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Many digital startups use platforms like WordPress or Shopify for their web presence and online sales. In our article on MVP apps we highlighted the use cases and potential of these products for entrepreneurs starting a business, and a lot of money can be made.
Developers hook up their websites to the APIs of different providers all the time and rely on third parties to manage their payments. You need to make sure your payment provider gives an adequate range of payment options for your customers. You need to know you can run recurring payments if needed. Do you need to be able to operate an escrow service?
Is your payment method going to have to act like a business bank account? What about dashboards to manage payments? Fortunately, the market has matured nicely and there are plenty of services which make payment quick and easy for the consumer while also hitting the features you need along the way. Stripe — An excellent option for a brand new digital startup.
Stripe helps you establish the business and grow it. Paypal — A useful addition to have on your site. They offer a good loans package to companies looking to expand.
Be wary of the high transaction rates when your revenue increases. Braintree — Enterprise customers should navigate here. It provides all the payment services of Stripe while also delivering Paypal and low currency conversion rates. Probably not the option for non-techies. Stripe is a well known platform and does a lot of the things you would expect.
It accepts the major credit cards and debit cards while also accepting some more obscure forms of payment like:. The inclusion of Bitcoin shows the edge of this willingness to explore new areas. In our article on organizational structure , we noted that certain innovative companies like Buffer were even paying their staff with it. The question will be whether more cryptocurrencies like Etherium, LiteCoin, or others start being adopted by existing payment platforms also.
Only time will tell. Think of a company paying staff on the same day. These additions, Bitcoin and ACH, show the role these payment platforms are taking in the market: Stripe are also often commended for their API , which is one of the factors which gave them an early edge over competitors like Paypal. Now, one big area where Stripe seem to be leading the pack is with their value added services.
Stripe offer assistance with a whole range of business operations as part of their services. They sell themselves on being able to provide this service to companies all over the world, complete in just a couple of days.
The claim is that they can take all that effort and just standardize the process for you; automating aspects. Combine Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and what do you get? The real innovator in the payment platform game , Paypal, was the company which took digital payment processing mainstream. Paypal provides a very streamlined and frictionless payment experience. Paypal has a full service approach, giving you the ability to track and monitor your money coming in and out.
However, it targets a lot of its business services at small or medium sized businesses while it pushes enterprises over to Braintree — similar to the old relationship between Mailchimp and Mandrill.
As a result, the reporting and tracking features may not alway be top of the market. One area where Paypal are looking to provide added value is in the provision of company loans. This option is a little different to the rest. While Square perform most of the same services as Stripe or Braintree, the real unique selling point of Square is their point of sale POS system.
Square sends you a card reader on signing up contactless readers come at a fee and provides you with the software you need to manage an offline store. Square accept all the normal credit and debit cards you would expect. They structure their service so that it can manage physical sales of goods and things like professional services.
Their calendar and booking system is geared for service provision, allowing a customer to book and pay online easily and simply. These elements distinguish Square from other providers and open up the potential use cases.
More than this, Square also has added value services geared towards assisting entrepreneurs which are not too dissimilar to the Paypal loans system we mentioned above. Square offers virtual loans based on your business performance. Considering all your sales activity is being routed through their platform, they are able to leverage machine learning to calculate what kind of loan they could offer you — and that you could afford to pay.
On your Square dashboard, you would be able to click to see if there are loans offered to you. As your business grows, these loans will automatically change to reflect your improved performance. The application takes only a few clicks and, if approved, the money drops into your account on the next business day. You can also pre-pay at no additional cost. Braintree is very much a Stripe competitor. First, Braintree bought Venmo, then Paypal bought Braintree. Being owned by Paypal, which is in turn owned by Ebay, has helped catapult Braintree into larger and larger market shares.
In terms of features, Braintree has a number of similarities to Stripe. All the major credit and debit cards, plus:. This has led to its strong performance in the enterprise space, though Braintree works equally well for small businesses too.
Other elements like fraud protection and support for recurring billing all fall under the remit of provided services, too. The fact that they operate in almost double the countries Stripe do gives them an edge, but their array of value added services is lower.
However, when processing large volume, small margins quickly add up. Stripe charge no monthly fee for their service, instead taking a transaction fee of 2. One of the higher rates for currency conversion. The first tier is based around adding a portal to your website through HTML. For this portal, there is no monthly cost and a variable transaction rate depending on your monthly volume; ranging from 3. Above that, they recommend a custom quote. The final product is aimed at customers who have an existing credit card processing system in place and just want to add Paypal to that.
This is a free API access with the same transaction rates as the free portal. For chip and pin or contactless physical sales , there is no monthly fee and Paypal list the pricing as:. Square sends you a magstripe reader for free , but upgrading your equipment comes with a little add on cost:. Of course, Square provide software and loans based on your sales volumes through their system, so there is an argument to say that sticking with Square past that point could be a wise decision also.
Yet again, Braintree come in at the same price points as Stripe:. However, Braintree have a couple of distinguishing factors. Stripe offer discounts for large volume sales, but customers are paying the transaction fees from the first sale. The real killer, though, is the currency conversion rates. Given that Braintree operates in 45 countries, it makes sense that they would want to try to be more price-friendly to international sales. For an enterprise company with huge volume, that saving of an entire percentage point could prove very lucrative indeed.
Stripe make everything easy. Their Stripe Atlas service is possibly the easiest way to start a US corporation , and certainly the easiest way to do it for a non-US citizen. Plus a number more. As a result, non-techies can employ Stripe on their websites and small businesses too. Even if the API gives a great degree more custom opportunities….
When it comes to ease of use, Paypal has a number of advantages. Additionally, it has a large number of integrations and partners; not limited to:. Given how established Paypal is in the industry, it should be no surprise that almost everything gives you a way to integrate with it. For small businesses, the UX and UI of the Paypal platform makes it easy to navigate and understand how your business is ticking over. The whole process presents a simple way for non technical folk to engage with it.
The point of sale software is designed to be as easy as possible for a user as the staff who interact with it will be waiters and shopkeepers , not developers. Think managing inventory, vendors, and wages. Given that Braintree are geared towards enterprises and developers, ease of use may not score highly.
However, it depends on what we mean by ease of use. For native mobile integration, it also gives you not just the ability to customize the UI of the checkout experience, but assistance in doing so. Developers may want to check out their Custom UI , Hosted Fields , or their DropIn UI for a streamlined way to integrate the payment platform stylishly into your application.
The control panel gives you complete oversight over what is coming in and out, with the ability to create webhooks to deliver notifications regarding certain activities. As far as ease of use goes, as long as you have a dedicated developer on staff then the platform can give you everything with no problem.
Stripe is a great option for a range of use cases and the API allows for a well customized ecommerce process. Stripe is not great for companies looking to make offline sales or companies that want to accept Paypal through the same system. Stripe is a very powerful solution to many business needs and could be a very good option for a new business just starting up and wanting an infrastructure in which to scale. Paypal is a full payment platform which accepts payments online and off with a much more frictionless experience for the customer.
Square provides similar services to Stripe and Braintree but is a little less cost effective at scale.