Stripe Payments Review: Online Credit Card Processing With Free API

Stripe can process over 135 currencies. You can display prices and process charges in a customer’s preferred currency. This helps to improve sales while allowing the customer to avoid conversion costs.

Let your online customer check out faster with wallet payment methods that digitally store credit and debit card information. It offers a quick and convenient way to pay, eliminating the need for customers to manually enter their card and billing details every time they want to make a purchase.

You can set up local Stripe accounts to maximize acceptance rates and lower costs while your customers save on foreign exchange and cross-border fees.

Whether you want to send one-off invoices or manage monthly subscriptions, Stripe Billing has all the management tools you’ll need. It allows you to bill your customers as frequently as you want and to create plans based on usage, number of users, flat fees or a number of other models that align with your business.

Stripe Billing also includes marketing tools like promotions and free trial periods.

This tool suite is designed for marketplaces and platforms – like Kickstarter or Uber – to accept money and pay out to third parties. It works in over 25 countries around the world and automatically converts transactions for you.

Connect can also verify international sellers, add descriptor text onto credit card statements, automate payments for sellers and create a custom payment schedule.

Way better than what you would get with Square, Stripe Sigma lets you create truly custom reports using SQL. So you can quickly analyze your Stripe data and get faster business insights.

Instead of paying an expensive monthly subscription fee for these tools, Stripe uses sliding scale pricing for Sigma. Based on the number of charges per month.

Currently by invite only, this end-to-end platform was designed to quickly create, distribute and manage physical and virtual cards. Stripe has eliminated extensive development time, complex requirements, long-term contracts and significant upfront fees that come with traditional card issuance. So you can create cards faster and scale more efficiently.

Also currently by invite only, this programmable point of sale (POS) enables in-person payments for any business model with pre-certified card readers, JavaScript and mobile SDKs, and cloud-based hardware management.

This feature allows international business to incorporate in the United States, set up bank accounts there, and get tax and legal advice. All for a flat fee of $500.

Since its launch, Stripe reports that it has had more than 1,000 startups apply in over 120 countries.

A solution to eCommerce fraud, Radar 2.0 uses machine learning to identify and stop credit card fraud. It takes into account a giant stream of data to determine the likelihood of a fraudulent transaction, including previous Stripe transactions on the card.

Radar will also take a look at your business’s payment processing and compare it against a bunch of data models to determine which will work best for your business. This reduces fraud and prevents false alarms.

For enterprise-scale businesses, you might be interested in Radar for Teams. It gives merchants tools in their dashboard to:

• Set specific rules for transactions
• Test what impact those rules have based on previous data
• Reduce the amount of manual work your team has to do

This fraud prevention is layered on top of other tools, like AVS and CVV checks.

The trade-off with the Scale plan is that it offers discounts on ACH credit and wire transfers. Plus it gives you access to Stripe Sigma, which comes at a cost on its own.

Keep in mind, Stripe is willing to negotiate with you if you have unusual business needs. So you might be able to get a deal that’s better suited for your business.

As mentioned before, Sigma is an advanced reporting tool that is priced on a sliding scale. Based on your overall transaction volume. This pricing method actually works well because it lets small businesses access powerful tools for a very reasonable price.

Stripe offers two integrated card readers:

• BBPOS Chipper 2X BT ($59)
• Verifone P400 ($299)

In all honesty, most businesses won’t need this feature. You might consider advanced fraud protection tools if you’re a very large business with many employees.

If you run into any issues, customer support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week over email, phone or live chat. There’s also an extensive self-help knowledge base online for you to reference.

Since 2013, Stripe has been accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and currently holds an A+ rating.

Gathering complaints from across the internet, I found the following common themes: account holds and terminations, unresponsive customer service, not user-friendly and lack of fraud protection.

Stripe does not charge an early termination fee (ETF), ever. The company will even help you export your customer data to take with you, if you decide to leave.

Read the fine print of the terms of service before you sign on the dotted line. As is the case with most third-party processors, Stripe can terminate your account or implement a hold if your business is determined high risk. If you want more stability, Stripe won’t be a good fit for your business.