Stripe.com Adds the UK

[nightkingdoms]

Making online payments work better also means making them work everywhere. Today, we’re getting a little closer: we’re crossing the Atlantic and launching Stripe in the UK.

We’ve worked hard not to compromise with this expansion. UK users get the same instant activation that we provide in the US and Canada. We support all major card types, including American Express. You retain complete control over your payment experience. And, as ever, it’s all covered by simple, flat pricing.

In addition to keeping the best parts, we’ve also built multi-currency support: the ability for UK businesses to charge customers around the world in US dollars, British pounds, and Euro. We’ll automatically handle all the conversions for you and deposit daily into your bank account.

more - https://stripe.com/blog/introducing-stripe-uk

 

[PSG-Samuel]

Hello,

The thing about stripe is it can only be used for online transactions right? as far as I am aware if your doing face to face you must use chip & pin. So stripe is good for online but not much else AFAIK.

Oh and also "personal computer technical support" is on their prohibited business types and practices.

-Sam

 

[nightkingdoms]

Hello,

The thing about stripe is it can only be used for online transactions right? as far as I am aware if your doing face to face you must use chip & pin. So stripe is good for online but not much else AFAIK.

Oh and also "personal computer technical support" is on their prohibited business types and practices.

-Sam

Yes, Stripe is used for online purchases. It's a payment processing alternative to the dreaded PayPal or any of the merchant account/gateway combos you find way overpriced.

The main advantage of Stripe is that you can handle the entire payment process like you would with a merchant account/gateway but with basically the PCI conpliance needs that you do with PayPal.

Instead of redirecting someone to PayPal - which anyone who's familiar with PayPal knows exactly how it works, who uses it and why - they stay on your site the entire time. Everything is handled behind the scenes like it is with a much bigger company and gets a higher conversion rate.

I use Stripe in my business with PayPal, Google Checkout and others as a backup. For in-person transactions I use Square. Checks I use Intuit. I get about 50/50 between Stripe and Square, only a few PayPal and Google Checkout.

If you email the people at Stripe explaining your business, you might get that prohibition waived. I did.

 

[4ycr]

They are extortionate, I use gocardless.com for one off and recurring payments. They charge 1% flat fee with me, plus they integrate with my accounting software.

 

[nightkingdoms]

They are extortionate, I use gocardless.com for one off and recurring payments. They charge 1% flat fee with me, plus they integrate with my accounting software.

From what I've seen on their site GoCardless looks like they're UK only and direct debit-based. They sound great, though.

Only problem is they're UK only so we (USA) can't use them and direct debit vs. credit card transactions are very different here than overseas. Closest we have to that I think is Dwolla and that's a joke in comparison.