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Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

197 points by mike97 4y ago

mtmail 4y ago
related 6 days ago "Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609182
TekMol 4y ago
How can Europeans use Stripe when they can't use Google Fonts and Google Analytics on the grounds that sending even a single IP packet to a server under the control of a US company violates the GDPR?
- ptman 4y ago
  Visa and MasterCard aren't in EU either. So you end up with US companies even when you use a local processor
- that_guy_iain 4y ago
  In theory, they can't. But no one is enforcing it because there is a plan to change the law.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    No. Technically it's illegal to provide such service, not receive it. Fun fact, this very website is not GDPR compliant. I've never ever seen a cookie notice on HN, which is legally required. Of course, none of this is relevant, because AFAIK HN has no physical presence in the EU, but still, this site is not GDPR compliant, which just outlines how stupid GDPR actually is.
    - Semaphor 4y ago
      > I've never ever seen a cookie notice on HN, which is legally required. What for? The GDPR does not require consent for purely functional cookies, and the only data I see stored is my account cookie. So the existing privacy policy should cover them.
    - dgb23 4y ago
      Cookie notices are required if you for example use them to pass data to third parties. A login cookie that is just for auth is not that. It is specifically requested by the user and implies that the user's data is managed on that site and can be evicted. Same with analytics. The problem is not that you're doing analytics. It's that the user doesn't know that your doing it and that you're passing on that data to a third party.
      - Semaphor 4y ago
        It’s not just about third parties. I still need to consent to any PII you gather for your analytics, even if it’s completely first-party.
        dgb23 4y ago
        Would have assumed that anonymous logging is fine? Generating usage data? Error logs? As long as it’s not sold, private data or used to identify the user? Highly doubt that kind of gathering is a problem. If it were you could close 95% of the web.
        Semaphor 4y ago
        As I said, PII. So if your only PII is storing the IP one-way hashed and salted, keeping the salt only for a day as like (I think) Plausible does, it’s probably/possibly okay. Besides that, intent also matters. For example, we had to start logging IPs for every newsletter change, or you can log IPs in your access log for security reasons without consent. Logging the same IP into your analytics tool becomes an issue.
    - berkes 4y ago
      > I've never ever seen a cookie notice on HN, which is legally required. For clarity: it isn't always required. Only if you have third party (tracking) cookies. I don't know about HN. But its perfectly possible to have analytics, ads and other functional cookies, without pestering your users with cookie popups. Again: cookie popups and concent-banners aren't required. They are only required if you have "invasive" tracking in place. e.g. I've worked on web-apps that were tracked by a selfhosted matomo, by plausible or some other tracking, that did not have any GTM or other tag-managers, that had no ads or only ads which were served from their own domain and without any 3rd party trackers, lacked all the GAFAM-pixels, had their fonts and other assets self-hosted (or on a simple, non-tracking CDN) and so on. Non of these needed any form of banner, popup or wizard.
    - that_guy_iain 4y ago
      It's illegal for you to provide a service that isn't compliant. So if you use Stripe, therefore transfer data to a non-compliant country, you would be illegally providing a service that isn't complaint. Also, the cookie notice is not GDPR it's a separate law. And if you only use functional cookies such as login cookies no notice is required.
    - enedil 4y ago
      I don't think you are right. Right now, the only cookie present is my session cookie. This should fall under obvious reason to have a cookie (it's not a tracking cookie). The sets of required and of all cookies are identical. Therefore, a dialog like this changes nothing.
- Escapado 4y ago
  Is that how it works? I thought as long as the user gives explicit consent to that happening it's fine. Most checkouts I have seen have a checkbox you need to check before being redirected to stripe/paypal and the likes which asks for explicit consent to the privacy policy rules.
  - jon-wood 4y ago
    It's not even slightly how it works, and your interpretation is correct, so long as the customer has consented then you're fine. The issue with Google Fonts and Analytics is that the customer has very rarely consented to tracking (particularly with fonts), and in a great many cases even where there is a "I consent to tracking cookies" dialog the cookies were dropped before it was displayed.
    - smeagull 4y ago
      Sick of those stupid dialogs.
      - iso1631 4y ago
        Sick of sites tracking me
      - latexr 4y ago
        I find them to be good indicators of how bad a website/service is. The harder it is to dismiss the dialog while rejecting everything, the worse the service tends to be in other metrics. I think of those dialogs as big bright banners which advertise loud and clear how disrespectful a website is of its users. Noticing the pattern means I waste considerably less time on websites which aren’t worth it.
      - kzrdude 4y ago
        Yes, I can't believe we've created a system where those are the norm. But we also have real world cities plastered with billboards, so it's not like everything is clean, perfect and rational in our worlds.
      - 4y ago
- trollied 4y ago
  If anybody is wondering what the parent comment is referencing: https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/31/website_fine_google_fonts_gdpr/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/31/website_fine_google_f...
- PeterisP 4y ago
  One aspect of this is that data processing which is necessary to do what the customer explicitly requested is permitted (GDPR article 6.1.b). Making the payment for your purchase is such a thing and this processing is lawful, but doing analytics or tracking who viewed the site through fonts is not, and generally requires explicit opt-in consent.
deleted 4y ago
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bjackman 4y ago
I have been pondering transaction costs lately. Seems like this is an area where intervention could have massive impact: these costs are effectively a tax that incurs deadweight loss so according to prevailing economic theory if we can reduce it the whole economy should be catalysed. IIUC governments already introduce price caps for certain elements of this market but I think we could be doing more? Like mandating incumbents to implement open standards and subsidising their competitors? Dunno though I'm not very informed about the topic, just suddenly discovered recently how much of my income is just funding a fairly small number of payment providers.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  Stripe provides value-added 'premium' service which competes with merchant banking solutions offered by most EU banks, and Stripe does not have a dominant position. But in general, yes, EU does place a LOT of attention to these deadweight transaction costs, and has had large interventions - for example, if you look at the price listed in this very article, the reason why 'international cards' have 3.25% fee and 'standard EU cards' have a 1.5% fee is primarily caused by EU-imposed changes to interchange fees which get paid by the acquiring/merchant institution (including Stripe) to the issuing bank.
