Stripe, an American company that was based in San Francisco in the state of California. This software enables persons and businesses to make transactions internationally through the internet. It was founded in 2010 by John and Patrick Collision that are Irish entrepreneurs. The company received various investments periodically. The first investment received by the Stripe is $2 million from Peter Thiel, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital in May 2011. Then, later in February 2012, the company again received an investment of up to $100 million. Publicly, the company was launched in September 2011 and less than a year after its launching, Stripe get an investment of $20 million. The funding continues periodically, and the company has raised $250 million in its recent funding to get its enterprise value up to $35 billion by September 2019. The company covers several countries of the world including Australia, Canada, Austria, Belgium, Finland Denmark, Netherland, Spain, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico, etc.
What is Stripe?
Stripe is the most flexible and powerful for internet commerce. It is a payment processor that can be used along with our Website Builder shopping carts. This US company is allowing the persons or businesses to receive or pay payments over the internet. It has been operating in more than 25 countries in the world and powers more than 100,000 businesses. According to Datanyze, the Stripe company has second-ranked on the number of websites for their payment processor. According to narrow research, Stripe holds almost 10.3% of the market shares of all the payment processors providing transactions internationally over the internet.
How to use Stripe?
The payment processor has a Stripe account that is almost similar to the bank account. Payments are received and the transaction can be made internationally through this stripe account. A person can have more than one Stripe for different products or businesses and each of the accounts has its dashboard and payments which can be managed by the user. The account has a default currency in which the user has been set according to his country. When anyone gets the payments on other currency, the Stripe automatically converts that amount into the default currency of that account and show in the default currency. The user can transfer its money to his bank account if he needs to withdraw that amount as cash. Stripe has also launched its app through which a user can have easy access to its Stripe account easily. The charges cannot create by the app but in case of a need, one can refund his transaction through app. Also, the user can visualize payments, transfers, and subscriptions through the app.
Products and services:
To operate the online payment systems, Stripe provides fraud prevention, technical and banking infrastructures. Following are some services provided the Stripe:
Atlas:
Atlas platform was launched on February 24, 2016, by the company that allows the user to incorporate in the United States more easily. This was originally launched as invite-only but in the next year, it was relaunched with a lot of improvements and till March 2019, Atlas has been used but the startups from more than 120 countries to start their business.
Issuing:
The company has begun issuing Visa and Mastercard credit cards for various companies that are available in private beta in July 2018.
Payment Logistics:
Payment processing integration for websites and mobile applications has also been provided for web developers by Stripe. The company also released anti-fraud tools to prevent fraudulent transactions. For online businesses, the company also provides a billing product that allows businesses to manage their invoicing.
Terminal:
The terminal was the new point to f sale solution launched by the Stripe on September 17, 2018, which was firstly announced as invite-only that offers the physical credit card readers for Stripe. Currently, the company is working with two credit card readers. One is BBPOS Chipper 2X BT and the other one is Verifone P400. The beta testing phase of the Terminal service has ended on June 11, 2019, and from then this service is available for all the users of the United States.
Pricing and Fee of Stripe:
As the Stripe is a third-party payment processor like square, PayPal, etc. the payment processing costs of the Stripe are very simple and straight forward. The cost to per transaction mainly depends on the types of the transaction. The company also gives some discounts. Also, the pricing may vary in different countries, but the basic fee is almost the same in all countries. A basic fee of 2.9% + $0.30 is charged for every successful charge of the card either it is Mastercard, Visa, American Express, etc. the same price is also charged for the third-party shopping carts and own websites. The one most beneficial thing go Stripe is that one can accept international cards for an additional 1% charge. Another feature is that if anyone wants to convert the currency then it can also be possible through Stripe. Just you have to pay 1% more for this service.
Without any extra charges, Stripe also verifies the Bank Account of the customer. It is usually that the third-party processors offering international transactions are very costly, but Stripe offers volume-based discounts for large businesses. In addition to that, it also allows custom pricing if the user runs a nonprofit business or has a unique model of the business. The following are some types of fees charged by the Stripe. The processing fee is charged for every transaction whereas managed account fee is charged only for active accounts and once per month. The other one is a Payout fee which is only charged for every transaction in which amounts transferred to a bank account from the Stripe account. Fully branded business, market places, and technology-focused companies always need a third-party processors foe secure payments and Stripe can overkill them.