I’m currently evaluating both Stripe and Revolut as payment gateways to accept payments for my latest software projects. Does anyone have any good or bad experiences with either of these (or alternative recommendations)? I used Stripe pre-COVID and they seemed ok but the Trustpilot score has since dropped from what I recall and filtering the Trustpilot reviews is tiresome so wondered if anyone else here had experiences to share? So far, in my evaluation both companies support teams have been responsive to me.
Christians (and many others) issues with Digital River have made me a little more sceptical of payment providers than I was before.
We dismissed Stripe because it is a US/EU only payment provider. We are based in Botswana Africa, and we cannot use Shopify, Etsy because Stripe doesn’t allow us to accept payments.
However, when you are in the US or EU, Stripe can work out for you. As a company based in Botswana, we consider Stripe a “racist” company. Even when they start servicing Africa, we will not make use of their service because of that.
It is time Africa has their own payment processors.
Interesting to know; thank you for the comment.
Out of interest which payment processor(s) are supported for you and do you have a good experience with them?
I find getting paid via PayPal expensive
3% of the transaction but I believe that varies based on total $ volume
Its comparable to credit card rates here
Paypal here too, but it’s quite isolated and expensive and annoying when you reach certain limits and they start requesting. Some experienced even problems when trying to transfer money back to your bank account. They ran into limits and cool down periods.
Try to find a bank with built in integrations for webstores and applicances.
Stripe’s customer support is also brain dead. The two times I’ve had problems with them, it’s become an extensive email chain involving supervisors because the customer (us) facing support people are just plain not familiar with Stripe… or financial products in general.
PayPal is horrible awful evil, just ask @samRowlands - can only recommend to run away very fast from PayPal.
[Doctor_Who_Run.gif]
For software sales specifically, a provider like FastSpring offers benefits like tax handling, fulfillment, and subscription management but will be more expensive. I have also heard from TPLM customers that starting fresh with FastSpring these days is not a great experience.
So far, I haven’t seen any recommendations in this thread I would choose above Stripe, even with their problems. I too am looking for a provider who I won’t dread dealing with.
If I could go back to paying 3% and using Paypal exclusively, I’d be overjoyed.
The overheads involved in dealing with the EU’s VAT changes in 2015 have cost me thousands over the years, paying commission to FastSpring and PayPro to handle the VAT aspects.
Before 2015, in the UK, I was under the VAT threshold and didnt have to deal with VAT at all. (Still dont if I only sell inside the UK)
I’ve not heard of anyone actually being prosecuted for avoiding the VAT, but I don;t want to be the first.
I’d rather avoid PayPal entirely if I could
I have 1 client that I need to remote VAT (we call ti GST) and thats easy to track
But the 3% fee PayPal charges cost me just shy of $4500 last year for nothing other than transferring money
Wise and other services could handle that for way less
I realize what I use these services for is not what most people use them for
Hence why I dislike their fee structure for what I get out of it
Thank you for all the info so far. The PayPal fees put me off but if they regularly payout with no issues I may reconsider.
Interesting to know the issues with Stripe support, the agent I spoke with seemed reasonably knowledgable about allowing only payments from customers in specific countries so I may have been lucky compared to your experiences.
Also interesting that no one has used Revolut for accepting payments - I’m not sure if I want to be the first…