  - moneywoes 4y ago
    Is there a list of competitors out there?
- abm53 4y ago
  On the other hand, transaction networks clearly add massive value, so it’s very likely that net of fees (without which the network may not exist at all) these networks still add value. So it’s more a question of finding the optimal equilibrium rather than viewing fees as “deadweight”.
  - bjornsing 4y ago
    “Dead weight” might be too harsh a term, but I think “rent seeking” is spot on. And it’s generally not a good idea to let rent seekers extract value in proportion to the damage they could potentially cause.
throwaway67743 4y ago
It says something when traditional banks are basically the same price now and are almost as good in features (and many other card processors are cheaper, especially if eg you stick to a processor in the EU for EU cards) - I'm not sure why anyone would pick Stripe anymore, especially as they have just as many "hidden" costs as others (eg fraud stuff)
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  is one of the features that they're as easy to set up? on edit: actually serious question, have been away from this area for a while but thinking about making a personal project soon.
  - throwaway67743 4y ago
    For quite a while they've been trying to emulate fintech style ease, and to some degree they have made it (although most still insist on their own hosted gateways, which is fine as SAQ D compliance is a real chore) - they do things like OOB webhooks etc, like Stripe/Paypal/whoever do, so really the flow and integration is pretty much the same edit: my experience only applies to UK (which were better and cheaper way before EU) and EU banks, the US is a minefield that actually is better avoided by just paying higher fees to a popular processor rather than deal with banks who think its the 1800s)
- pancrufty 4y ago
  Having seen many of these systems myself, I doubt they’re “almost as good in features.” My European bank (one of the largest in my country) doesn’t accept passwords longer than 8 characters. Imagine how bad the rest of the systems is.
  - candiodari 4y ago
    If you're working with COBOL records then changing the number of characters of any field, or adding or removing a field is pretty much impossible. Which leads to funny questions at development time like "how many characters do we reserve in the customer record for the third child of the second wife of customer X, when they're remarried, this third child is not a child of the customer but there does exist an alimentation 'agreement' between the customer and their third wife". You must make this decision knowing that whatever your answer ... it can never be changed again. >500kb per record. And, of course, mostly it just has first and last name, address, birthdate and balance, nothing else. Makes the web look efficient.
reisse 4y ago
I don't know how Stripe can justify these pricing, except for "oh we can extract more money, let's do that!". In other (non-Western) countries pricing for local payment systems can be less than half of what Stripe charges, e. g. Alipay (one of the biggest Chinese payment services) charges about 0.55% merchant fee without per-transaction cost.
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  Why don't Stripe customers shift to Alipay? I don't know anything about the service, but that seems like a pretty straightforward win, if they're as similar as you suggest.
  - lima 4y ago
    More work to support multiple payment providers (and their respective APIs, conflict resolution procedures, fraud prevention systems...).
  - reisse 4y ago
    Because countries where both work are not completely overlapping. It'd be very interesting to compare Stripe market share in countries where there are strong competitors.
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    The key part of the parent comment was 'local payment systems' - that rate is for Alipay payments from China-issued payment instruments, it's not for accepting Visa or Mastercard. It wouldn't be enough for Stripe customers (merchants) to switch to a cheaper payment system, the actual consumers would have to do it as well.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Different regulations probably.
- puzzlingcaptcha 4y ago
  Higher costs of compliance in the EU perhaps?
Anon4Now 4y ago
Those charges don't look exorbitant. They seem to be inline with what PayPal charges.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  For comparison: PayPal normal: 2.99% + 0.39€ PayPal Microtransactions: 4.99% + 0.09€ So Stripe still has some edge vs PayPal in all but non-EU cards. Not sure if they offer a microtransaction optimized fee schedule, if not, PP is far better there.
- mihaic 4y ago
  Since these charges are from the gross, it all depends on your profit margins. If they're >50%, sure, it's not a big thing. If it's 5%, that means that 0.5% extra on Stripe eats 10% of your profit.
Laaas 4y ago
> Dispute fees (also known as chargebacks) will increase from €15 to €20. Due to costs for managing dispute evidence submissions (regardless of outcome), we'll no longer refund this fee if the customer's bank resolves the dispute in your favor. > If you or your users have an account located in an EEA country that has not adopted the Euro, here are the fixed fees of €20 in local currencies: Bulgaria: ЛВ40; Czech Republic: 550Kč; Denmark: 200kr; Hungary: 7,000Ft; Liechtenstein: 20CHF, Poland: 90zł; Romania: 100LEU, Sweden: 200kr. 200 DKK is almost 27 EUR. This seems a bit expensive considering that you don't get refunded if you're in the right anymore.
- throwaway67743 4y ago
  It makes taking cards via Stripe completely untenable as anyone can dispute a legit charge and you're still out of pocket - imagine being charged 20 EUR for a 3 eur order even if the customer actually ordered it and just felt like being a dick
  - ivan_gammel 4y ago
    You just refund 3€ order and move on. This is the reason why marketplaces implement sophisticated solutions for returns — sometimes it is cheaper to let a few customers to get their product for free than to spend ton of money on returns, refunds and legal disputes. You can always reflect this risk in your prices.
    - remus 4y ago
      > You just refund 3€ order and move on. That's fine if the customer actually asks for a refund in the first place. All the chargebacks I've handled through work (admittedly only in single digits), the customer just started a chargeback with no prior communications. It's a pretty frustrating process as we've got no issues giving refunds in most cases.
    - throwaway67743 4y ago
      My comment was specifically where the customer is being a dick, ie; not asking for a refund, or being refunded and then disputing it anyway (in which case you're now 20+3+fees down which is even worse)
petesergeant 4y ago
