ShopLocket Announces Support For Stripe, Helping Bring Stripe To Non-Developers

ShopLocket Announces Support For Stripe, Helping Bring Stripe To Non-Developers(blog.shoplocket.com)

37 points by dankalmar 14 years ago | 18 comments

liamk 14 years ago |

Given that ShopLocket is based in Toronto, does this mean that Stripe is now offered in Canada?

More related, ShopLocket has been working extremely hard, and their site looks great.

Thanks for your support! Today Stripe really only supports US bank accounts. But they are working really hard to make it available outside the US. You can submit your information to Stripe and they are trying to keep people updated. We had to do a lot around getting ourselves setup in the States to use it for our own invoicing, but it was worth it :)

https://stripe.com/global

getsat 14 years ago | | |

  We are working hard to make Stripe available outside the United States.

What does this even mean? You've been saying this for a long time now. Is there really no other status update besides this? Why not be a bit more transparent about the process to people who want to give you money?

karanbhangui 14 years ago | |

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3669589

joelrunyon 14 years ago |

The combination of the two services is about a 5% cut. As a non-developer, this combination looks appealing (I'm still waiting for someone to completely kill paypal), but that's a pretty big cut.

Maybe I should just spend a few weeks learning to program instead :)

katherinehague 14 years ago | |

This is Katherine, Co-Founder of ShopLocket. Definitely understand where you are coming from in terms of fees. We've thought a lot about this. What we ended up doing for the pricing model is very much taking a cue from other services like Eventbrite, Etsy, and even lower plans on Shopify. Some competitors bring both there fees and the processing fees together, but it still usually ends up around 5%. This is actually a lot lower than tradition Marketplaces, say eBay that will charge much larger percentages. We're certainly open to feedback though!

joelrunyon 14 years ago | | |

hey katherine,

thanks for replying. i guess my biggest question is what really differentiates you from shopify then?

I have a shopify store for an e-commerce site I run and a wazala store (don't ask) to sell apparel items related to a blog I run. While shopify is great, but if i was going to pay the 5% or so percentage fee, I'd probably spring for shopify's fuller featured site capabilities over shoplocket.

I get the lower setup fee for Shoplocket, but when I heard of Shoplocket, I was really hoping i'd be able to use this as a lower-cost, less-featured alternative to shopify that was less expensive as well so i could finally get rid of Wazala and host stuff on my site.

I still might give it a try - I'm really anxious to get rid of wazala, but it'd be interesting to know your ideal customer usage of the product.

mistermann 14 years ago | |

I totally agree, even for me 2.5% is cutting it.

joelrunyon 14 years ago | | |

Well, you can't get it for free. Avg processing fees are 1-2% even for credit cards.

peteforde 14 years ago | |

5% is a lot less than 30% on iTunes.

joelrunyon 14 years ago | | |

You're comparing apples and oranges.

Shoplocket (I would guess) has a lot of users who are using it to sell retail items - which unlike app stores sales - have incremental costs as you sell more and more products. That 5% cuts into the margin of each item as opposed to an app that has a certain development cost and then no additional costs for increased sales (other than support + updates which would have to be done one way or another).

They're also not providing distribution, which Apple does.

sunkencity 14 years ago |

Not wanting to rain on your parade but here's some feedback on the www.shoplocket.com site: the out of focus images hurt my eyes. Please designers, keep it sharp! Why is the "Buy" not centered vertically in the example buttons?

katherinehague 14 years ago |

If any one has tried out the actually connect with Stripe flow we'd love your feedback on the process!! Think connect with facebook, for merchant accounts. This is Katherine from Shoplocket, btw :)

mistermann 14 years ago |

Hijack warning: this seemed like a potentially relevant thread to a service I am looking for so I'm just going to post it in case any HN readers know of or provide this service.

I'm looking for an online service that can automate our order processing workflow.

Our current workflow is: (For additional clarity, I am surrounding separate entities in [ ])

    [Distributor emails] a Purchase Order to [OurCompany]
    [OurCompany] forwards this Purchase Order to the appropriate [3rd Party Warehouse], who then picks and ships the order to the [Distributor]
    [3rd Party Warehouse] sends [OurCompany] a Bill of Lading confirming product shipment
    [OurCompany] forwards this Bill of Lading to [Distributor]
    [OurCompany] invoices [Distributor] based on Bill of Lading (using QuickBooks)

I'm trying to find a service that will help us automate this, totally or partially, via a centralized website & automated emails.

Anyone know of such a thing?

SpiderX 14 years ago | |

Pegasus mail. http://www.pmail.com/

[Distributor emails] a Purchase Order to [OurCompany] [OurCompany] forwards this Purchase Order to the appropriate [3rd Party Warehouse], who then picks and ships the order to the [Distributor] [3rd Party Warehouse] sends [OurCompany] a Bill of Lading confirming product shipment [OurCompany] forwards this Bill of Lading to [Distributor] [OurCompany] invoices [Distributor] based on Bill of Lading (using QuickBooks)