Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by upupandup 1401 days ago
Ever since patio11 pushed that dubious Stripe Atlas program that resulted in far more headache than worth (turns out Delaware is the crappiest state to incorporate) my trust in Stripe going downhill.

I think what really did it was that it took somebody a while back to post on HN about issues with Stripe regarding tax that jepordized his business to get the situation fixed.

I don't know but lately it seems like so much of YC's production is just pure garbage. From coinbase to ponzi metaverses to now Stripe screwing up like this.

If anybody has alternative to Stripe please reply here, been with Stripe for almost 7 years and looking to bounce.

6 comments

> If anybody has alternative to Stripe please reply here, been with Stripe for almost 7 years and looking to bounce.

I still use what everyone used before Stripe: a "merchant account" from an ISO/MSP of a bank. Google "interchange plus merchant account" to find a hundred options. You pay some fixed markup over interchange rates set by the card networks, as low as 0.05% + $0.21 to charge a debit or check card for example. Quite a bit of savings over Stripe for most card mixes...

I used to recommend Spreedly to go with that, a payment gateway agnostic credit card vault so you can take your customers with you if you switch merchant accounts or payment gateways in the future, but they turned toxic over the years. Seemingly only care about enterprise customers, their sales/support team I've interacted with are useless, and they raised my subscription rate by over 30x without an ounce of empathy. I'm still trying to find time to replace them.

Said it elsewhere- do some research on Checkout.com
What made it a headache to incorporate in Delaware?
I incorporated in Delaware, had no issues. Likewise simple enough to close down the company when that sad day came.

I know that some Western states have better privacy laws, but those are designed for setting up tax shelters, not corporations you hope to scale.

just search on HN about patio11's Stripe Atlas and several blogs talking about how much of a headache delaware is compared to other states
Look into Paddle. They handle payments, subscriptions, sales tax + invoicing and you can set your business up from virtually anywhere in the world. They act as a merchant of record, meaning they don't just calculate the tax owed they pay it on your behalf too. So even if there is a miscalculation, nobodys business is jeopardised and Paddle take full liability :) Shoot me an email if you want to chat nick.read@ paddle.com
Don't know if it works for your use case but I've been pretty happy with cardknox
Is Wyoming better in that respect?