> premium cards [are] commercial, corporate, or business cards issued by Visa and Mastercard [and attract more expensive fees, even compared to Amex] Does anyone know more about that? Why are they more expensive? Is there a different underlying cost structure, or simply price discrimination by some intermediary? There's more information on "premium cards" here[0], but it doesn't explain the price difference or why a separate category is needed. 0: https://support.stripe.com/questions/what-s-the-difference-between-standard-and-premium-cards https://support.stripe.com/questions/what-s-the-difference-b...
- Symbiote 4y ago
  The EU regulation limiting card transaction fees does not apply to corporate cards or foreign cards. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-card-based-payments.html https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...
- thiscatis 4y ago
  Because they give more benefits (insurance, lounge access, cashback etc...) and someone has to pay for this (i.e. the merchants). For example R̶e̶v̶o̶l̶u̶t̶ ̶M̶e̶t̶a̶l̶ premium cards and corporate cards which offers benefits such as lounge access to pay-to-use lounges, travel insurance, cashback etc.. are mostly designed by the schemes in parternship with the issuing banks. Also note that mostly in the US and Europe AMEX works in another way than Visa and MasterCard. Where V and MC are in a 4 party model (Issuing Bank that gets interchange, Processor (like Stripe) that processes the payment and gets a cut, Merchant that pays the merchant discount rate (or processing fee) and the customer that got their card from their issuing bank getting some benefits) Amex mostly cuts out the issuing bank and issues the cards to the customers directly. Hence because they don't have to share the interchange with the banks they offer way better benefits on their cards (airmiles, centurion lounges, travel benefits, extensive insurance) but also at a high cost for the merchant because these are really premium cards. Some consumer banks do issue AMEX cards so they will get their interchange. In Asia there's also Amex Debit cards, I think definitely less popular in the rest of the world. Something to note, also a lot of people in Europe think Visa or MasterCard == a Credit Card, this is not true. A credit card is an actual revolving credit instrument issued to the consumer by a credit institution such as a bank that then uses Visa or MasterCard rails. A card that you get from Lloyds or HSBC when you open an account in the UK might say Visa or MasterCard but it's on a prepaid or debit programme with the scheme but using Visa and MasterCard payment rails. The interchange on these (pre-brexit) and still in Europe is capped by law. Furthermore a lot of EU, Latam and Asian countries have their local payment rails which run at way lower costs than Visa and MasterCard to the merchants (Wechat, Alipay, Giropay, Payconiq etc.. to name a few). One last thing, I do think Open Banking in the UK and Europe, especially when Variable Recurring Payments are coming will be a game changer. The banks have been lobbying to delay most of the UX improvements for the users because they just make too much money as an issuer to get interchange.
m3nu 4y ago
Together with the new payout fee this is a +46% increase for charging USD cards. 2.9% to 4.25%.
switch007 4y ago
I thought they would be benefitting from everyone else raising their prices. Isn't this double dipping? Edit: and isn't it quite likely it's easy for companies just to pass this charge straight on to customers, given the climate? Maybe that was Stripe's intention with the timing
sschueller 4y ago
In Switzerland Stripe is already 2.9% + CHF0.30 which is higher than the new rate in the EU. If you want a local solution that also can do Twint (Swiss p2p payments) without extra contracts then I would recommend you try Payrexx[1]. Per transaction fees are also less than what Stripe is charging although you have a monthly fixed fee. [1] https://www.payrexx.ch https://www.payrexx.ch
- hocuspocus 4y ago
  > In Switzerland Stripe is already 2.9% + CHF0.30 which is higher than the new rate in the EU. We're outside the EEA cap on interchange fees, that's not surprising.
- titaniumtown 4y ago
  Switzerland isn't in the EEA though? or am I mistaken
  - traceroute66 4y ago
    > Switzerland .... Everything's outrageously expensive in Switzerland, so why shouldn't Stripe be too !
  - jkaplowitz 4y ago
    You're correct. It's in EFTA and the Schengen Area, but not in the EEA or the EU.
- stanislavb 4y ago
  Thanks. I'm wondering, are you affiliated with Payrexx?
jambojumbo 4y ago
the beginning of the end of stripe. Instead of attracting more customers and building the ground for a healthy startup ecosystem, stripe chose the shortsighted 'let's just charge more'. this immediately makes other alternatives like adyen more attractive...bad move and I don't get how patrick collison who roams around here let this happen. the 2.9%+0.25 was already allowing for healthy margins, and was higher than competitors.
- moneywoes 4y ago
  Is Aden the only competitor here?
  - makestuff 4y ago
    Square is as well. I think there are several players which is good because if you design your payment systems to support multiple integrations you can switch between them without a ton of friction (source: last company switched a few times based on the terms they negotiated).
sensibar 4y ago
So what to do as a German company to avoid the 1% fee on payouts to US USD bank accounts? Does anyone know if one can add a German USD-bank account to Stripe by now? (Was not possible a year ago) Does the 1% fee also apply if the company is based in Switzerland? (strictly not the EEA) Does anyone at which MRR scale one can negotiate fees down with Stripe?
- chinathrow 4y ago
  > Does the 1% fee also apply if the company is based in Switzerland? Yes.
prepend 4y ago
It’s interesting how these fees slowly inch up. It’s a slippery slope argument or more like a glacier. But once the market stabilizes, I think there’s lots of pressure to eat these fees over time. I wonder if everyone will end up with the apple model of only getting 70% and letting some huge conglomerate fight over fees, or just vertically integrate. I’m not a fan of government regulation but this is an area where it may be worth having some digital cash mediated exchange where the transaction fees are meant to be absurdly low, like 1% or 5 cents whichever is lower. It would provide all the insurances of cash, so none, but would be a strong financial infrastructure that helps consumers and business. This has been my hope for crypto since 2009, but the fees have always been higher than visa for consumer purchases.
matips 4y ago
Interesting, I did not know that internet payments are so expensive. In Poland (UE) max interchange is 0,3%. Blue Media (Polish payment gate) cost 1,19%. 1.9%-3,25% + €0.25 looks expensive.
burdapoint 4y ago
UK/EEA businesses who are paying out in USD to a US-domiciled bank account will now incur a 1% fee, with a minimum fee of US$2.50. My business does most of it's sales in USD and pays out to a US bank account, I don't understand this fee at all. Just because they can I guess? Stripe is really becoming the new PayPal. Will definitely be exploring options to move to Adyen or continue moving more customers over to Paddle as we've found Stripe to be increasingly frustrating to deal with. Now we're looking at 3.25% + £0.20 for the card payment in the US, 0.5% for Billing to handle subscriptions, 1% to payout, 0.4% if you want invoices, 0.5% if you need to handle sales tax. Already at 5.65% + £0.20 - that's without any of the paid radar tools.
- a1371 4y ago
