If you are a business owner and looking for an online payment processing solution, Stripe is one of your options. For tech-savvy customers looking for customization, Stripe comes with a wide range of open-source projects and documents. Its readily available apps can offer you any business payment solution in a few clicks.
Stripe comes with a promising vision of reducing financial complexities for e-commerce businesses. To till day, they’ve lived up to the expectations of their customers with a wide range of solutions. Any business looking for online payment processing, reporting, invoicing, data security, fraud prevention, and POS solutions can choose Stripe.
Stripe has partnered with everyone from small businesses and startups to international organizations and leading brands. It may not be an old-house name like PayPal but certainly catching up on the industry leader.
Beginners are indifferent to choosing Stripe and other platforms like PayPal’s Braintree or Square, and there are always some comparative measures.
Here are a few of Stripe’s Pros and Cons for you to decide on its worth.
Transaction Costs
Stripe offers a consistently flat transaction-based pricing model for most of its applications. It comes with no contract requirement and commitment. You can easily compare its pricing with other platforms like Square and Braintree. For many of its applications, its pricing plans offer lower costs than others.
Customers’ Ease-of-Use
Businesses shifting to e-commerce look for an easy-to-use interface that customers would enjoy. Stripe doesn’t require individual customers to leave the merchant website with checkouts.
It may not seem like a significant competitive edge at a glance, but customers’ experience with the merchant website certainly affects the retention rate. Its clean interface and easy checkout experience will likely increase your business’s customer satisfaction, resulting in increased sales certainly.
E-Commerce Security
Stripe stands out with a dedicated online fraud prevention application, RADAR. Small businesses, in particular, become reluctant to opt for e-commerce platforms with fraud threats.
In-house developed tools offer a better integration experience. Stripe’s RADAR application also offers a strengthened website and financial security.
Thinking of additional costs? The Radar application comes free of charge with a standard payment plan.
Third-Party Integrated Applications
Stripe offers numerous extensions and applications to enhance the e-commerce functionality for your business. As a payment processing platform, Stripe certainly lacked some key features that e-commerce businesses would expect.
You can add third-party developed applications and extensions for marketing, reporting, referrals, tax calculations, business management tasks, and CRM, to name a few.
Premium Support
Stripe’s standard customer support is similar to any other platform with e-mail, chat, or phone call-back services. However, its premium support is dedicated and offers 24/7 timings to its clients.
It may come in handy for businesses with complex structures and regular needs for setting up and payment processing issues. It doesn’t come cheap, though, at a monthly cost of $1,800. Apart from great flexibility and an abundance of payment processing tools, Stripe does come with some limitations.
Difficult Initial Setup
You can set up the payment processing applications from Stripe with a few clicks. But if you need some customization or want to integrate its open-source code documents, perhaps it may not be that easy.
Many small businesses lack the skillset required to set up payment processing platforms with coding needs. At the same time, it becomes an advantage for Stripe, though, as it offers customization for the users.
Limited International Presence
Stripe is making long strides with global expansion. Recently they partnered with Paystack for business expansions in Africa. Yet its global presence currently is limited to 42 countries only. You may have to incur additional currency conversion and third-party licensing costs if you partner with Stripe in other countries.
Additional Costs with third-party Applications
As much as third-party applications and extensions provide flexibility and a wider range of services, they incur more costs. Small businesses may not afford these additional costs.
For example, its premium support comes at a high cost of $1,800 per month. Some key features like free invoicing are also limited with an upper limit of turnover.
Conclusion
Here is a quick wrap-up of Pros and Cons for Stripe.
Pros:
- Competitive Pricing model
- Clean user interface with on-page checkout experience for customers
- Dedicated customer support
- Open-source code documentation and PCI compliant
- Online security and fraud prevention
Cons:
- Customization may require challenging coding skills
- Premium Customer Support does not come free
- Limited international presence than its competitors
- Additional costs with third-party extensions and applications