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Our "enterprise" experience with Stripe after $1B+ processed (be careful)

28 points Boulderchaim | 1 comments | 12 Dec 25 14:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.215s | source

Hi guys,

In middle of a stripe Shakedown and feel like I this is something to warn others of.

We rent vehicles and implemented stripe in 2017. We process a massive volume and must have spent 1B+ with stripe so far.

We love stripe, the tools the software ect. But recently they have been closer to a mob boss than a vendor as they must know their customers are highly locked in.

Over time, our deal evolved into a multi‑year minimum annual fee commitment with “enterprise” pricing. On every renewal, the pattern has been:

Stripe pushes the minimum annual fees higher.

If we don’t naturally hit that minimum, they expect us to burn the difference on add‑on products and “nice to have” features just to satisfy the commit.

We’re warned that if we don’t find a way to hit the minimum, they can just take the full amount out of revenue.

What I would think of before picking stripe.

Make your integration portable. Don't use vender form/card logic. 2. Use an invoices platform that can easily switch card provider. 3. Push back on the small yearly minimum, as they will just raise it next time instead of focusing on you making more money stripe focuses on itself.

To anyone working at stripe, you guys built an awesome product, just wish you could maintain the culture that got you to where you are.

Good luck

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drewsski ◴[14 Dec 25 03:02 UTC] No.46260441[source]▶
Given that you are processing that much volume, wouldn't it make sense to explore interchange plus pricing with a processor that connects directly to the card networks? I don't know much about the car rental business, but my experience has been that they typically require credit cards rather than debit cards. The ratio of debit to credit card usage obviously makes a big difference given that average credit card interchange cost hovers around 200 basis points while debit is closer to 50 basis points. If most of your transactions are credit card, then you're kind of stuck with the higher interchange rates even before Stripe adds their markup.

At my company, we started off with Stripe since the API's make it very easy to get started, but since then we have added backup integrations with Adyen and Fis. Stripe API's are still the gold standard, but as you have experienced, that vendor lock in limits your options when they decide to jack up prices.

For businesses that do recurring payments/subscription, one important consideration when you get started is whether you can port out the tokenized card data if you do decide to move to a different processor. Definitely don't want to have to ask subscribers to re-enter their card details because the payment details they provided via Stripe cannot be ported.

replies(1): >>46265357 #
1. segmondy ◴[14 Dec 25 18:17 UTC] No.46265357[source]▶
Yup, this is what you do once you process a lot, go to a processor that can even provide you custom pricing and discounts based on your business.