  I thought just the base fee was high but these rates are insane. Where I live, the taxes we pay are less than this. It's not like stripe needs this money to build roads, they are just moving digits.
CalRobert 4y ago
Well as it so happens I'm only in the first day or so of integrating Stripe in to my subscription-based side project in the EEA. What should I use instead? Molliepay?
glintik 4y ago
«Dispute fees (also known as chargebacks) will increase from €15 to €20. We’ll also no longer refund this fee if the customer’s bank resolves the dispute in your favor, due to the costs Stripe incurs for managing dispute evidence submissions (regardless of the outcome).» That’s very interesting. Stripe is so greedy and dishonest.
rr888 4y ago
Its crazy there isn't more competition. I was hoping that would be one thing cryptos would be good for. One thing I think regulators could do is force cc fees to be added to the price instead of hidden. Eg a $10 item costs $10, $10.20, $10.40 depending on which payment method you use.
- Zuiii 4y ago
  > I was hoping that would be one thing cryptos would be good for. It already is. While still not many, there are companies that will pass the savings realized from avoiding traditional payment processors fees by giving you discounts if you pay them in crypto (e.g. mullvad). > One thing I think regulators could do is force cc fees to be added to the price instead of hidden. I agree. Increasing competition by nullifying this part of merchant pgw agreements (standard in most agreements) would definitely be better than the status quo. Another option is to simply impose limits on cc fees and ban non-compliant processors but I believe your method is better. Give the customer the information and power to choose.
baby-yoda 4y ago
Assuming this is related to Stripe trying to decrease the effect of the next funding devaluation. [0] Hard to imagine they are still in a cashflow burn despite being around for so long and seemingly capturing a large marketshare of payments. Perhaps its primarily for insiders to take money off the table before an IPO lockup, with a not-so-great 6 month post IPO forecast? [0] https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/fintech-stripe-tried-to-raise-more-capital-at-a-55b-60b-valuation/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/fintech-stripe-tried-to-ra...
12907835202 4y ago
So what are the main alternatives to Stripe?
metacritic12 4y ago
Preparing for an IPO, I see.
zhuzhu 4y ago
UK too. I think I need to try other payment processor?
freedude 4y ago
I know this is in the EU, but do yourself and the businesses you love a favor. Pay with CA$H. The value you receive from local small businesses is worth the time it takes to avoid the tax on our economy.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  Cash isn't free, either. Processing cash involves trips to the bank, and it comes with the risk of theft, loss, and counterfeiting.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  I dunno, the 25 cents surcharge payment processors take on my €10+ payment isn't really worth that much of a hassle to me. Ads have encouraged me to pay by card for years. I don't know why Stripe is taking a percentage on top of the normal processing fee, I'm guessing it's to deal with percentage differences for people paying using credit cards. There are many cheaper alternatives out there if Stripe is getting too expensive.
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
> Dispute fees (also known as chargebacks) will increase from €15 to €20. We’ll also no longer refund this fee if the customer’s bank resolves the dispute in your favor, due to the costs Stripe incurs for managing dispute evidence submissions (regardless of the outcome). Is Stripe testing dispute fees for all chargebacks out in EU before rolling out in the US? 1) This is gonna be bad for NGOs 2) So now people can just DDOS an org with chargebacks to put them in the red?
- gnicholas 4y ago
  I wondered if it's a practice run for the US, although it's possible the process for "managing dispute evidence submissions" is more involved in the EU. They seem to do next to nothing in the US — just forward the docs you upload to the customer bank, I assume. I agree with 2 — this would be really bad if a business were targeted with chargebacks. There would need to be some defensive mechanism that kicks in and retroactively refunds all these fees in such cases. I also wonder if this is just a way to pump up their margins in advance of an IPO.
- zachlatta 4y ago
  We had someone try to use hundreds of stolen credit cards on our nonprofit's donation form to test them. What a nightmare! I really hope these fees don't get charged to nonprofits.
deleted 4y ago
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zhuzhu 4y ago
Stripe said: Amazon is my sugar daddy now. What do you want to do?
poxrud 4y ago
Stripe stopped being competitive when they began keeping all of the transaction fees, including a percentage of the entire transaction, when issuing refunds. A customer changed their mind... well you just lost a lot of money.
- conductr 4y ago
  I agree but to be fair, that was always an expense to them. They just took it on the chin and used it as a competitive advantage/point of differentiation and it helped them grow. Especially makes sense as they initially targeted markets where software trials were being sold.
  - ComputerGuru 4y ago
    It's not and never was a "competitive advantage." The "real" existing players all returned the fees (modulo some fixed amount).
- segmondy 4y ago
  Imagine you sold a product on the internet, you paid Fedex to ship it. Your customer decides they don't want your product anymore. You refund them their money, but then you have to refund them the shipping cost. Not just the cost to ship it to them, but they want you to handle the return for free. Yeah, that costs money. Transaction fees are not free. Stripe doesn't own the credit card network.
  - poxrud 4y ago
    No that is incorrect. The credit card network returns most of the fees. They absolutely do not keep a percentage of the full amount. The credit card network might keep $0.3, but Stripe decided to keep the full 3-4%.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Has been true of PayPal for several years now, too.
csomar 4y ago
The carding ecosystem is going down. In the last two years, I saw a surprising uptick in the number of businesses that will charge a 2-3% fee if you pay with card. This is from the US to Europe to SEA. My guess is that most commerce will start offloading this cost to customers especially as new payment methods become available (ie: wallets) Lest government impose cards monopoly and force transactions with them, I think we have reached/are close to the peak of mastercard/visa.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Iirc in the US at least the gov’t finally struck down the “must charge same as cash” requirement that the credit card companies were forcing on everyone. And inflation has given them incentive to start actually doing it - at least two restaurants here have a cash discount now.
  - dexterdog 4y ago
    So few places actually followed that rule anyway, especially every gas station.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Gas stations had a special exemption because they were totally willing to just not accept credit cards.
deleted 4y ago
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197 points by mike97 4y ago

