Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bidandanswer 882 days ago
Stripe takes a hefty cut. Use USDC. Costs a fraction of a penny and settles in less than a second.
4 comments

Still shilling crypto even in 2024 ?
Standard Stripe fees on $250k revenue:

- 2.9% + 30¢ per charge

- Assume net-30 invoices

- Total fees: 2.9% * $250k + 30¢ * 12 = $7,253.60

- Stripe can freeze your money arbitrarily and indefinitely

Standard USDC fees on Solana:

- Less than 1 cent per transaction

- Total fees: < 12¢

What's your argument?

Red flags which crypotocurrency may raise for a client aside, isn't it higher friction for the vast majority of companies?

It's hard enough to get clients, but then to have to say.. oh, also please use this other payment system which I will likely have to walk you through setting up once you clear it with accounting?

In my experience, clients have asked me if it's alright to pay me in USDC, not the other way around.

The genie's out of the bottle. Once your funds are on chain, you have instant settlement, zero fees, and zero risk of an intermediary arbitrarily freezing your funds. No point in going back, unless your counterparty demands it.

That's interesting, what industries do your clients work in?
Trading and finance. It makes sense that they are crypto friendly, given their close proximity to it.

I suspect the rest of the commercial world will become much friendlier to it as more and more businesses are onboarded.

The pros vastly outweigh the cons and if you need something like escrow (or another trusted intermediary) then you can always revert to the legacy financial system for that. Both have their use cases.

Would it be correct to expand that the clients are in crypto-trading and crypto-finance?
For the most part big companies won't be paying via stripe anyway, but even if they did want to pay on credit card they certainly won't want to pay with cryptocurrency, even if it is a stable coin.
In my experience, that's not true.

I've accepted hundreds of thousands of USDC in revenue in other ventures.

I've also wired and accepted wires for similar amounts. Each time I get a call from the bank and it takes a half a day at the very least. Sometimes it takes weeks to unfreeze my money in various payment processors.

On chain, it's faster. It's cheaper.

Would love to see some stats on the number of companies that are prepared to use USDC vs bank transfers. I'm going to suspect it's low until proven otherwise.
And the number of companies that made use of computers was low when they first came out, despite the fact that the fledgling technology was genuinely valuable to them.

What's your point?

No explanation, just downvotes?

Standard Stripe fees on $250k revenue:

- 2.9% + 30¢ per charge

- Assume net-30 invoices

- Total fees: 2.9% * $250k + 30¢ * 12 = $7,253.60

- Stripe can freeze your money arbitrarily and indefinitely

Standard USDC fees on Solana:

- Less than 1 cent per transaction

- Total fees: < 12¢

Hint: It is not about the fees. The 3% fee is a much smaller problem to have than what the world of crypto brings. Oh and while we are at it, remind me how to get majority of customers to pay in crypto who are used to just credit cards or wires ?
> The 3% fee is a much smaller problem to have than what the world of crypto brings.

That's not an argument. Name the problems specifically.

> Oh and while we are at it, remind me how to get majority of customers to pay in crypto who are used to just credit cards or wires

There are tons of off-the-shelf checkout flows that allow customers to pay in cash and companies to receive the funds on chain.

Because 2.9% is just a cost of doing business. If it's that critical to your margins, raise your price to compensate for it. Adding friction by using crypto is likely to cost you far more than 2.9% by losing the contract altogether.
Okay. I have personally saved tens of thousands of dollars and hours of headache by just doing my business on chain.

How valuable is 2.9% of $1m+ to you?

Finding a client who wants to pay in crypto... priceless.
See my other comment. Not hard.

And it will only get easier as time goes on.

It's neither easy nor will it get easier.
All of the facts contradict you.

Two years ago I had to fend off contracts that paid in USDC.

It's easier to find someone to pay in USDC today than it was then.

Market share and volume will continue to grow.

What do you have against a genuinely useful technology with tangible benefits?

- Cheaper

- Faster

- No arbiter risk

- Built-in escape hatch for political dissidents and enemies of the state

If you want a trusted arbiter for all your financial transactions, you can continue to use the legacy financial system and pay the costs for doing so. I'm not arguing crypto will replace it. Both have their use case.

I have nothing against it but your anecdotal evidence isn't supported by the market.
Whining about downvotes is not likely to help. I replied to your original comment.