How do you survive without Stripe?
Sometimes I feel like Stripe is taken for granted, being largely available in the countries that comprise most of the "maker scene" (if that's a thing). Me, I live in South Africa, a country that got as far as a PayPal workaround for international billing.
To date I've been able to invoice and bill customers directly (Transferwise has been an enormous help there) but I want to start building self-signup applications in the new year, and I've spent quite a while looking at the various options.
Turns out there aren't many, at least not on the lower cost side. While I can do PayPal (classic, not Braintree), I'm hoping that there's another option I haven't considered yet. Stripe Atlas is not an option until I reach enough revenue to justify the additional overhead.
So in the absence of Stripe, how do you guys bill for stuff?
I could use Stripe, but i don't, because they still don't handle VAT automatically. It's really a pain in the ass if you have a lot of customers in Europe.
I'm using Paddle, for various reasons:
So all in all: You pay a bit more comission, but you have a lot more time for other stuff.
Paddle looks nice! And since I already have a SWIFT channel set up for international payments, integrating this should be simple. Great recommendation!
You're welcome :-) It's really easy to integrate. Good luck!
Ok so the VAT point is interesting, I hadn't considered that. I've seen niche European payment providers come up that highlight that as a benefit. I'll give Paddle a look, thanks!
Paddle
I'm in the same boat. I use Paddle, it's the closest thing to stripe you'll find.
Just throwing this here in case anyone has any ideas : A few weeks ago me and a friend were saying that we'd be ready to pay if someone could find a solution for people in countries without stripe access to use stripe. Something like stripe access as a service, or rent a stripe account.
What paddle does is it sells your product as their own and send you the money after taking a commission. Can't something like this be done with a stripe account ? People with stripe accounts sell your product for you in exchange for a fee and then send you the earnings.( DM if someone needs more info / wants to discuss )
" I'm in the same boat. I use Paddle "
That made me giggle :)
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In southeast Asia it's worth checking out Omise, who offer a very similar service to Stripe.
https://www.omise.co/
Hi Wogan, as a fellow South African I feel your pain.
My first SaaS just uses Paypal for both once off payments and subscriptions which is far from ideal. But im just a solo bootstrapped IH running my small SaaS on the side and Paypal was the easiest way to get that all going initially as a South African.
Judging by the rest of the comments, it sounds like Paddle is worth investigating.
Have you looked into https://www.payfast.co.za/ ? I would like to hear your thoughts.
Our suffering may be at an end! I signed up at flutterwave.com this week and have been researching them since, they look like a really solid solution for the African market.
Prior to this I did the PayPal thing (FNB Cheque account, the whole deal), and I've tried implementing PayFast before but ran into a lot of hassles with their documentation. Plus the checkout experience is pre-modern, to put it mildly.
Great, flutterwave looks like it could be what we've been waiting for. I'll definitely investigate a bit more.
Thanks for the warning about PayFast, they were my top potential choice before hearing about Paddle and Flutterwave here.
Good news! I've just heard back from their support team, and they were apparently able to verify my South African business using a CIPC disclosure document. It looks like I'm live and ready to go.
Failing that, they also advised that you can register an Individual account, and verify that with a simple government ID. From what I've seen, both accounts have similar features.
That's great. This sounds really promising. I hope the API etc integration goes well too.
@woganmay Just checking in to see how your experience of Flutterwave has been?
I've been doing research into Paddle and Flutterwave over the last few weeks and I was just about to sign up for Paddle when a few red flags stopped me from doing so.
I've now pretty much decided on Flutterwave and will likely sign up within the next week.
I would appreciate any thoughts you have on them. API, documentation, customer support etc.
I tried them out earlier this year, but I ran into too many problems with the way they handle remittances. Your options are to either have SWIFT payments come through every day (on which the forex fees are murder), or batch them up and go through a very confusing manual withdrawal process.
The third option would hypothetically be to automatically remit currencies to equivalent accounts (USD -> USD) in South Africa, but FNB couldn't help me with that last time I tried.