related 6 days ago "Stripe increases fees for EU and UK-based businesses in April " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609182

TekMol 4y ago

How can Europeans use Stripe when they can't use Google Fonts and Google Analytics on the grounds that sending even a single IP packet to a server under the control of a US company violates the GDPR?

ptman 4y ago
Visa and MasterCard aren't in EU either. So you end up with US companies even when you use a local processor
that_guy_iain 4y ago
In theory, they can't. But no one is enforcing it because there is a plan to change the law.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  No. Technically it's illegal to provide such service, not receive it. Fun fact, this very website is not GDPR compliant. I've never ever seen a cookie notice on HN, which is legally required. Of course, none of this is relevant, because AFAIK HN has no physical presence in the EU, but still, this site is not GDPR compliant, which just outlines how stupid GDPR actually is.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    > I've never ever seen a cookie notice on HN, which is legally required. What for? The GDPR does not require consent for purely functional cookies, and the only data I see stored is my account cookie. So the existing privacy policy should cover them.
  - dgb23 4y ago
    Cookie notices are required if you for example use them to pass data to third parties. A login cookie that is just for auth is not that. It is specifically requested by the user and implies that the user's data is managed on that site and can be evicted. Same with analytics. The problem is not that you're doing analytics. It's that the user doesn't know that your doing it and that you're passing on that data to a third party.
    - Semaphor 4y ago
      It’s not just about third parties. I still need to consent to any PII you gather for your analytics, even if it’s completely first-party.
      - dgb23 4y ago
        Would have assumed that anonymous logging is fine? Generating usage data? Error logs? As long as it’s not sold, private data or used to identify the user? Highly doubt that kind of gathering is a problem. If it were you could close 95% of the web.
        Semaphor 4y ago
        As I said, PII. So if your only PII is storing the IP one-way hashed and salted, keeping the salt only for a day as like (I think) Plausible does, it’s probably/possibly okay. Besides that, intent also matters. For example, we had to start logging IPs for every newsletter change, or you can log IPs in your access log for security reasons without consent. Logging the same IP into your analytics tool becomes an issue.
  - berkes 4y ago
    > I've never ever seen a cookie notice on HN, which is legally required. For clarity: it isn't always required. Only if you have third party (tracking) cookies. I don't know about HN. But its perfectly possible to have analytics, ads and other functional cookies, without pestering your users with cookie popups. Again: cookie popups and concent-banners aren't required. They are only required if you have "invasive" tracking in place. e.g. I've worked on web-apps that were tracked by a selfhosted matomo, by plausible or some other tracking, that did not have any GTM or other tag-managers, that had no ads or only ads which were served from their own domain and without any 3rd party trackers, lacked all the GAFAM-pixels, had their fonts and other assets self-hosted (or on a simple, non-tracking CDN) and so on. Non of these needed any form of banner, popup or wizard.
  - that_guy_iain 4y ago
    It's illegal for you to provide a service that isn't compliant. So if you use Stripe, therefore transfer data to a non-compliant country, you would be illegally providing a service that isn't complaint. Also, the cookie notice is not GDPR it's a separate law. And if you only use functional cookies such as login cookies no notice is required.
  - enedil 4y ago
    I don't think you are right. Right now, the only cookie present is my session cookie. This should fall under obvious reason to have a cookie (it's not a tracking cookie). The sets of required and of all cookies are identical. Therefore, a dialog like this changes nothing.
Escapado 4y ago
Is that how it works? I thought as long as the user gives explicit consent to that happening it's fine. Most checkouts I have seen have a checkbox you need to check before being redirected to stripe/paypal and the likes which asks for explicit consent to the privacy policy rules.
- jon-wood 4y ago
  It's not even slightly how it works, and your interpretation is correct, so long as the customer has consented then you're fine. The issue with Google Fonts and Analytics is that the customer has very rarely consented to tracking (particularly with fonts), and in a great many cases even where there is a "I consent to tracking cookies" dialog the cookies were dropped before it was displayed.
  - smeagull 4y ago
    Sick of those stupid dialogs.
    - iso1631 4y ago
      Sick of sites tracking me
    - latexr 4y ago
      I find them to be good indicators of how bad a website/service is. The harder it is to dismiss the dialog while rejecting everything, the worse the service tends to be in other metrics. I think of those dialogs as big bright banners which advertise loud and clear how disrespectful a website is of its users. Noticing the pattern means I waste considerably less time on websites which aren’t worth it.
    - kzrdude 4y ago
      Yes, I can't believe we've created a system where those are the norm. But we also have real world cities plastered with billboards, so it's not like everything is clean, perfect and rational in our worlds.
    - 4y ago
trollied 4y ago
If anybody is wondering what the parent comment is referencing: https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/31/website_fine_google_fonts_gdpr/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/31/website_fine_google_f...
PeterisP 4y ago
One aspect of this is that data processing which is necessary to do what the customer explicitly requested is permitted (GDPR article 6.1.b). Making the payment for your purchase is such a thing and this processing is lawful, but doing analytics or tracking who viewed the site through fonts is not, and generally requires explicit opt-in consent.

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bjackman 4y ago

I have been pondering transaction costs lately. Seems like this is an area where intervention could have massive impact: these costs are effectively a tax that incurs deadweight loss so according to prevailing economic theory if we can reduce it the whole economy should be catalysed. IIUC governments already introduce price caps for certain elements of this market but I think we could be doing more? Like mandating incumbents to implement open standards and subsidising their competitors? Dunno though I'm not very informed about the topic, just suddenly discovered recently how much of my income is just funding a fairly small number of payment providers.

