Stripe Overview
Stripe is an online payment processor that was founded in 2011 by brothers John and Patrick Collison. The company originally focused on creating an easily integrated payments API for developers, but it has since expanded its service offering to court new e-commerce merchants, small online vendors, and startups. Like Square, Uber, Airbnb, and other payment-oriented technology startups, Stripe is a merchant account aggregator. This means that Stripe users do not have to set up individual merchant accounts through an ISO or bank to use Stripe. Instead, they can simply integrate Stripe’s checkout flow into their website and pay a flat per-transaction fee with no long-term contracts, monthly fees, or annual fees.
In addition to online payment acceptance, Stripe offers a customizable checkout flow, developer tools, mobile app integration, recurring billing, custom coupons, trial offers, acceptance of more than 100 currencies, Bitcoin acceptance, and accounting integration. Stripe also recently launched a service called “Atlas,” which helps new merchants incorporate their business in the state of Delaware, open a business bank account, and find affordable tax and legal advice. Stripe charges 2.9% plus $0.30 on all transactions and offers volume pricing to businesses processing over $80,000 per month.
Stripe does not offer phone support to all of its merchants. The company prefers to keep all support issues confined to email, chat, and FAQ support channels, but it has stated that it will contact merchants by phone if the nature of the problem demands it. Merchants will need to make sure that they are comfortable without live phone support before transition to Stripe as their primary payment processing service.
Stripe is a web application that allows merchants to accept credit card payments via their websites. It does not charge any setup fees, monthly fees, or monthly minimum fees for payment processing.
Stripe is a third party payment processor that has stricter fraud prevention protocols than Paypal, but is preferred by Amazon and Shopify because of its developer-friendly tools and plugins.
Stripe is a software company at heart, and its ease of use lends well to e-commerce businesses, but has some fees and stipulations that might frustrate businesses in retail, hospitality and other high transaction volumes.
Stripe allows business owners to accept debit and credit cards, digital wallets, wire transfers, and ACH credit and debit transfers.
Stripe has spent considerable effort to make its integrations and account setup as seamless as possible. The payment service can integrate with major Ecommerce platforms and subscription and recurring billing platforms.
Stripe shows over 150 different e-commerce platform integrations, and has created several additional e-commerce features.
Machine learning helps Stripe Radar automatically detect and prevent fraudulent transactions, while locking out fewer real customers.
Stripe’s unique e-commerce feature Adaptive Acceptance dynamically retries declined transactions before even returning a decline code.
Stripe Billing aims to provide its customers with higher invoice payment rates by automatically checking for card activity, changes or updates, and if the payment method is being used successfully.
The company is accredited by the Better Business Bureau and provides a free trial period. It has received more than 300 complaints about its service.
Stripe charges 2.9% plus $0.30 for every transaction. It does not charge an early termination fee, PCI compliance fee, refund or failed payments fees, or a $15 Chargeback fee per incident.
Stripe provides interchange-plus pricing to merchants if they process a high volume of online payments, and they also offer a volume-based discount to their tiered rate structure.
Stripe’s policies regarding fraud prevention appear to be cause for complaint, and merchants report difficulty resolving their unprocessed payments with Stripe.
Merchants need to be aware that Stripe reserves the right to suspend payouts in the event of fraudulent activities or in cases of court order.
We recommend Helcim as a top alternative to Stripe. Both offer an API and integrated mobile payment options, but Helcim has a lower per-transaction fee, a customer support phone line, next-day funding, and QuickBooks integration.
Stripe users have experienced issues with their merchant account including sudden cancellation, reserves being withheld without notice, and difficulty reaching customer support in a timely fashion.
Since our last update, Stripe complaints are still a steady flow of negative reviews regarding fund holds, unexpected fees, and poor customer service.
Stripe customers complaining of the 2.9% transaction fee being charged even after refunds. This is standard for many payment providers, however Stripe still charges you the percentage fee on refunds.
Boom Payments! sued Stripe for patent infringement, alleging that the company infringed upon two patents.
A class-action suit was brought in 2020 against Stripe for allegedly data mining through its Stripe Elements feature.
The ruling states that Stripe can collect information from its users, but not whether it can pass that information on to other companies.
In 2020, Stripe paid $120,000 to Massachusetts, and the DOJ brought a case against Visa because of the company’s relationships with other FinTech organizations.
Stripe offers support in English for all Stripe users, but does not publicly list a support phone number. The company has received many negative reviews and a steady increase in complaints since last review.
Stripe has had 460 complaints filed in the past 36 months, 188 were resolved to the merchant’s satisfaction. The remaining 272 were resolved to the merchant’s dissatisfaction or received no final response.
Stripe received 109 negative reviews on its profile, making only 3 positive reviews.
Stripe appears to market its services primarily to web developers who need to add a payment application to their websites.
Stripe does not prominently list its cash reserve and account cancellation policies, which appear to be responsible for numerous Stripe complaints. We have slightly lowered Stripe’s score to reflect this.
Stripe is a large credit card processor with transparent pricing model and customer service that is criticized for poor reserve policies, cancellation policies, and customer service.
At a glance
Founded: 2011
Location: San Francisco, California
Acquiring bank: N/A
Website:Stripe.com (visit)
Phone number: N/A
E-mail: Contact form here
Stripe Promotional Video
Online reputation and reviews
There are nearly 600 negative Stripe reviews across all major consumer protection websites and blogs. This number has climbed steadily since the company’s debut in 2011 and shows no signs of decreasing. The vast majority of complaints about Stripe are related to the company’s fund hold policy and lack of live support. These complainants state that their transactions are unexpectedly frozen by Stripe, and that they cannot reach Stripe in a reasonable amount of time to determine what has happened. Given the ease of signup and the innovative product that Stripe offers, some complaints should be expected. However, the company does not appear to have taken steps to address the issues surrounding its customer support.
Legal actions and lawsuits
There are no outstanding or recently resolved legal actions related to Stripe at this time.
Have you used Stripe for your business? Rate the company at the top of this post and tell us about your experience in the comment section below:
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