http://blog.thinkful.com/post/98406708378/why-stripe-is-beco...
Some highlights:
- Agility in adopting new technologies
Whether it’s Bitcoin, Stellar, or 139 other currencies, Stripe is able to rapidly roll out developer kits and support for new forms of payment and protocols. To give context around this speed, the company announced support for Stellar, a decentralized protocol for sending and receiving money in any pair of currencies, just hours after its announcement. While this was obviously behind a curtain, it speaks volumes about Stripe being regarded as the first choice for these types of adoptions.
- Landing key deals
Within the span of 4 months, Stripe announced partnerships with Alipay, Twitter, Apple, and most recently Facebook. For a company of 160 employees, and just under five years in age, these are huge wins to add to their gallery.
- Developer support and evangelism
The company extensively blogs, holds office hours and maintains an active IRC channel to help companies integrate with their services. For a startup looking to gain market share, this is crucial. However, the real challenge lies in their ability to sustain this level of support as the company grows. Another area still largely untapped by Stripe is hackathons. By having mentors on-site and getting their client libraries in the hands of as many budding developers as possible, they can solidify their name as the go-to tool for online payments.
Out of curiosity, what do they cover in their office hours? Basically any questions developers may have with their API and platform?
I'm selling a fairly small e-comm web project to a new company that will be doing "adventure tours" right now. They'd been told by their bank to use Moneris (probably Canada's biggest POS company), but of course, they were experiencing all sorts of hurdles getting approved because they were told "travel companies are risky", etc. They couldn't process any payments before their website went live, because Moneris insists on inspecting everything. Etc.
I told them to use Stripe. Like really strongly advised it. And they kept coming back with stuff like, "Okay, so, would you advise that we apply with Stripe now so that they can approve us due to the apparently more risky nature of our business?" And so on. My responses were always, "I don't think that's going to even be a thing you have to think about."
And it hasn't been.
Another Moneris story: I had a customer all set up with integrated payment processing through their gateway. Then we were informed that they needed to a security scan on the server. They outsource this to some other company.
So they run this scan, and it fails - and why? Because the server is equipped with all kinds of countermeasures (firewall stuff, port scan blocking, whatever - that's not my area of expertise). So they tell us that in order for their scan to pass, we need to disable all of the security measures that are currently protecting the server.
You really can't make this shit up. After that experience I swore I would always, always try to talk my customers out of using the banks and to use Stripe instead. And it's working.
It would be exactly the same thing like with fb ads and fb pages. Some people just complain and complain about everything, other are just quietly crushing it.
Because the people who were crushing it with Twitter, you know, it turned out to be just bullshit (the revolution in Iran, Dell, Zappos, for example). Thanks.
- It is directly helpful to users and casts a good light on your company
- It makes the company look more human and composed of actual people, rather than automatons (think Google)
- It provides a way to clear up potential PR disasters, misunderstandings etc when the eventual user comes up with whatever conspiracy theory is en vogue that day (there's always one)
They haven't responded to any of my questions posted here. My email question was left unanswered as well.
I guess if you are building a service catered to customers from a very small asian country and currency which they say they support/accept, you are SOL.
I love Stripe's design and ease of API implementation but when they don't answer a simple question about a foreign exchange fee, I have no choice but to go with a local company who replies and even calls you to help you with setup and answering questions.
So they tell us that in order for their scan to pass,
we need to disable all of the security measures that
are currently protecting the server.
Would an open source app not be PCI compliant?
Buzzfeed and the other a hundred or so copycats. Searchengineland.com, sejorunal.com, smashingmagazine, ColledgeHumor, NatGeo, Scientific american, goodhousekeeping.com to name just a very FEW. I've written for some of those and have seen the actual traffic numbers. There are thousands of pages which promote something and do very well. Those are the ones I saw in 2 minutes browsing my feed.
I can go in a lot more detail, but this is just not the place. The reality is that marketing and PR is fucking hard. It's like me saying "I tried to build a spaceship, but Boeing's parts just suck big time, so I couldn't".
I just don't get why people think they can just wake up one day and be rockstar PR specialists. Just because you can click a few buttons on a web page doesn't mean people want to read your shit.
Facebook is a feed-reader (and many other things rolled into one). Not a good place to sell, that's my point.
Sending out a "politician" type who specializes in speaking at length while saying nothing is worse than not doing anything, IMO.
(edited to add that I think Stripe handles this extremely well... they could be a model for others)