PeterisP 4y ago
Stripe provides value-added 'premium' service which competes with merchant banking solutions offered by most EU banks, and Stripe does not have a dominant position. But in general, yes, EU does place a LOT of attention to these deadweight transaction costs, and has had large interventions - for example, if you look at the price listed in this very article, the reason why 'international cards' have 3.25% fee and 'standard EU cards' have a 1.5% fee is primarily caused by EU-imposed changes to interchange fees which get paid by the acquiring/merchant institution (including Stripe) to the issuing bank.
- moneywoes 4y ago
  Is there a list of competitors out there?
abm53 4y ago
On the other hand, transaction networks clearly add massive value, so it’s very likely that net of fees (without which the network may not exist at all) these networks still add value. So it’s more a question of finding the optimal equilibrium rather than viewing fees as “deadweight”.
- bjornsing 4y ago
  “Dead weight” might be too harsh a term, but I think “rent seeking” is spot on. And it’s generally not a good idea to let rent seekers extract value in proportion to the damage they could potentially cause.

throwaway67743 4y ago

It says something when traditional banks are basically the same price now and are almost as good in features (and many other card processors are cheaper, especially if eg you stick to a processor in the EU for EU cards) - I'm not sure why anyone would pick Stripe anymore, especially as they have just as many "hidden" costs as others (eg fraud stuff)

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
is one of the features that they're as easy to set up? on edit: actually serious question, have been away from this area for a while but thinking about making a personal project soon.
- throwaway67743 4y ago
  For quite a while they've been trying to emulate fintech style ease, and to some degree they have made it (although most still insist on their own hosted gateways, which is fine as SAQ D compliance is a real chore) - they do things like OOB webhooks etc, like Stripe/Paypal/whoever do, so really the flow and integration is pretty much the same edit: my experience only applies to UK (which were better and cheaper way before EU) and EU banks, the US is a minefield that actually is better avoided by just paying higher fees to a popular processor rather than deal with banks who think its the 1800s)
pancrufty 4y ago
Having seen many of these systems myself, I doubt they’re “almost as good in features.” My European bank (one of the largest in my country) doesn’t accept passwords longer than 8 characters. Imagine how bad the rest of the systems is.
- candiodari 4y ago
  If you're working with COBOL records then changing the number of characters of any field, or adding or removing a field is pretty much impossible. Which leads to funny questions at development time like "how many characters do we reserve in the customer record for the third child of the second wife of customer X, when they're remarried, this third child is not a child of the customer but there does exist an alimentation 'agreement' between the customer and their third wife". You must make this decision knowing that whatever your answer ... it can never be changed again. >500kb per record. And, of course, mostly it just has first and last name, address, birthdate and balance, nothing else. Makes the web look efficient.

reisse 4y ago

I don't know how Stripe can justify these pricing, except for "oh we can extract more money, let's do that!". In other (non-Western) countries pricing for local payment systems can be less than half of what Stripe charges, e. g. Alipay (one of the biggest Chinese payment services) charges about 0.55% merchant fee without per-transaction cost.

QuarterReptile 4y ago
Why don't Stripe customers shift to Alipay? I don't know anything about the service, but that seems like a pretty straightforward win, if they're as similar as you suggest.
- lima 4y ago
  More work to support multiple payment providers (and their respective APIs, conflict resolution procedures, fraud prevention systems...).
- reisse 4y ago
  Because countries where both work are not completely overlapping. It'd be very interesting to compare Stripe market share in countries where there are strong competitors.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  The key part of the parent comment was 'local payment systems' - that rate is for Alipay payments from China-issued payment instruments, it's not for accepting Visa or Mastercard. It wouldn't be enough for Stripe customers (merchants) to switch to a cheaper payment system, the actual consumers would have to do it as well.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Different regulations probably.
puzzlingcaptcha 4y ago
Higher costs of compliance in the EU perhaps?

Anon4Now 4y ago

Those charges don't look exorbitant. They seem to be inline with what PayPal charges.

Semaphor 4y ago
For comparison: PayPal normal: 2.99% + 0.39€ PayPal Microtransactions: 4.99% + 0.09€ So Stripe still has some edge vs PayPal in all but non-EU cards. Not sure if they offer a microtransaction optimized fee schedule, if not, PP is far better there.
mihaic 4y ago
Since these charges are from the gross, it all depends on your profit margins. If they're >50%, sure, it's not a big thing. If it's 5%, that means that 0.5% extra on Stripe eats 10% of your profit.

Laaas 4y ago

> Dispute fees (also known as chargebacks) will increase from €15 to €20. Due to costs for managing dispute evidence submissions (regardless of outcome), we'll no longer refund this fee if the customer's bank resolves the dispute in your favor. > If you or your users have an account located in an EEA country that has not adopted the Euro, here are the fixed fees of €20 in local currencies: Bulgaria: ЛВ40; Czech Republic: 550Kč; Denmark: 200kr; Hungary: 7,000Ft; Liechtenstein: 20CHF, Poland: 90zł; Romania: 100LEU, Sweden: 200kr. 200 DKK is almost 27 EUR. This seems a bit expensive considering that you don't get refunded if you're in the right anymore.

throwaway67743 4y ago
It makes taking cards via Stripe completely untenable as anyone can dispute a legit charge and you're still out of pocket - imagine being charged 20 EUR for a 3 eur order even if the customer actually ordered it and just felt like being a dick
- ivan_gammel 4y ago
  You just refund 3€ order and move on. This is the reason why marketplaces implement sophisticated solutions for returns — sometimes it is cheaper to let a few customers to get their product for free than to spend ton of money on returns, refunds and legal disputes. You can always reflect this risk in your prices.
  - remus 4y ago
    > You just refund 3€ order and move on. That's fine if the customer actually asks for a refund in the first place. All the chargebacks I've handled through work (admittedly only in single digits), the customer just started a chargeback with no prior communications. It's a pretty frustrating process as we've got no issues giving refunds in most cases.
  - throwaway67743 4y ago
    My comment was specifically where the customer is being a dick, ie; not asking for a refund, or being refunded and then disputing it anyway (in which case you're now 20+3+fees down which is even worse)

petesergeant 4y ago

> premium cards [are] commercial, corporate, or business cards issued by Visa and Mastercard [and attract more expensive fees, even compared to Amex] Does anyone know more about that? Why are they more expensive? Is there a different underlying cost structure, or simply price discrimination by some intermediary? There's more information on "premium cards" here[0], but it doesn't explain the price difference or why a separate category is needed. 0: https://support.stripe.com/questions/what-s-the-difference-between-standard-and-premium-cards https://support.stripe.com/questions/what-s-the-difference-b...

