We were coming to the end of our initial merchant account agreement, and basically throwing money away to maintain that account at a "big bank" and our original payment processor. I had heard good things about Stripe, and to be honest, I'm a bit of late adopter, so I took the plunge. It was a bit of effort to build out the revised interfaces, while stringing along some of the old ones (for the old processor), but today I am so happy I did. The amount of detail that Stripe provides about every communication with their API is fantastic.
First paying customer
We weren't even offering 14 day free trials yet, but we landed a beach and baby gear rental business in Hawaii. Social media, SEO and our blog probably helped find that first customer.