←back to thread

Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation

(www.axios.com)
721 points hhs | 1 comments | 16 Apr 20 14:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.281s | source
Show context
fbelzile ◴[16 Apr 20 15:28 UTC] No.22890386[source]▶
I'm very happy with Stripe and for their success, but I plan on switching all my payments to go through PayPal again. I did some math and PayPal offers a better deal for Canadian businesses after Stripe bumps me off of their grandfathered conversion fees in a couple months.

I love the slick interface, but it's simply not worth the thousands per year I'll be saving with the switch.

For me the main selling point for any payment processor is the minimization of fees. Sure, the API's are nice, but I already use a payment gateway for that.

I'm a few clicks away from saving thousands. Am I missing anything?

replies(9): >>22890423 #>>22890465 #>>22890493 #>>22890527 #>>22890600 #>>22890701 #>>22890745 #>>22892139 #>>22893596 #
swat535 ◴[16 Apr 20 18:32 UTC] No.22892139[source]▶
How are you saving fees on paypal ?

Looking at https://www.paypal.com/ca/for-you/fees It looks like the fees are exactly the same as Stripe, what am I missing ?

Can you elaborate ? Are you a charitable organization?

replies(1): >>22892650 #
fbelzile ◴[16 Apr 20 19:32 UTC] No.22892650[source]▶
A majority of my sales are from US customers buying in USD.

With PayPal, fees are: 3.7% + $0.30 USD

With Stripe, fees are: 2.9% + $0.30 CAD + 0.6% (international card charge) + 2.0% (currency conversion fee)

replies(3): >>22893656 #>>22894610 #>>22898796 #
1. kenpratt ◴[16 Apr 20 21:15 UTC] No.22893656[source]▶
If you're a Canadian merchant, you can add a USD bank account to avoid the 2% currency conversion fee. This bank account can either be with a Canadian bank, or a US bank.

Source: I work at Stripe, but in addition to that, previously started a Canadian company using Stripe, and like you did mostly payments to US customers in USD. I had deposits directly into both a USD bank account held at a Canadian bank as well as a USD bank account held at a US bank, and did not pay the 2% conversion fee. I actually never received CAD directly at all.

More details: https://stripe.com/docs/payouts

But yes, other than certain exceptions such as this one, getting payouts in non-local currencies on Stripe is limited, and we're working on improving that.

(edit: This assumes you have expenses in USD, or a cheap way to convert USD to CAD, to avoid a ~2% fee from your bank on the conversion. Personally I've used Interactive Brokers which charges 0.002% for USD/CAD conversions.)