Symbiote 4y ago
The EU regulation limiting card transaction fees does not apply to corporate cards or foreign cards. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-card-based-payments.html https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...
thiscatis 4y ago
Because they give more benefits (insurance, lounge access, cashback etc...) and someone has to pay for this (i.e. the merchants). For example R̶e̶v̶o̶l̶u̶t̶ ̶M̶e̶t̶a̶l̶ premium cards and corporate cards which offers benefits such as lounge access to pay-to-use lounges, travel insurance, cashback etc.. are mostly designed by the schemes in parternship with the issuing banks. Also note that mostly in the US and Europe AMEX works in another way than Visa and MasterCard. Where V and MC are in a 4 party model (Issuing Bank that gets interchange, Processor (like Stripe) that processes the payment and gets a cut, Merchant that pays the merchant discount rate (or processing fee) and the customer that got their card from their issuing bank getting some benefits) Amex mostly cuts out the issuing bank and issues the cards to the customers directly. Hence because they don't have to share the interchange with the banks they offer way better benefits on their cards (airmiles, centurion lounges, travel benefits, extensive insurance) but also at a high cost for the merchant because these are really premium cards. Some consumer banks do issue AMEX cards so they will get their interchange. In Asia there's also Amex Debit cards, I think definitely less popular in the rest of the world. Something to note, also a lot of people in Europe think Visa or MasterCard == a Credit Card, this is not true. A credit card is an actual revolving credit instrument issued to the consumer by a credit institution such as a bank that then uses Visa or MasterCard rails. A card that you get from Lloyds or HSBC when you open an account in the UK might say Visa or MasterCard but it's on a prepaid or debit programme with the scheme but using Visa and MasterCard payment rails. The interchange on these (pre-brexit) and still in Europe is capped by law. Furthermore a lot of EU, Latam and Asian countries have their local payment rails which run at way lower costs than Visa and MasterCard to the merchants (Wechat, Alipay, Giropay, Payconiq etc.. to name a few). One last thing, I do think Open Banking in the UK and Europe, especially when Variable Recurring Payments are coming will be a game changer. The banks have been lobbying to delay most of the UX improvements for the users because they just make too much money as an issuer to get interchange.

m3nu 4y ago

Together with the new payout fee this is a +46% increase for charging USD cards. 2.9% to 4.25%.

switch007 4y ago

I thought they would be benefitting from everyone else raising their prices. Isn't this double dipping? Edit: and isn't it quite likely it's easy for companies just to pass this charge straight on to customers, given the climate? Maybe that was Stripe's intention with the timing

sschueller 4y ago

In Switzerland Stripe is already 2.9% + CHF0.30 which is higher than the new rate in the EU. If you want a local solution that also can do Twint (Swiss p2p payments) without extra contracts then I would recommend you try Payrexx[1]. Per transaction fees are also less than what Stripe is charging although you have a monthly fixed fee. [1] https://www.payrexx.ch https://www.payrexx.ch

hocuspocus 4y ago
> In Switzerland Stripe is already 2.9% + CHF0.30 which is higher than the new rate in the EU. We're outside the EEA cap on interchange fees, that's not surprising.
titaniumtown 4y ago
Switzerland isn't in the EEA though? or am I mistaken
- traceroute66 4y ago
  > Switzerland .... Everything's outrageously expensive in Switzerland, so why shouldn't Stripe be too !
- jkaplowitz 4y ago
  You're correct. It's in EFTA and the Schengen Area, but not in the EEA or the EU.
stanislavb 4y ago
Thanks. I'm wondering, are you affiliated with Payrexx?

jambojumbo 4y ago

the beginning of the end of stripe. Instead of attracting more customers and building the ground for a healthy startup ecosystem, stripe chose the shortsighted 'let's just charge more'. this immediately makes other alternatives like adyen more attractive...bad move and I don't get how patrick collison who roams around here let this happen. the 2.9%+0.25 was already allowing for healthy margins, and was higher than competitors.

moneywoes 4y ago
Is Aden the only competitor here?
- makestuff 4y ago
  Square is as well. I think there are several players which is good because if you design your payment systems to support multiple integrations you can switch between them without a ton of friction (source: last company switched a few times based on the terms they negotiated).

sensibar 4y ago

So what to do as a German company to avoid the 1% fee on payouts to US USD bank accounts? Does anyone know if one can add a German USD-bank account to Stripe by now? (Was not possible a year ago) Does the 1% fee also apply if the company is based in Switzerland? (strictly not the EEA) Does anyone at which MRR scale one can negotiate fees down with Stripe?

chinathrow 4y ago
> Does the 1% fee also apply if the company is based in Switzerland? Yes.

prepend 4y ago

It’s interesting how these fees slowly inch up. It’s a slippery slope argument or more like a glacier. But once the market stabilizes, I think there’s lots of pressure to eat these fees over time. I wonder if everyone will end up with the apple model of only getting 70% and letting some huge conglomerate fight over fees, or just vertically integrate. I’m not a fan of government regulation but this is an area where it may be worth having some digital cash mediated exchange where the transaction fees are meant to be absurdly low, like 1% or 5 cents whichever is lower. It would provide all the insurances of cash, so none, but would be a strong financial infrastructure that helps consumers and business. This has been my hope for crypto since 2009, but the fees have always been higher than visa for consumer purchases.

matips 4y ago

Interesting, I did not know that internet payments are so expensive. In Poland (UE) max interchange is 0,3%. Blue Media (Polish payment gate) cost 1,19%. 1.9%-3,25% + €0.25 looks expensive.

burdapoint 4y ago

UK/EEA businesses who are paying out in USD to a US-domiciled bank account will now incur a 1% fee, with a minimum fee of US$2.50. My business does most of it's sales in USD and pays out to a US bank account, I don't understand this fee at all. Just because they can I guess? Stripe is really becoming the new PayPal. Will definitely be exploring options to move to Adyen or continue moving more customers over to Paddle as we've found Stripe to be increasingly frustrating to deal with. Now we're looking at 3.25% + £0.20 for the card payment in the US, 0.5% for Billing to handle subscriptions, 1% to payout, 0.4% if you want invoices, 0.5% if you need to handle sales tax. Already at 5.65% + £0.20 - that's without any of the paid radar tools.

a1371 4y ago
I thought just the base fee was high but these rates are insane. Where I live, the taxes we pay are less than this. It's not like stripe needs this money to build roads, they are just moving digits.

