Like many other web startups, we recently faced the challenge of accepting payments and making pay outs as our first vertical - (Crowd)Funding - went live. We considered many of the usual suspects including PayPal, WePay, and the newer kid on the block - Balanced Payments.
In the end we chose to go with Stripe after considering feature sets, customer reviews, and relative maturity of the business. We would like to give you some insight into why we think this was the right decision for us.
Stripe was originally developed by developers so they could accept payments - that back story appeals to the geek in us - but they have come a long way since then.
Stripe's forms, like their website, are beautifully minimalist in their execution. We love this.
We have reached out to Stripe's support folks a couple of times with questions and received responses in a timely manner.
We are a marketplace and our funding vertical requires us to facilitate the flow of payments from supporters to our crowdfunders after our platform commission is deducted. For us, Stripe Connect provides the perfect crowdfunding solution. FYI, even though this is not a white-label solution, our crowdfunders can sign up for their Stripe Connect account directly on our platform. Project supporters are not required to create Stripe accounts.
We had originally intended to accept crowdfunding projects from around the globe. Now with the implementation of Stripe Connect, we are restricted to accepting campaigns whose owners are based in the following countries:
- Australia
- Belgium
- Canada
- Denmark
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Ireland
- Italy
- Luxembourg
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- United Kingdom
- United States
We have decided to accept this limitation and expand our coverage as Stripe Connect expands theirs.
Our other verticals will have service requesters and providers from all parts of the world. We will use Stripe's Transfers API to accept and hold payments, and issue pay-outs for these crowdsourcing verticals. The users of these verticals will not be required to create their own Stripe accounts and can therefore be based anywhere as long as they have bank accounts that can accept (international) wire transfers.
To summarize, we chose Stripe over their competition because:
- they offer the right tools we need to run our business efficiently
- they are reviewed well by other users
- they respond in a timely fashion to questions and support requests sent via email
- they are established
- they have a Python API library
- their design sensibilities match ours
- they have a comprehensive and easy to use dashboard
If you would like answers to more specific questions with regard to our Stripe implementation, please write us at [email protected]