Thanks for your support! Today Stripe really only supports US bank accounts. But they are working really hard to make it available outside the US. You can submit your information to Stripe and they are trying to keep people updated. We had to do a lot around getting ourselves setup in the States to use it for our own invoicing, but it was worth it :)
We are working hard to make Stripe available outside the United States.
What does this even mean? You've been saying this for a long time now. Is there really no other status update besides this? Why not be a bit more transparent about the process to people who want to give you money?
Because people who say "Do this, I want to give you money" often turn out to:
a. Not really have money to give.
b. Not really want to give money.
And frankly, "getting money" is probably low on Katherine's list right now. She has a product roadmap that she's executing on and doesn't want to be pulled away from. The money stuff will come later if she charts the right course.
It's counterintuitive at first, but as an entrepreneur, once you get burned a few times creating a feature or changing course due to a request from "someone who wants to give you money", you start learning to tune out the folks who demand stuff with that kind of domineering urgency. I've found this very difficult on my end and have people on my team help spot when to tune people out so I can get better at it.
(For the record, I'm not talking about Katherine's business; I'm talking about Stripe.)
I'm not disputing that, and I totally agree with your points, however unrelated to my questions they are. I'm not even going to use Stripe (as I have nothing that could utilise it at present), but I keep seeing that line appear over and over on this site.
People are going to get tired of being led on at some point. Something as simple as "We're handling regulatory/bureaucratic issue X at present in country Y" would be tremendously transparent compared to their handling of the situation at present.
They raised a gajillion dollars from A-list investors and have the most incredible team I've ever seen on their "About" page. That's enough for me to think they'll figure it out and to give them time.
The combination of the two services is about a 5% cut. As a non-developer, this combination looks appealing (I'm still waiting for someone to completely kill paypal), but that's a pretty big cut.
Maybe I should just spend a few weeks learning to program instead :)
This is Katherine, Co-Founder of ShopLocket. Definitely understand where you are coming from in terms of fees. We've thought a lot about this. What we ended up doing for the pricing model is very much taking a cue from other services like Eventbrite, Etsy, and even lower plans on Shopify. Some competitors bring both there fees and the processing fees together, but it still usually ends up around 5%. This is actually a lot lower than tradition Marketplaces, say eBay that will charge much larger percentages. We're certainly open to feedback though!
thanks for replying. i guess my biggest question is what really differentiates you from shopify then?
I have a shopify store for an e-commerce site I run and a wazala store (don't ask) to sell apparel items related to a blog I run. While shopify is great, but if i was going to pay the 5% or so percentage fee, I'd probably spring for shopify's fuller featured site capabilities over shoplocket.
I get the lower setup fee for Shoplocket, but when I heard of Shoplocket, I was really hoping i'd be able to use this as a lower-cost, less-featured alternative to shopify that was less expensive as well so i could finally get rid of Wazala and host stuff on my site.
I still might give it a try - I'm really anxious to get rid of wazala, but it'd be interesting to know your ideal customer usage of the product.
Shoplocket (I would guess) has a lot of users who are using it to sell retail items - which unlike app stores sales - have incremental costs as you sell more and more products. That 5% cuts into the margin of each item as opposed to an app that has a certain development cost and then no additional costs for increased sales (other than support + updates which would have to be done one way or another).
They're also not providing distribution, which Apple does.
Not wanting to rain on your parade but here's some feedback on the www.shoplocket.com site: the out of focus images hurt my eyes. Please designers, keep it sharp! Why is the "Buy" not centered vertically in the example buttons?
If any one has tried out the actually connect with Stripe flow we'd love your feedback on the process!! Think connect with facebook, for merchant accounts. This is Katherine from Shoplocket, btw :)
Hijack warning: this seemed like a potentially relevant thread to a service I am looking for so I'm just going to post it in case any HN readers know of or provide this service.
I'm looking for an online service that can automate our order processing workflow.
Our current workflow is:
(For additional clarity, I am surrounding separate entities in [ ])
[Distributor emails] a Purchase Order to [OurCompany]
[OurCompany] forwards this Purchase Order to the appropriate [3rd Party Warehouse], who then picks and ships the order to the [Distributor]
[3rd Party Warehouse] sends [OurCompany] a Bill of Lading confirming product shipment
[OurCompany] forwards this Bill of Lading to [Distributor]
[OurCompany] invoices [Distributor] based on Bill of Lading (using QuickBooks)
I'm trying to find a service that will help us automate this, totally or partially, via a centralized website & automated emails.
More related, ShopLocket has been working extremely hard, and their site looks great.