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Ask HN: What are some low cost payment processing alternatives to Stripe?

155 points by NavyG ↗ HN
I'm looking to process ~20k transactions a month with an average ticket size of $15 per transaction. Would ISOs(Independent sales organizations) with sponsor banks be good options to consider?

116 comments

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tmikaeld
The most low-cost I know of with widest reach (most countries) is https://www.adyen.com/pricing

Because you can choose which processor you want to use and there are many low-cost ones, including some inter-bank ones with fixed cost (no %)

Most shops like WooCommerce and Shopify have ready-to-use plugins for it.

(I'm not affiliated, but i build e-commerce for brands)

CMCDragonkai
They may reject you for no reason though, well no given reason.
tmikaeld
That applies to any and all payment processors..
hiyer
On a related note, you can look at hyperswitch [1], which is an open-source payment orchestrator that supports multiple payment processors. You can self-host it or they have a hosted version as well.

1. https://github.com/juspay/hyperswitch

(not affiliated with this project in any way)

sramam
Do you use this?

I can't seem to figure what their pricing strategy is or who's running it.

> Free-tier > Free-tier for startups. Lowest Price for others.

Nars088
Hyperswitch is free to use for the first 10k transactions of the month. After that it costs $0.04 per transaction. It is a payment switch that comes pre integrated with major processors. So as a merchant your business relationship with processors like Stripe or Adyen remains the same (I'm affiliated with this product)
NavyG
Adyen is a good option, however they have a monthly fixed fee ($120) and looks like they might not onboard small merchants with less than $50M ARR
lnalx
Are you sure about the fixed fee? Their website says it isn't.

> We do not have monthly fees, set-up fees, integration fees or closure fees. We do have a minimum invoice depending on industry or business model. Please speak to a member of our sales team for more details.

louis-lau
The minimum invoice is $120. Though it seems they can waive that if they like you during sales. It's all a little vague which I honestly despise.
tmikaeld
The candy-shop on my street use Adyen, I'd be very surprised if they had $50M ARR
gndk
I talked to them in December 2022 and they now require a minimum of €5m/year to even consider you. The reason given was that underwriting/KYC for such small accounts is not worth it anymore. So not really an option for small businesses unfortunately. The Adyen sales rep I talked to recommended https://www.mollie.com.
pg_1234
I found GoCardless to be better and cheaper than Stripe.

Not sure what their minimum viable throughput is though ...

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hknmtt
Every country has couple, if not dozens, of payment processors. Most of them will support foreign customers as well. So you have hundreds and thousands of options here. Bottom line will be that they are all essentially the same when it comes to functionality and pricing because they are the middlemen between you and visa/mastercard/... and not much else. So there is very little variety possible in this little space. It will mostly come down to how "pretty" their gateway is(unless you are doing direct integration without redirection), how responsive their support team is and how they bill you and provide transaction information. Again, not much variety. So pick the cheapest one and be done with it.
rahkiin
Outside of the US this is not true at all. There are plenty of ways to transfer money without touching the CC networks but instead use interbank communications. iDeal, Klarna, SEPA: all fixed pricing instead of percentage based fees. It depends on where you want to provide your services.
beardyw
> Outside of the US this is not true at all

I think you meant "not entirely true". Yes, there are other options.

rpodraza
In Poland barely anyone uses cards for online payments. There are couple of different options: one-time automatic transfers that support major banks, BLIK (payment via one-time code), etc.
Roark66
Exactly, and it works well. Unfortunately as a customer you don't have the level of protection with these services a CC or a specialised top up "virtual" debit card has. Charge backs etc. It's one of the reasons why these alternative payment methods are a lot less risky to process and therefore cheaper for the merchants.

So it makes me wonder why global companies like Google are so "credit card" centric. For example. You can attach a debit card as a payment mechanism for Google cloud services, but it can't be a top up one... Why? It is very annoying I have to open an extra account with overdraft block just to maintain some control on the spending if they suddenly decide to charge a wrong amount.

withinboredom
> Unfortunately as a customer you don't have the level of protection with these services a CC or a specialised top up "virtual" debit card has.

Generally, you'd have to have your bank account hacked to have a reason to reverse a charge on these types of systems. It happens, but very, very rarely and the banks have a lot of reasons to make sure it doesn't happen. That or you gave money to a scammer and that's your own fault (but they'll still help you).

This is why the fees are much, much lower. Often these systems even verify that you actually have the money and can transfer the amount to your business bank account on the same day. You can't do that with credit cards.

packagethieves
> That or you gave money to a scammer and that's your own fault (but they'll still help you).

