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Ask HN: Is it still safe to use Stripe?

40 points by lab ↗ HN
I heard a lot of shaky news over the past year from Stripe's customers: [0], [1], [2]

Now there's news about the whole Stripe raising more money [3], [4], [5], eyeing an exit within 12 months.

What does this mean for Stripe customers now and 12 months from now?

I would like my payment infra to be stable, boring, and profitable/sustainable. But the news is giving me mixed impressions...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32261868

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32854528

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34233011

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/technology/stripe-thrive-funding.html

[4] https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/fintech-stripe-tried-to-raise-more-capital-at-a-55b-60b-valuation/

[5] https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/26/fintech-stripe-eyes-an-exit/

22 comments

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tobinfekkes
I use to love working with Stripe, but it turned from being an asset to a liability. Far too risky to have my payments infra stuck behind a company that will arbitrarily cut you off with no support, or worse, actively use "terms" and "our policy" to not support you

I moved all my clients off Stripe as a precautionary measure, and now in the process of moving our last Stripe account with 100+ Stripe Connect accounts away. It eventually just got to be comical how infuriating their ability to dodge responsibility became, or even just simply being helpful; i.e. "we can't unblock those payments or that account, it's just our policy because x,y, and z", or "we can't tell you what your transaction threshold is, or where you are at in it, and we can't increase it, or let you check via the API". IF YOU CAN'T DO ANY OF THAT FOR ME, WHY AM I PAYING YOU AND WHO DID YOU BUILD YOUR SYSTEM FOR? Answer: not you or me.

Stripe is a great way to get something quick and dirty off the ground, but you better have a plan or timeline from day one for replacing it.

Treat it like eating McDonalds. It's fine as a one-off to get you through a hard time, but as soon as you depend on it, you'll be in a world of hurt with no one else to blame.

kurtbuilds
What did you migrate your clients to?
satvikpendem
Yes, also interested to hear alternatives to Stripe Connect in particular, as someone looking to make a marketplace type product.
theyknowitsxmas
I identified businesses complaining on their Reddit and Discord over the years as precaution. Mostly dropshippers, malware markets, selling brand name clothes without approval. Never mind the guy with a $100,000 fine from MasterCard. All prohibited. If you're a prohib, don't use Stripe. They're an aggregator, so anyone poisoning the pool (their merchant account) with risk will be banned.

You want a merchant account from a bank + what ever processor they offer.

rvz
> What does this mean for Stripe customers now and 12 months from now?

It means that it will become just like PayPal. I would not sit on one payment gateway in the long run.

gvkhna
Ding ding ding. Stripe becomes PayPal. New stripe is born, cycle repeats.

As companies age and become more mature, they tend to become more risk-averse. They also become slower moving. The exact opposite of a startup. And why startups can and have beat incumbents.

iuvcaw
Why would raising another round or going public cause concern?
aliswe
I am guessing this might cause increases in fees
jpoesen
New money comes with new strings attached. The more the founders are diluted, the less they have a say in things.
jaundicedave
why would raising money imply dilution? shares could easily come from existing employees.
chowchowchow
I think raising money does imply dilution. How can the company raise money from employee share sales?
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halotrope
Just onboarded an app and had to go trough a fairly arbitrary verification process for weeks. Does not feel safe at all specially if you use their subscription. Are there good alternatives for SaaS payments?
gorbypark
I’m a one man dev shop but in an app I’m developing I decided to implement payments with two (or more!) processors with the ability to set a weight for each. It hasn’t launched yet but the current plan is to have about 90% or so of transactions flow through Stripe with the other 10% being a “hot backup”, more or less. If anything happens, I can just flip over to the other processor. I decided to actually have the second processor take a small amount of payments so there is less of a risk of it not working seamlessly in the event of a crisis with Stripe. It’s going to cost slightly more in transaction fees but I think it’s worth it.
hakfoo
Some gateways offer a more decoupled concept-- you can have one API account, but set it up to route the transactions to different processor accounts based either on predefined rules or an API field during the individual transaction. The nice thing about this is that you can still use the gateway's client-side stuff (i. e. the "embedded form" that reduces your PCI compliance scope) and a single API for all transactions.

I'd think that would mitigate most of the risk, because then the gateway usually is a relatively neutral middleman-- the processors are more in contact with the actual money and more likely to be the true source of arbitrary and weird behaviour, so I can concur it makes sense to be less dependent on them.

gorbypark
Yeah, I decided to more or less implement this myself so I could use Stripe as the main provider still.
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remus
Just a single user, but I've found stripe to be stable and boring. Just how I like it!