[MBCook]

That's what a company I worked with did, and I thought it was a bad decision.

The per-transaction fees are lower, but there is a monthly (or yearly) cost. The API is big because it covers so many cases that you probably won't use.

Plus there are fees. Sure, they'll let you do e-checks (every customer wants those, right?), but that's a fee. Return? That's a fee. Chargeback? Fee. Process transactions in real-time instead of a batch at the end of the day? Fee. Log into the web interface? It's free, but it kinda slow and hard to use so you'll waste far more time that you would expect.

If you've got a business that does a lot of sales, or sales of very hight dollar items, that kind of thing can really add up. But if your sales are smaller or much more sporadic then the time investment and all the little fees may end up making Stripe cheaper. Sometime an extra 1% more than pays you back in lack of stress.

Also, for what it's worth, I remember PayPal, Google Checkout, and Amazon all being roughly the same as Stripe.

[dusing]

I would use stripe for my products store but with authorize.net we are on 1 day delay deposits. Stripe is 7 days. With seasonal sales and inventory/advertising costs 7 business days is a long time.

We use stripe for everything else we build for clients though, and it's awesome.

[sulife]

You can negotiate all those BS fees to $0. For example.. I pay 0.1% + interchange. $0.05 per transaction gateway fee and $0.10 cc trans fee (includes AVS). $5/mo base fee. NOTHING ELSE (well chargeback fees, everywhere has that).

You have no clue what you're talking about. I guarantee Stripe will charge you CB fees too.

Only way Stripe is worth the time and % they jack it up is if you do LOW volume.

edit: 5 seconds in google and Stripe charges $15 for a chargeback, same as Chase. Basically paying Stripe 1% + another $0.15 or so per transaction. NO THANKS! No one doing any type of CC volume would be dumb enough to give that $ away.

[dusing]

You have it right, the key for stripe is LOW volume.