<story><title>Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April</title><url>https://support.stripe.com/questions/april-2023-pricing-updates-for-businesses-based-in-europe</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>superzamp</author><text>The problem with SEPA payment, is that it&amp;#x27;s great for the merchant and a net loss for the user, especially individual consumers.&lt;p&gt;From a UX perspective today, it will always be more cumbersome to initiate a SEPA transfer to the merchant. Some integrations offer a semblance of interactivity with your banking app in an attempt to streamline it, but nothing beats the simplicity entering your cards details or just showing your face to Apple pay. Then from a consumer protection perspective, if something wrong happen with your order or the merchant goes bust, you have no recourse if you initiated a SEPA CT. Card payments on the other hand give you a nice chain of large entities exposing themselves to the merchant&amp;#x27;s credit risk in front of you.&lt;p&gt;It can probably work in specific situations (e.g. if you have a niche website with a sophisticated audience ready to overcome the hurdles to acquire your widgets), but for these reasons alone I just can&amp;#x27;t see SEPA payments going anywhere near even a ridicule fraction of the market share held by legacy card networks yet.</text></item><item><author>01acheru</author><text>Something needs to change in the digital payments sector. 1.5% is ok-ish but 3.25% to accept foreign cards in the EU is a lot of money!&lt;p&gt;I understand that costs are higher when using credit cards because of the credit part that introduces risk, but in my case for example I have a debit card that runs also over Mastercard, so either I have the money or I don&amp;#x27;t. Why should a merchant be charged the same fee of using a real credit card if the risk is highly reduced?&lt;p&gt;I still don&amp;#x27;t understand why it is so hard to break the Visa&amp;#x2F;Mastercard duopoly on card payments. Why isn&amp;#x27;t there a standard for payments that banks can implement? Why are Visa&amp;#x2F;Mastercard&amp;#x2F;Amex required? SEPA in EU is already something but it is taking ages for it to become an actual payment platform in everyday&amp;#x27;s life.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cataflam</author><text>There are multiple types of SEPA payments, I think you&amp;#x27;re talking about SEPA Credit Transfer (essentially making the bank transfer yourself).&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, for SEPA Direct Debit, not only is the interface quite reasonable (you enter your IBAN and confirm a mandate), but consumer protection is very high. You can chargeback no questions asked for 8 weeks, it will be immediately accepted and the merchant can&amp;#x27;t do anything about it. And as a customer, besides the 8 weeks no questions asked policy, you have 13 months to ask for a refund of an unauthorised transaction, with supporting evidence. In practice, the bank will always accept such a request too.</text></comment>
<story><title>Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April</title><url>https://support.stripe.com/questions/april-2023-pricing-updates-for-businesses-based-in-europe</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>superzamp</author><text>The problem with SEPA payment, is that it&amp;#x27;s great for the merchant and a net loss for the user, especially individual consumers.&lt;p&gt;From a UX perspective today, it will always be more cumbersome to initiate a SEPA transfer to the merchant. Some integrations offer a semblance of interactivity with your banking app in an attempt to streamline it, but nothing beats the simplicity entering your cards details or just showing your face to Apple pay. Then from a consumer protection perspective, if something wrong happen with your order or the merchant goes bust, you have no recourse if you initiated a SEPA CT. Card payments on the other hand give you a nice chain of large entities exposing themselves to the merchant&amp;#x27;s credit risk in front of you.&lt;p&gt;It can probably work in specific situations (e.g. if you have a niche website with a sophisticated audience ready to overcome the hurdles to acquire your widgets), but for these reasons alone I just can&amp;#x27;t see SEPA payments going anywhere near even a ridicule fraction of the market share held by legacy card networks yet.</text></item><item><author>01acheru</author><text>Something needs to change in the digital payments sector. 1.5% is ok-ish but 3.25% to accept foreign cards in the EU is a lot of money!&lt;p&gt;I understand that costs are higher when using credit cards because of the credit part that introduces risk, but in my case for example I have a debit card that runs also over Mastercard, so either I have the money or I don&amp;#x27;t. Why should a merchant be charged the same fee of using a real credit card if the risk is highly reduced?&lt;p&gt;I still don&amp;#x27;t understand why it is so hard to break the Visa&amp;#x2F;Mastercard duopoly on card payments. Why isn&amp;#x27;t there a standard for payments that banks can implement? Why are Visa&amp;#x2F;Mastercard&amp;#x2F;Amex required? SEPA in EU is already something but it is taking ages for it to become an actual payment platform in everyday&amp;#x27;s life.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>disruptiveink</author><text>This. I would never do a SEPA payment vs a credit card transaction unless there&amp;#x27;s a significant advantage to me as a user to go with SEPA. And the merchant can&amp;#x27;t give me a discount for using a specific payment which is not allowed under EU rules, so there&amp;#x27;s not much the merchant can do there.</text></comment>