (by no means all..) Web Developers use lazy coding, and I never meant to infer it was the norm, so my apologies to the good guys, comment was very firmly aimed at the Wild West end of this market.. Hopefully no one has taken offence !

Much apologies Mark

 

[deniser]

I'm with Mark; the fraud risk is just too high.

Depends what you sell though and what your average order transaction is. Our orders are £50-250 each so each chargeback is fairly painful and once you get one, they keep coming!

 

[lumencreative]

We currently use Stripe for our online payments and whilst I am very happy with their service, it is frustrating that payments ALWAYS take a full 7 days to appear in the bank. However, their fees are just too competitive.

We have looked at SagePage but they want £19.90 per month, plus 1.99% (for credit cards) and 40p for debit cards. We would need to take around £800+ to be any better off using Sagepay.

The only downside is we currently have a requirement for a face to face solution which Stripe don't offer.

 

[Claire H]

Thanks for all your responses. I'm not exactly clear on the chargeback issue with Stripe. Is this if there is a problem with fraudulent activity using this merchant due to lack of 3D secure and the seller then having to pay for this? If someone could clarify that would be great.

 

[8420PR]

Your basically correct:

Without 3D secure (i.e Stripe), a cardholder could make a chargeback saying that the purchase was unauthorised - i.e. it wasn't done by the actual cardholder (so the card details were stolen and someone else made the purchase). You'll lose the value of the transaction and also have to pay a chargeback fee ( £15)

With 3D secure, unauthorised purchases are supposedly not possible, and even if they happen it is normally in the bank that takes the loss (depending on your contract I assume), not the merchant (i.e. you). You can still get other chargebacks, such as goods or services not received.

Stripe does provide some fraud prevention tools, for example CVC check, telling you if the cardholders street and postcode match the billing address, and the country of origin of the card. Depending on the integration with your shopping cart, you can review these before shipping the order.

Personally, I agree with what Mark has said above: If your business volume is uncertain (i.e. just starting to trade) or you have up to £500 in monthly sales, then Stripe (or similiar) is great. It's easy to setup and use, giving you the time to concentrate on more important areas. Just to add, if your trading in electronics or other areas prone to fraud (or with very high order values) then you may want to consider paying more for 3D secure.

 

[Ed B]

Stripe combined with an analytics package such as baremetrics is just great. Most importantly, its easy to use and gives all the info you need on a dashboard. Its also very reliable and customers seem to like it.

 

[BigTree]

When I moved from oscMax to Bigcommerce I ditched my Merchant Acc from PayPal in favor of Stripe.

Firstly it was well integrated into BigCommerce however I worked out it would save me quite a lot. Firstly they don't charge you monthly where PayPal wanted £20 per month. And although I was on a discounted rate with paypal due to volume per month each transaction was also cheaper with Stripe.

I was also tired of PayPal reminding me about PCI Compliance when I was already confirmed by their preferred tester.

Payments are transferred to my business acc after 7 days (paypal I could withdrawn instantly after the card transaction) plus they often miss a day but I can live with that when they're very simple to use and cheaper (for me).

Happy customer. Not like when I was with PayPal Pro.

 

[Nochexman]

The main reason merchants choose Nochex over Stripe is 3D Secure. The cost of one bad transaction easily over rides any other consideration.

 

[Deleted member 243860]

My company uses Stripe for technical support subscriptions. I have found their support to be a bit slow but VERY thorough when they do get back to you. Their fees are reasonable and its LOVELY to have a seamless integration in that we have credit card form directly on our site with no PCI compliance requirement!

Also checkout Braintree (owned by PayPal) and the new Payeezy (owned by FirstData) which have similar products.

 

[Deleted member 243860]

3D Secure is fundamentally flawed in my opinion.

1. If scammers can phish for card details they can also phish for your 3D secure details surely!?
2. It increases cart abandonment with extra payment step and may even scare people off. One miniute you are shopping on example (dot) com which you have gained their trust on then they are either shipped off to arcot5 (dot) com (or similar name) or a secure page loads in an iframe (which could be from anywhere). Why would anyone put trust in that?
3. US customers just don't get it. I've spent significant time on live chat trying to explain to a long established customer how to get through it. Lucky with most merchant accounts you can push the payment though even if 3D secure fails.

Personally I'd rather not have 3D secure and take a risk that the odd chargeback balances with the cart abandonment rate the 3D secure may bring.

Please note that these are just my thoughts and I have no facts or statistics to back this up.

 

[BigTree]

I can't stand 3D secure either and having dyslexia find it hard to count the required letters in a password so end up writing it down. I've certainly given up at checkout because of it and therefore I deliberately choose a merchant for my websites that don't use it.

 

[Deleted member 243860]

Pleased it's not just me. I'm sure there is room for a far superior replacement to 3D Secure. How you add a layer of security onto an already dated technology isn't exactly easy!

 

[ldjames]

From personal experience, and knowing several other merchants who have tried them, they are VERY ban happy. If one of your customers looks a tad suspicious to their automated system, be prepared to have your account automatically closed with no explanation. I recommend staying ar away.

A good alternative, also offering £30k in free transactions, is Braintree.

 

[Deleted member 243860]

Interesting to hear your feedback! Hope this doesn't happen to us! I'd be keen to hear how people get on with Braintree.

 

[ryedale]

We switched to Stripe last year and it's been brilliant - quick,easy to use and reliable

 

[Paramount Embroidery]

Had major issues with SagePay in Kashflow so enabled Stripe and everything works fine.

 

[bharris]

i was very interested in trying stripe on one of my sites (low volume) but i am not happy they keep your money for a week. Seems so old school now. (i remember when i started worldpay kept it for 4 weeks and i promised i would never use anyone that keeps hold of your money again). Also when i looked at integrating it with Magento you had to purchase an integration module, when all other payment providers seem to be free. Such a shame as it did look good for this particular site.

 

[Harry.D88]

Stripe is so easy to use. Besides, it allows accepting payments from anywhere in any currency. Thus, if you have customers all over the globe it will be one of the best options for you.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Another plus vote for Stipe form me. used it on lots of sites, (customers) never had an issue.

 

[Tom Porter]

Stripe is fantasic, easy to use, easy to set up and is available across platforms. I moved recently from worldpay and also have a crowd funding website that uses stripe pay to take commission.

 

[peterthake]

I have had more chargebacks using Stripe in the past 6 months than I have in the past 6 years using other payment gateways. Stripe are just not very good at protecting you from fraudulent transactions; the options you have as a seller to protect yourself from fraud are very limited (for example, they do not support 3D secure). Their fraud screening is very patchy – sometimes allowing obviously fraudulent transactions to go through, even though they have blocked many similar transactions. You end up having to inspect every transaction to ensure it is safe.

To make matters worse, Stripe do not fight on your behalf when it comes to chargebacks. I just do not feel that Stripe are “on my side”.

Fraud protection is not a high priority for stripe. Indeed, chargebacks would seem highly profitable for them, with Stripe charging a substantial fee to cover the cost of processing each dispute.

My advice would be to stay away from Stripe. I have since moved to Braintree, who have much more comprehensive and customisable fraud screening.

 

[Kat Haylock]

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