Is it really that merchant-friendly / anti-consumer? I have used chargebacks when merchants fail to deliver as promised, even when most people wouldn’t call them “some scammer”.

For instance recently a package was shipped that didn’t include one of many items. I asked for a refund, they claimed it was in the package. No worries, I’ll just do a chargeback.

withinboredom
So you’re one of those people. I refuse to do business with people who do chargebacks without reason. I wish there was a list of them.
carlosjobim
You perfectly illustrated why credit cards are better for customers. There is fraud protection, which you don't have with other payment methods.

Bank transfers and other direct methods are only an advantage for the seller and gives no advantage to the customer. That's why businesses that don't accept credit cards lose customers.

> You can't do that with credit cards.

Yes, you can. Stripe has same-day payouts, as do many more.

withinboredom
Hmm. I think we are talking past each other. There isn’t a need for fraud protection because people can’t get access to your bank account. Bank accounts where I am aren’t like they are in the US.

Every time I login I have to verify my identity (or use faceid on my phone). The bank account is basically unhackable without my physical presence.

Thus using something like ideal, there’s no need for fraud protection because it makes damn sure it’s you and asks like 4 times that you are sure.

carlosjobim
Yes, we're talking past each other. What credit card fraud protection means is that if you purchased something and didn't receive your product, or didn't receive the product as specified, you will get your money back from the credit card company. If you purchase something with a bank transfer and you didn't receive the product you can call the bank, but they won't give you your money back. With credit cards you have some protection against being scammed.
withinboredom
Ah. That makes sense. Yeah, bank transfers aren’t really protected from that use case. Usually you just contact the merchant and have them refund you. I’ve never used a chargeback.
trimethylpurine
I'm always surprised by the diminutive and inaccurate view of the US that I see on HN. This is, of course, EXACTLY the same in the US and elsewhere. The OP was asking specifically about CC processing.
rahkiin
OP said _payment processing_, and then parent said

> they are all essentially the same when it comes to functionality and pricing because they are the middlemen between you and visa/mastercard/... and not much else

Which is false, as there are many payment providers using fixed cost models and not touching the CC networks. And in a lot of countries this is the main method of online payments instead of credit cards.

I would not say it is exactly the same as in the US.

trimethylpurine
I'd be interested to see some stats on that. I wouldn't think that alternative to CC is the primary form of online transactions in any country, unless you're excluding debit cards from that category. At least not yet. And, just like everywhere else, there are countless payment methods that are not run through Visa/Mastercard in the US. Zelle, ACH, Direct transfer, etc.
jorams
Here[1]'s an infographic for a report on the Dutch market for Q1 of this year. See the bottom right. iDEAL is by far the biggest payment method.

[1]: https://www.thuiswinkel.org/media/oyhhmgvy/infographic_thuis...

trimethylpurine
The Ideal platform is essentially an agreement between banks to process payments from a trusted, third party processor, who collects fees from the seller.

What I just described is also what Visa and Mastercard are.

While the graphic might be nice marketing for Ideal, I wouldn't categorize it as separate from debit/credit card.

NavyG
Exactly my concern, I'm basically looking to get a service provider that is as close to card networks or banks as possible. Not looking at which one is "pretty" at all. Willing to work with that provider to integrate them with my website
hknmtt
most banks offer their own gateways so that is as close to the "wire" as you can get.
rmdes
Mollie - https://www.mollie.com/
buf
This is the first I've heard of it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

Great for those starting in Europe, it seems. And PayPal!!!!

Version467
I've had a bad experience with them (though that was a few years ago). Back then they manually reviewed each website before enabling payment processing (which is fine), but then just didn't get back to us. We tried messaging them for a status update, but only got a generic answer that it'd take another couple days. After three or four weeks and another back and forth we just gave up.

As I said, this was a couple years ago, so things might be very different now (we might've been an outlier even back then), but it left a bad taste, because the customer service was so unhelpful, even though they were much smaller than stripe.

michelb
I have had good experiences with them for the past ±10 years.
gndk
We currently use them as our main PSP. It's ok.

Unfortunately they seem to have stopped working on their main payment product for years and it stagnated.

I asked a sales rep years ago if they have plans to integrate Amazon Pay. He said yes. It is still not available. They have Apple Pay, but not Google Pay. After PayPal, these wallets are the most important payment methods in e-commerce here, yet they don't seem to know this and/or refuse to add them for whatever reason.

Instead they now offer loans that are repaid with a percentage of sales. The conditions are horrible. Probably related to selling a good amount of shares to Blackstone PE in 2021.

