Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

So with Stripe, is it industry practice to keep the fee when refunding customers?

For example, if I return something to Best Buy, are they still paying that 2.9% fee to their CC processor?

i don't know about best buy, they might be able to negotiate something better. but for small fish, it's standard practice to keep not just the fee, but twice the fee: when you charge a card, visa charges you 2.5% on the purchase amount. and then when you refund the card, visa charges you 2.5% on the refund amount.

as far as visa is concerned, they're both just transactions, regardless of the direction, and they want their fee.

IMHO it is time to start promulgating the idea that electronic money transfer should be considered a basic human right just like free cash transactions have been since the invention of money. It already is that way in many advanced countries where electronic money transfer is a service provided by the government. It is only in the U.S. where a private monopolistic cartel is allowed to impose a private tax on all retail transactions.

Without any profit, what's going to support the creation of such service and pay for the talent that is going to make it cheap and reliable? The only answer is likely to have taxes pay for it, but then you're still paying a tax and then you're in the situation where you can't switch to a new company providing a better service. A service being provided by the government doesn't make it free. You're still paying for it one way or another.

Here's a recent example from my life: About 10 days ago my partner sent $1000 to friends/family in another country and used the official channels that involves the nationalized bank in that country. It should have been there quickly, but took 10 days. There was no update the entire time and no phone number to call or other customer service channel to figure out what was happening. On day 3 or 4, a friend asked why she hadn't used this other private money transfer service that is known to be far more reliable, faster and with better customer service. With the government, there were still fees involved and the service was far less convenient/reliable.

Here's a fact of life: Nothing that requires the labor of other people will ever be free unless:

- the people providing the labor choose to do so and have the time to do so because they have some other means to support themselves; or

- someone voluntarily donates the money to fund both the creation of such a service and the maintenance of such a service in perpetuity.

- you steal money from someone else to pay for that labor.

Those are pretty much the only three ways that something requiring labor comes into being.

You can't just magically declare anything that requires human labor to be a basic human right and will it into being.