<story><title>Stripe Raises New Funding and Partners with Visa</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/technology/stripe-digital-payments-start-up-raises-new-funding-and-partners-with-visa.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pc</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;In the US Stripe charges 2.9%. That&amp;#x27;s 66% more than in Australia. Do you think it costs Visa that much extra to process a payment in the US? No, it clearly does not.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The extra interchange in the US doesn&amp;#x27;t go to Visa but instead to the banks that issue the cards -- much of which then, in turn, gets passed to consumers in the form of rewards. So, whether it costs more depends on your definition of &amp;quot;cost&amp;quot; -- but Visa itself does indeed incur much higher fees in the US (since they&amp;#x27;re paying more to banks). To a large degree, it&amp;#x27;s just a different equilibrium.&lt;p&gt;That aside, I&amp;#x27;m one of Stripe&amp;#x27;s cofounders. We&amp;#x27;re not beholden to credit cards: Stripe was the first major payments company to support Bitcoin; we support Alipay; we support ACH. We funded Stellar. And we have more in the works.&lt;p&gt;But we should acknowledge that credit cards are by far the dominant instrument today. The purpose of this partnership is to help build products that improve the experience of accepting credit cards on behalf of the businesses that use Stripe. (And there sure is plenty of improvement possible there!)</text></item><item><author>objclxt</author><text>In the US Stripe charges 2.9%. That&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;66%&lt;/i&gt; more than in Australia. Do you think it costs Visa that much extra to process a payment in the US? No, it clearly does not.&lt;p&gt;Whilst I&amp;#x27;ll happily congratulate Stripe for the investment, I don&amp;#x27;t myself see it as a good thing. With Stripe having investments from both Visa and AmEx they have little incentive to challenge the current fee structure. Stripe processes its payments in the US through a strategic deal with Wells Fargo, who have a substantial (&amp;gt; $1 billion) investment in Visa, who in turn have an investment in Stripe. Do any large retailers or merchants have similar investments in Stripe? I don&amp;#x27;t believe they do.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re a merchant I wouldn&amp;#x27;t see Visa and American Express investing and taking equity in Stripe as a good thing. These are companies that have every possible reason to keep credit card fees as high as possible and prevent regulation from reducing them (which is exactly why Australia&amp;#x27;s fees are much lower - they&amp;#x27;re regulated).&lt;p&gt;I like Stripe as a company. I think they do great stuff. But a Stripe that&amp;#x27;s received investment from the card networks is a Stripe less likely to make disruptive moves to break the monopoly card networks have today.</text></item><item><author>thejosh</author><text>The nice thing about Stripe is that they have really shaken up the online payments here in Australia. They are 1.75%+30c per transaction here, and that caused the others to drop down to that as well (even Braintree which was one the last IIRC).&lt;p&gt;eWay is still 2.6%, hopefully that changes too.&lt;p&gt;So thanks Stripe for your awesome API &amp;amp; team.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>abalone</author><text>All due respect but I believe you are leaving out a key piece of information: that the Durbin Amendment regulated down the cost of &lt;i&gt;debit&lt;/i&gt; cards to next to nothing (not unlike Australia&amp;#x27;s interchange regulations), yet Stripe still charges the same as credit cards.&lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#x27;s fair to call Stripe out on this because you position the 2.9% as a &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s not our fault, it&amp;#x27;s the payment instrument, we&amp;#x27;re happy to pass on savings if you use alternatives like Bitcoin etc.&amp;quot; But you are not passing on the very significant savings of debit cards.&lt;p&gt;How significant? Whereas credit card cards are in the ballpark of 1.5-2% plus 10 cents, major debit cards are just 0.05% + 21 cents.[1]&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s right.. 0.05%.&lt;p&gt;So why is Stripe charging 2.9%?&lt;p&gt;[1] Visa interchange rates: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;usa.visa.com&amp;#x2F;download&amp;#x2F;merchants&amp;#x2F;Visa-USA-Interchange-Reimbursement-Fees-2015-April-18.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;usa.visa.com&amp;#x2F;download&amp;#x2F;merchants&amp;#x2F;Visa-USA-Interchange-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Stripe Raises New Funding and Partners with Visa</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/technology/stripe-digital-payments-start-up-raises-new-funding-and-partners-with-visa.