So the enshittification has started. I guess they are working towards an IPO, so price hikes will probably come, too. Hope they prove me wrong and turn it around.

stephenr
Does any gateway provide Amazon Pay besides going straight to Amazon?
gndk
Adyen does. I previously used a smaller German company, Payone, they did too.
decide1000
This is not the experience I have with Mollie. Their API and payment integrations with the subscriptions API is pretty good. Very stable, fast to integrate and all European payment methods we need.
neom
I've heard braintree is pretty good these days, and iirc they're actually slightly cheaper than Stripe.

https://www.braintreepayments.com/products/braintree-direct

buf
I've been using braintree for 9 years on one of my projects, and while it does "work", there doesn't seem to be much innovation happening, sadly.

I use them for their direct integration with paypal, who owns them

cj
What features are missing?

In contrast, I almost feel like Stripe is innovating too much. I wish they stopped product development, no more redesigns, no more API breaking changes, it already "just works" so why rewrite and "improve" everything endlessly.

davetron5000
Their engineers need promotions so how else can they get them?
smca
Braintree is a good chunk more expensive than Stripe for OP's needs if they're in the US.

Based on the info they shared:

• Braintree: 2.59% + $0.49

> Braintree fees: $17,570 cost for 20K txns/month ($15 AOV)

• Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30

> Stripe fees: $14,700 cost for 20K txns/month ($15 AOV)

So Stripe is around 16% cheaper for their use case on standard pricing alone.

dubcanada
Though I suppose that 16% does depend on what the average transaction fee is. If you are higher then $15 it does scale towards Braintree being cheaper.
smca
For sure, although I based it on OP's stated transaction value + volume ("20k transactions a month with an average ticket size of $15 per transaction").

If you're doing ~$300K/month, it’s likely you would've already spoken to our sales team and we would work out custom pricing for your business.

burpee
I've used Braintree extensively with their subscriptions, and would not recommend using them.

Their documentation is spotty, they don't inform customers about required changes to an implementation, and most importantly their failed transaction rate is much much higher than other processors I've worked with.

NavyG
Has anyone used Helcim or Stax? These processors pricing seems to be around $0.15 per transaction. If this is true why don't so many people use it?
notwhereyouare
I’ve used stax in the past. It is cheaper than stripe, but you’re also paying a monthly fee. In our case, it was $120 a month for a physical terminal in the office. I don’t know what the differences are for API transactions. It wasn’t something we were doing.

We are now with mxmerchant and they are okay? I’ve never seen a credit card merchant go down and not take transactions, but in the 1.5 years we’ve used them, they’ve gone down twice.

But we need to use them because they are the only processor the software uses and we need to now take cards through their system

NavyG
Interesting, have you also tried online payments (card not present) with them? If so how is the reliability in that case?
notwhereyouare
We didn’t. I spent like 30 minutes investigating and then we didn’t go that route with them.

Nothing against them, just went a different route

hmert
Hello, (I’m co-founder of MonoPayments, white label payment platform for fintechs.)

If you want to pay less, you have to use local processors with local currencies. This would be a complex operation.

1. Establish a company at that jurisdiction 2. Make agreements with processors, it could be banks or wallet providers. 3. You need a treasurer (or CFO) 4. Foreign Exchange rates will be a concern after a while.

NavyG
I currently operate only in US and I am willing to put in the effort for integration, PCI compliance etc. Do you have any recommendations for the local processors you mentioned?
hmert
For US, I recommend Paypal. If your payment gateway supports paypal it will cover 80% of transactions.
tomnipotent
Not at your volume. It would probably cost you more to switch than you'd save, considering the time and training investment involved.

Assuming $250k per year at $15/transaction gives ~16,666 transactions a year. With base Stripe pricing, that means you're paying $5k for the $0.30 per transaction fee and another $7.2k for the 2.9% interchange plus fee. So $12.2k in fees per $250k processed, or 4.9% of processed dollars. Adyen is probably going to be about the same given your volume.

