HACKER Q&A
📣 dzonga

What did Stripe change (Value Add)?


What was the revolutionary thing Stripe enabled that changed payments & commerce ? From what I understand - people could do payments via credit-cards & paypal.

What was the value added from stripe that made it differentiated from the solutions / providers before ?

  👤 gadders Accepted Answer ✓
I think they made it far, far easier to implement them as a payment provider vs PayPal etc. That was the first innovation.
👤 tobinfekkes
Pro: they abstracted away the intricacies of getting "KYC" approval to take payments and abstracted the merchant services integration, so a developer could be up and taking payments in hours, rather than weeks/months.

Con: they abstracted the relationship a merchant has with their processor, so now they stand between you and your money, they decide whether you get it or not, or if you're banned or not, and you have no recourse if they decide your story isn't compelling enough.