CalRobert 4y ago

Well as it so happens I'm only in the first day or so of integrating Stripe in to my subscription-based side project in the EEA. What should I use instead? Molliepay?

glintik 4y ago

«Dispute fees (also known as chargebacks) will increase from €15 to €20. We’ll also no longer refund this fee if the customer’s bank resolves the dispute in your favor, due to the costs Stripe incurs for managing dispute evidence submissions (regardless of the outcome).» That’s very interesting. Stripe is so greedy and dishonest.

rr888 4y ago

Its crazy there isn't more competition. I was hoping that would be one thing cryptos would be good for. One thing I think regulators could do is force cc fees to be added to the price instead of hidden. Eg a $10 item costs $10, $10.20, $10.40 depending on which payment method you use.

Zuiii 4y ago
> I was hoping that would be one thing cryptos would be good for. It already is. While still not many, there are companies that will pass the savings realized from avoiding traditional payment processors fees by giving you discounts if you pay them in crypto (e.g. mullvad). > One thing I think regulators could do is force cc fees to be added to the price instead of hidden. I agree. Increasing competition by nullifying this part of merchant pgw agreements (standard in most agreements) would definitely be better than the status quo. Another option is to simply impose limits on cc fees and ban non-compliant processors but I believe your method is better. Give the customer the information and power to choose.

baby-yoda 4y ago

Assuming this is related to Stripe trying to decrease the effect of the next funding devaluation. [0] Hard to imagine they are still in a cashflow burn despite being around for so long and seemingly capturing a large marketshare of payments. Perhaps its primarily for insiders to take money off the table before an IPO lockup, with a not-so-great 6 month post IPO forecast? [0] https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/fintech-stripe-tried-to-raise-more-capital-at-a-55b-60b-valuation/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/fintech-stripe-tried-to-ra...

12907835202 4y ago

So what are the main alternatives to Stripe?

metacritic12 4y ago

Preparing for an IPO, I see.

zhuzhu 4y ago

UK too. I think I need to try other payment processor?

freedude 4y ago

I know this is in the EU, but do yourself and the businesses you love a favor. Pay with CA$H. The value you receive from local small businesses is worth the time it takes to avoid the tax on our economy.

dehrmann 4y ago
Cash isn't free, either. Processing cash involves trips to the bank, and it comes with the risk of theft, loss, and counterfeiting.
jeroenhd 4y ago
I dunno, the 25 cents surcharge payment processors take on my €10+ payment isn't really worth that much of a hassle to me. Ads have encouraged me to pay by card for years. I don't know why Stripe is taking a percentage on top of the normal processing fee, I'm guessing it's to deal with percentage differences for people paying using credit cards. There are many cheaper alternatives out there if Stripe is getting too expensive.

kylehotchkiss 4y ago

> Dispute fees (also known as chargebacks) will increase from €15 to €20. We’ll also no longer refund this fee if the customer’s bank resolves the dispute in your favor, due to the costs Stripe incurs for managing dispute evidence submissions (regardless of the outcome). Is Stripe testing dispute fees for all chargebacks out in EU before rolling out in the US? 1) This is gonna be bad for NGOs 2) So now people can just DDOS an org with chargebacks to put them in the red?

gnicholas 4y ago
I wondered if it's a practice run for the US, although it's possible the process for "managing dispute evidence submissions" is more involved in the EU. They seem to do next to nothing in the US — just forward the docs you upload to the customer bank, I assume. I agree with 2 — this would be really bad if a business were targeted with chargebacks. There would need to be some defensive mechanism that kicks in and retroactively refunds all these fees in such cases. I also wonder if this is just a way to pump up their margins in advance of an IPO.
zachlatta 4y ago
We had someone try to use hundreds of stolen credit cards on our nonprofit's donation form to test them. What a nightmare! I really hope these fees don't get charged to nonprofits.

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zhuzhu 4y ago

Stripe said: Amazon is my sugar daddy now. What do you want to do?

poxrud 4y ago

Stripe stopped being competitive when they began keeping all of the transaction fees, including a percentage of the entire transaction, when issuing refunds. A customer changed their mind... well you just lost a lot of money.

conductr 4y ago
I agree but to be fair, that was always an expense to them. They just took it on the chin and used it as a competitive advantage/point of differentiation and it helped them grow. Especially makes sense as they initially targeted markets where software trials were being sold.
- ComputerGuru 4y ago
  It's not and never was a "competitive advantage." The "real" existing players all returned the fees (modulo some fixed amount).
segmondy 4y ago
Imagine you sold a product on the internet, you paid Fedex to ship it. Your customer decides they don't want your product anymore. You refund them their money, but then you have to refund them the shipping cost. Not just the cost to ship it to them, but they want you to handle the return for free. Yeah, that costs money. Transaction fees are not free. Stripe doesn't own the credit card network.
- poxrud 4y ago
  No that is incorrect. The credit card network returns most of the fees. They absolutely do not keep a percentage of the full amount. The credit card network might keep $0.3, but Stripe decided to keep the full 3-4%.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Has been true of PayPal for several years now, too.

csomar 4y ago

The carding ecosystem is going down. In the last two years, I saw a surprising uptick in the number of businesses that will charge a 2-3% fee if you pay with card. This is from the US to Europe to SEA. My guess is that most commerce will start offloading this cost to customers especially as new payment methods become available (ie: wallets) Lest government impose cards monopoly and force transactions with them, I think we have reached/are close to the peak of mastercard/visa.

bombcar 4y ago
Iirc in the US at least the gov’t finally struck down the “must charge same as cash” requirement that the credit card companies were forcing on everyone. And inflation has given them incentive to start actually doing it - at least two restaurants here have a cash discount now.
- dexterdog 4y ago
  So few places actually followed that rule anyway, especially every gas station.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Gas stations had a special exemption because they were totally willing to just not accept credit cards.

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