It's important to know that Stripe charges the same fee even though the fee for processing American Express is different from Visa, which is different from Discover and all are more expensive than debit cards. If your business skews highly towards American Express, than Stripe is actually giving you the best rate you could hope for. If you're volume skews debit cards, than Stripe is giving you the worst rate.

flangola7
Why is American Express so expensive?
navigate8310
In my country, they offer some of the best rewards rates and customer care services. Their no-frills chargeback protections and airport lounge network are somewhat better than what I have with my Visa card. However, Amex lacks offline acceptance and can be quite challenging to meet the "milestones" for annual fee waiver.
tomnipotent
It's how they pay for their best-in-class rewards and offerings. This means card holders are more likely to make big purchases on an Amex than other cards, and why many small ma n' pa shops don't accept them.
jesterson
Their perks for cardholders are substantially better than VISA/MC in most cases
projektfu
Other answers are good but keep in mind that other brands can be pretty expensive. If you are B2B but most of your business is using a credit card, Visa and Mastercard business card and government purchase card transactions are more costly than American Express.

I don't think Stripe loses any money on a transaction. All interchange rates are less than 2.99%, but some are very close. For very low volume/low ticket price, stripe is a pretty good deal. But if high volume, there's bound to be a better option that pays off considerably the sooner you implement it.

Now, if you can get most of your customers using debit cards or ACH-type transactions, you can really achieve a low cost if you use a processor with interchange-based pricing.

Why support American Express? Their members tend to be better customers in my experience, and they appreciate that you support their preference.

scarab92
In my experience people with American Express also carry a Visa or Mastercard, so there’s limited downside to refusing to accept it.

Crazy that we live in a world where 3% is “a good deal”. In Europe the fees are capped at 0.15%, and I’m sure even that is well above the true costs of payment processing. Interchange fees are such a clear case of market failure that I’m surprised they haven’t been regulated.

projektfu
I agree, and the rewards system gives consumers a false idea that they are getting a net benefit. The new game is charging a 3.99% service charge to the customer to pay with card, which takes the pressure off the vendor and allows the processor to take a larger cut. In some places, like tourist traps, you don't have any other options. The ATM in town might charge $3.99 withdrawal fees as well.

I was told by an insider that the reason why emv+pin is not used in the US is because Visa/MC actually profit from fraud. If fraud were cut considerably, you could argue that the network is only providing 5-10¢ of value per transaction, and cut their rates with legislation.

If we went to a system like PIX in Brazil, and dropped rewards, we could do away with most of the industry. People would only use credit cards if they needed credit.

Maybe we'll see some legislation in the future.

riadsila
Not sure if this previous thread from years ago will be of any use, sharing it just in case any of the alternatives are still relevant or could be of use for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22596082

Mentions Adyen, Braintree, and Paddle

rayquazatime
Paddle now looks super expensive, with like 5% + $0.5 what is happening?
rayquazatime
Okay this includes fraud and tax as well. Any idea how paddle's Fraud management compares with Stripe's radar?
khemdhaliwal
Khem from Paddle here - we'll be able to fight chargebacks on your behalf too as part of that :)

The price above includes the entire payments stack (filing and remitting of taxes too), so you're compliant globally out of the box.

We often help teams avoid having to hire lots of external accounting resource.

Happy to chat if you'd like to learn more :)

NavyG
Curious: you must have done a lot of groundwork to provide the whole stack as a solution, would love to hear from you how you internally select the processors you work with. Or are you directly integrated with banks and card networks?
khemdhaliwal
Sure - it's always evolving as we add more gateways and payment methods. We currently have three Stripe gateways (each region), WorldPay and Checkout.com.

We find that payments getting accepted is dependent on a whole number of things and having the ability to re-route and retry based on the location of the transaction massively helps boost chances of it going through.

You're absolutely correct in that haha - we exist to make sure teams don't have to do all this work internally themselves, as it becomes increasingly messy the more you grow.

Can I ask what category of product it is you're selling?

dingi
Depends on where you tap into the digital payments chain. At the highest level (with highest fees) are the payfacs (Payment facilitators). Above them are the payment acquirers with comparatively low fees, higher joining fees, more rigorous certification process and the PCI compliance is a chore you need to repeat every year. Above that is not that easy to tap into such as direct link to credit card networks and banks. At your volume, PayFac like Stripe is the best option IMO.
Xixi
Only tangentially related, but does someone know good competitors to Stripe in Japan? I need support for subscriptions in USD and EUR.

Last time I checked, there were a few choices (besides Stripe and PayPal), but many supported either only JPY, or only one time payments...

justusw
I’m also interested to hear, as I am using Stripe for my Japanese startup.
la_fayette
Bitcoin lightning network
jeremycarter
In an alternative universe perhaps where irrational ideas are mass adopted maybe...
lnalx
This is definitely the more robust, durable and cheaper alternative. But clearly is a utopia for today.
rewmie
For over a decade I've been having free bank accounts with free Visa and MasterCard debit and credit cards, and I've been using them with services that allow me to create as many free virtual credit cards I wish.

