Wherever you look nowadays, you can see a reference to Stripe. Millions of businesses of all sizes across the world – from start-ups to large enterprises – use Stripe’s software and API’s daily to send pay-outs, accept payments and manage their businesses online. Read on to learn more about Stripe, how it works and the various benefits it offers businesses.
Stripe – What Is It?
Founded in 2010 by two Irish entrepreneur brothers John and Patrick Collison, Stripe is a leading online payment processing platform. It allows businesses to send and receive payments easily and securely over the internet.
Stripe serves as both a payment gateway and third-party payment processor. This means that Stripe allows your business to process Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions as well as debit and credit cards, both online and offline. For merchants, Stripe payments make it easier to start and control an online business by building a set of products. This could save up on money, resources and time required for creating and setting up an online payment processor to start accepting payments from customers.
Stripe has gained immense global recognition and some of the world’s biggest companies like Amazon, Shopify, Yelp, Spotify, Lyft, Ted, Uber, and Reddit use Stripe as their preferred payments processor. Given Stripe’s ability to handle 135 currencies, it is a common and preferred solution for companies that do business internationally.
Stripe – How Does It Work?
Stripe allows businesses to take payments from credit or debit cards within seconds and then transfer those payments directly into their bank accounts. It supports a variety of payment methods, such as credit card payments, subscription billings and recurring payments, making it a convenient choice for doing business in foreign markets.
Not only that, but it also takes the rare approach of supporting the local payment modes, especially those popular in Europe and China, besides the common ‘universal’ ones.
The following universal (across all markets) payment types are supported by Stripe’s Payments API:
- Google Pay
- Apple Pay
- Alipay
- Microsoft Pay
- Amex Express Checkout
- Visa Checkout
- WeChat Pay
- Masterpress by Mastercard
Additionally, popular local payment types are also supported by Stripe, such as:
- ACH
- SOFORT
- SEPA Direct Debit
- Klarna
- Multibanco
- Giropay
- EPS
- Bancontact
- P24
- iDEAL
Stripe – Benefits for Businesses
For your online business, choosing the right payment gateway can be a tricky process. This is especially so if you are in the subscription niche, where you need to handle customer lifecycle management, dunning management, recurring payments, PCI compliance and many other things.
For such subscription businesses, Stripe has made it easy to set up subscription billing and receive recurring payments with the development docs. A developer’s job is to integrate payment gateways using these docs to an app or website, and thus these are crucial for him.
Stripe was hailed by developers because of how effectively it allowed tasks to be completed within two days, which would normally take three weeks to a month before.
Some of the other benefits of using Stripe for your business are:
1. Developer First:
Stripe aims to put the ease of developers first, to make it flexible and easier for programmers to integrate payments on their website. This comes with excellent documentation and easy-to-use APIs.
2. Secure Transactions:
Stripe security servers help to process payments securely. There is no risk of leaked customer details. Stripe also has features that can detect fraud.
3. Seamless Checkout Experience:
Stripe provides a smooth checkout experience on your website. This could lead to higher conversion rates and eventual sales. A significant advantage of using Stripe for your online e-commerce store is that it lets users stay on your website when making a payment, rather than redirecting them to another website.
4. Easy to Integrate, Set up and Maintain:
You don’t need to have any prior knowledge of coding to integrate Stripe into your website. Your basic computer knowledge can suffice.
5. Recurring Payments:
Stripe is a better alternative to any other subscription management platform when you aim to use it for your subscription business. It allows you to effectively set up recurring payments, offers customers discounts and coupons as well as trial periods with delayed payments. It also features one of the best payment reminder systems among other useful features.
6. International Payments:
Stripe can save your customers a conversion fee by processing international payments in their native currency. Stripe can currently accept more than 135 currencies and is available in more than 39 countries.
7. PCI Compliant:
Stripe help to store cardholder data and credit card payment securely with a PCI-compliant hosting provider. You no longer have to worry about how to find a PCI compliant payment gateway service provider.
Conclusion
For businesses that are involved in e-commerce, do business across international borders and those who want the best security the industry can offer- for them, Stripe can prove to be a great option. Moreover, if you have programmers on your team, Stripe can prove quite useful as it provides the best developer tools in the payment processing industry.
However, you also need to keep in mind that it is not the cheapest option available in the market and you can’t merely use it as a gateway.
You will get a lot of services for your money, and it is quite possible that you won’t need to use all of them. Also, like all third-party processors, Stripe does come with its fair share of unexplained account holds and freezes. You, therefore, need to do thorough research and analyse your business requirements before you go for Stripe.
