After a testing beta phase of about a year, payments service Stripe has launched in France. They have also established a Paris office, engaged a French staff and will be offering their full offering in French to French users.
Guillaume Princen of Stripe says of the development: “Everyone in France can now sign up in minutes and get access to the world-class Stripe stack that we’ve been building and optimizing for more than five years. Developers can charge customers in 100+ currencies (and a growing set of payment types), create subscriptions, or build global platforms with Stripe Connect. Pricing is simple and predictable: 1.4% + €0.25 for European cards and 2.9% + €0.25 for non-European cards.”
Stripe is proving to be a force to be reckoned with and is making good progress although it remains to be seen whether it’s a Paypal killer or not. Is anyone using Stripe and how do you find it?
6 Responses
We have been using Stripe successfully for a few months now and the rates are very good. They do take 7 or 8 days to put the funds in to your account and I would expect that to speed up at some point maybe. My biggest concern with them is that they are not easy to contact, a UK helpline would be useful and give us a little more confidence.
The invoicing solution I use for freelance work (Harvest) has an integration with Stripe, that puts “Pay by credit card” logos and links on outgoing invoice emails.
While Stripe payments take longer to hit my bank account than traditional bank transfers, and cost me a little, my cashflow is actually healthier with Stripe than without it – I rarely need to chase invoices for smaller amounts these days, as the vast majority see the “Pay by card” button, click and pay.
Larger amounts (~£300 up) still seem to come mostly via bank transfer, and mostly the larger the organisation, the longer they take to pay.