I thought these services were already widespread.

Are people still paying for debit and credit cards?

NavyG
Hey I was referring to accepting payments online on my website. So this is the payment processing fees I was referring to
sschueller
Highly depends on in which country you are. For Switzerland I can recommend payrexx which also accept Swiss payment systems such a Twint.

https://payrexx.com/en/

chakintosh
One that comes to mind is LemonSqueezy
NavyG
This seems more like a merchant of record partner though
merwanedr
According to some people on Twitter, this should've been deleted lol
NavyG
Twitter where? link pls
bibosj
Full disclosure, I work for Stripe. The question you want to ask is why are these alternatives cheaper than Stripe? What is the tradeoff.
sundarurfriend
One obvious answer is that Stripe has name recognition and fame, which means they can afford to charge more and get away with it. And smaller companies have an incentive to prioritize growth and user acquisition over immediate profit.

But what other tradeoffs are you implying there to be? I understand in a vague sense that payment processors deal with a lot of ugly behind-the-scenes stuff like mind-boggling varieties of frauds, dispute resolutions, regulations, etc., but what exactly is the difference in this specific case, and how might it affect a potential user in practice?

NavyG
Yes, want to understand the trade off and would like to know what the challenge is in integrating directly with a payment provider that is closer to the networks / banks. I love Stripe for how easy it is to get started with but I am looking for opportunities to save cost further but getting closer to the acquirer
davetron5000
I dunno, the OP may want to work with a processor that provides transparent and clear customer service.
tail_exchange
What is your experience with Stripe's customer service?
mbStavola
While we're talking about Stripe alternatives, anyone have a good Stripe Tax alternative?

Their pricing is actually insane as they charge per API call rather than transaction amount. That sort of pricing made sense for TaxJar because it was their whole deal, but post-acquisition it would've made more sense to treat the tax product as a complement to the core business and just tack on a small 50c fee for successful tax collection.

khemdhaliwal
Hey mbStavola, Khem from the Paddle team here. We see quite a few sites switch over from Stripe Tax - offloading tax (including the filing) is our core competency (rather than bundling loads of tools together) and we'd charge per transaction for everything to save you paying unnecessary fees. Happy to chat if you'd like to learn more :)
mbStavola
I'd absolutely love to switch to Paddle, the product seems great. Unfortunately, my business is a marketplace which I don't believe Paddle supports. Happy to be wrong on that though!

Are there any plans to have a marketplace offering?

khemdhaliwal
Unfortunately not sadly - we'd love to but the tax categories prevent us from working with any site where the products aren't yours. This is because it takes on all the tax liability.

Stripe are awesome for that (can appreciate the costs stack up internationally though). At your avg transaction size I'm not sure I'd know anything cheaper that's worth the extra work.

Best of Luck!

[dead] abcd_f
[flagged]
ericpauley
Disagree. In the real world prices aren’t all that simple. Especially in payments it could come down to the riskiness of the business, fees imposed by upstream providers, etc. Simplifying that is a valid business decision, but it’s hardly “spam” not to.
ChatGTP
So...there kind of isn't any good alternatives?
andrewshadura
https://www.kevin.eu/ looks interesting. Apart from card payments, it supports instant account to account transfers.
sourcecodeplz
That landing page is ridiculous for a payment processor.
NavyG
Super interesting, is this available in the US?
dubcanada
Have you considered going to one of the archaic platforms and getting a proper merchant account? Moneris, banks (Chase, Wells Fargo), etc? Pretty much all of them will probably offer better support (a customer support line) and cheaper transaction fee.

You lose the developer friendliness, so you'll have to debate if that matters to you. To me it never did.

Or you could take a look at stax https://staxpayments.com/

NavyG
Yess I am willing to trade off developer friendliness. Have you personally used stax or any of these archaic platforms?
dubcanada
I have used Moneris, and one provided by Costco and a bank before. They are all terrible SOAP garbage, but they work. I cannot recommend any for the US market as I am Canadian, maybe others have suggestions?
khemdhaliwal
Hey NavyG - Khem from the Paddle team here. We offer a merchant of record model which takes all of the manual work/integrations away and can migrate customers seamlessly over so you can focus on the product. Happy to chat if you'd like to learn more.
sfmike
authorize.net
gndk
Underrated, but probably the best long-term solution. Along with direct integration of popular wallets like PayPal, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay. GoCardless for bank account based stuff.
APersonSomewher
I would like to know, if i'm correct in thinking, this is what GNU Taler could solve, too?