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pc</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;In the US Stripe charges 2.9%. That&amp;#x27;s 66% more than in Australia. Do you think it costs Visa that much extra to process a payment in the US? No, it clearly does not.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The extra interchange in the US doesn&amp;#x27;t go to Visa but instead to the banks that issue the cards -- much of which then, in turn, gets passed to consumers in the form of rewards. So, whether it costs more depends on your definition of &amp;quot;cost&amp;quot; -- but Visa itself does indeed incur much higher fees in the US (since they&amp;#x27;re paying more to banks). To a large degree, it&amp;#x27;s just a different equilibrium.&lt;p&gt;That aside, I&amp;#x27;m one of Stripe&amp;#x27;s cofounders. We&amp;#x27;re not beholden to credit cards: Stripe was the first major payments company to support Bitcoin; we support Alipay; we support ACH. We funded Stellar. And we have more in the works.&lt;p&gt;But we should acknowledge that credit cards are by far the dominant instrument today. The purpose of this partnership is to help build products that improve the experience of accepting credit cards on behalf of the businesses that use Stripe. (And there sure is plenty of improvement possible there!)</text></item><item><author>objclxt</author><text>In the US Stripe charges 2.9%. That&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;66%&lt;/i&gt; more than in Australia. Do you think it costs Visa that much extra to process a payment in the US? No, it clearly does not.&lt;p&gt;Whilst I&amp;#x27;ll happily congratulate Stripe for the investment, I don&amp;#x27;t myself see it as a good thing. With Stripe having investments from both Visa and AmEx they have little incentive to challenge the current fee structure. Stripe processes its payments in the US through a strategic deal with Wells Fargo, who have a substantial (&amp;gt; $1 billion) investment in Visa, who in turn have an investment in Stripe. Do any large retailers or merchants have similar investments in Stripe? I don&amp;#x27;t believe they do.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re a merchant I wouldn&amp;#x27;t see Visa and American Express investing and taking equity in Stripe as a good thing. These are companies that have every possible reason to keep credit card fees as high as possible and prevent regulation from reducing them (which is exactly why Australia&amp;#x27;s fees are much lower - they&amp;#x27;re regulated).&lt;p&gt;I like Stripe as a company. I think they do great stuff. But a Stripe that&amp;#x27;s received investment from the card networks is a Stripe less likely to make disruptive moves to break the monopoly card networks have today.</text></item><item><author>thejosh</author><text>The nice thing about Stripe is that they have really shaken up the online payments here in Australia. They are 1.75%+30c per transaction here, and that caused the others to drop down to that as well (even Braintree which was one the last IIRC).&lt;p&gt;eWay is still 2.6%, hopefully that changes too.&lt;p&gt;So thanks Stripe for your awesome API &amp;amp; team.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>objclxt</author><text>I do always appreciate your willingness to comment here on stories about Stripe, so first of all thanks for taking the time to reply. I know so many people who have great experiences using Stripe and love the services you provide - I&amp;#x27;ve evangelized them myself on occasion.&lt;p&gt;But it is good, I think, to be a little skeptical about vertical integration - which isn&amp;#x27;t a bad thing per se, but you do have to wonder whether investments by the established card networks will have any impact on Stripe&amp;#x27;s ability to disrupt the space and work to benefit the merchant, rather than the bank (or both!). It&amp;#x27;s really good it sounds like that&amp;#x27;s not the case.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The extra interchange in the US doesn&amp;#x27;t go to Visa but instead to the banks that issue the cards&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whilst this is true, it&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; true that until 2008 Visa was owned by the issuing banks, and since Visa IPO&amp;#x27;d the banks have maintained significant investments. So I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s quite as clear cut as &amp;quot;the banks vs the networks&amp;quot;. They have a somewhat symbiotic relationship.&lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#x27;s pretty clear that there&amp;#x27;s no appetite in the US on either the banks or the networks to reduce interchange unless forced to by regulation. And I think that&amp;#x27;s going to happen one day just as it did for debit cards, and it will be really interesting to see how the payment processors react to that - whether they lobby against it, or for it.</text></comment>