They've made some spectacular mistakes during rollouts in the last few months too, and I get the overall impression that the tech team doesn't quite know what they're doing, change management-wise. Their focus is definitely on their domestic markets too, so while foreign companies can sign up, I can't honestly say I've felt like I was getting the support I needed.
Ok that's a pitty. Once again it continues to be really hard to find a viable solution here in SA. Those who have access to Stripe don't know how good they have it.
My current SaaS uses PayPal. The problem here is that customers have to sign up for a PayPal account for subscriptions.
Paddle was an option but my current SaaS is in the investment space and that for some reason appears to be on Paddle's list of business types which they do not allow on their platform. They also don't have a test environment which seems weird.
The next option was Flutterwave. But now im not so sure. One thing i've noticed though is that they seem to have been running an official launch in South Africa over the last month or so. Perhaps they've been ramping things up in terms of South African support and now is a reasonable time to give them a try. eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2X-2aznxws
I hadn't seen that launch, but then my inbox is a mess as it is :) If they're committing to serving this market then yes, that should be a good sign.
And look, Rave does exactly what it says on the tin, it's just a bit harder to use than Stripe is. The customer UX is pretty good (compared to PayPal), I just couldn't figure out the remittance side in a way that wouldn't kill me with admin.
The only other potential option is Paystack, but they haven't launched in SA yet, though they did say it was on their roadmap for 2019.
I don't have access to Stripe or PayPal where I'm based but I can use Paddle.
Apart from the documentation which could use some polish, Paddle works really well and I can charge for subscriptions to my SaaS product.
As an added bonus, they take care of VAT and sending invoices for you, and can let your users pay with PayPal and Apple Pay.
Don’t have Stripe here, don’t have PayPal (can only pay with it but not receive).
But hey, at least I can get payouts from Google via wire transfer (SWIFT) to my bank account. That’s until they ban me for whatever reason.
Freelancers here used to use Payoneer to get payments from abroad, but now it’s easier and overall cheaper to register as an individual entrepreneur and receive wire transfers. As for domestic payments, people usually just do card transfers.
My niche market is one that trades cryptocurrency so .. Coinbase Commerce.
Payments are very quick and for a tenth of the fee I pay with Stripe
https://paystack.com/
"It's Stripe for Africa"
Yes, I know about PayStack :) They only operate in Nigeria for the moment. They've received funding from Stripe and are starting a rollout into other African countries next year, but they don't have any specific plans other than "2019".
Wow. I think it an American company led with "Payments for Africa" and was only in one country it would get crucified in the court of public opinion.
Wogan, we gotta get this crypto-currency thing going in Africa.
It's the other way around, though - PayStack is fully home-grown in-market, and it seems like Stripe invested in them as an alternative to launching any competition. Africa is a very different market, and I'm pretty sure most of PayStack's volume is coming from mobile POS terminals.
Right. Sorry, poor communication. I know PayStack is home-grown... I was thinking it's a rather bold claim to say "Payments for Africa" while it's, in reality, payments for the biggest country in Africa. It's analogous to offering a service in the US, only, but claiming it serves all of the Americas from the tip of Argentina to the top of Canada.
It's ambitious branding, that's for sure! Last I checked they had 7 other African countries on their roadmap for next year. And since they're the only company of their type operating on the continent, I think they're allowed some leeway on the specificity of their operating markets :)
I've stopped using Stripe for my info product two months ago due the average 15% transactions decline. Client side PayPal is my way now.
When you switched did the decline rate reduce? I’ve not experienced that before so I’m quite curious.
That decline rate doesn’t sound right...I work at Stripe and would love to dig into that. Could you email me at edwin@stripe.com?
By "Client side paypal", do you mean the classic one? PayPal has their own Stripe-esque billing product called BrainTree, but that's not available in SA either.
Mollie
Gave Mollie a look and it seems like exactly what I need. I'm not sure why I didn't find this one before! I just hope they're able to completely onboard me.
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Hey @tbhyn what are you using for India right now?
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Thanks for the link! I remember flutterwave launching, and doing a presentation at a recent dev ops conference in Nigeria (forloop Africa iirc). I've seen some mixed reviews on the quality of their service though. If I did use it, I'd probably try it out extensively before relying on it to process payments.