PayPal ruled for years when we are talking about payment gateways or credit card processors. We had only PayPal to accept payments from customers because there was no other choice. But that’s not the case anymore— we have Stripe. Stripe is the love of developers, and it’s highly flexible API integrates easily into your business website without any complex coding. For online stores, e-commerce websites, small business startups, and sites running WooCommerce, Stripe is an ideal payment processing solution.
What is Stripe?
Stripe was officially launched back in 2011 with a motive to make payments processing smooth and transparent. Since that day, Stripe started to beat its competitors. It also gathered massive funding and got 4th position on Forbes Cloud 100 after 5 years of its launch. Stripe is a highly secure, API integration platform. Just because of its API’s simplicity, thousands of developers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners recommend Stripe.
What makes Stripe so special?
The facts and figures speak for themselves. Stripe handles 135 international currencies, which makes it an ideal platform for people doing business worldwide. Furthermore, the transaction costs are lower, cheaper, and the fee structure is easier to understand. There are many payment gateways to choose from, but Stripe does not charge you for authorizing cards, no gimmicks, and no hidden fees. The biggest e-commerce giants like Amazon, Salesforce, Shopify, Expedia, and Didi, to name a few, use Stripe, which makes it stand out from the crowd.
Long story short, Stripe is a full-stack payment processor.
Stripe Integration
Stripe is a payment processor that fits in every business. It has automatic card updates, multiple libraries, and a custom UI toolkit to make your business transaction hassle-free. Stripe supports both web and mobile integration. Whether you have a mobile or web-based app, you can integrate Stripe payments with Stripe’s tool known as Stripe Terminal.
A stripe payment gateway can be integrated if your app is designed in any of the following languages or frameworks:
- Ruby
- Python
- Laravel
- WordPress
- Codeigniter
- Android
- iOS
- ASP.Net
- React.js
- Node.js
Fortunately, there are tutorials for each integration on Stripe’s docs website. Now, if we talk about other payment processors and credit card providers, Stripe integrates with almost every popular payment processor, for instance, Apple Pay, Microsoft Pay, American Express, AliPay, VISA, and MasterCard.
Why is Stripe Best for Your Business?
Stripe is focused on becoming the best payment gateway for small and medium businesses. Security means everything, and Stripe does not compromise on it. If you are using Stripe for accepting payments, you are moving your business to the future. Here are some of the best features that’ll make you fall in love with Stripe.
i). Subscription Billing
Billing customers accurately is the most crucial part of your business. Billing errors frustrate customers, to be honest. Fortunately, Stripe offers you the fastest and error-free billing system along with invoicing and subscriptions. Subscriptions increase the business revenue-making easy for customers to pay recurring payments. It means a customer will provide the relevant payment information, and he’ll be charged automatically for all future purchases. Each customer can have up to 500 active or scheduled subscriptions.
ii). Fraud Prevention
E-commerce businesses and Saas companies encounter fraudulent activities on a massive scale. Fraud is an unpleasant surprise that comes from nowhere and costs you a lot of business damages. Every company that accepts payments can be compromised anytime because there are no strong actions to prevent fraud. However, Stripe has a dedicated team of expert fraud analysts to hunt fraudulent transactions. Stripe’s fraud prevention system is known as Stripe Radar. Stripe has expanded its fraud detection systems with the help of powerful machine learning algorithms. Stripe also provides two-factor authentication to make sure both sellers and buyers are protected.
iii). 135+ Currencies
Stripe plays a key role in your business growth. The best part is, it supports more than 135 currencies worldwide. More surprisingly, a customer can pay in his native currency, and you’ll get payment in yours. Stripe will handle all the backend hurdles; you’ll never have to worry about it. It means massive sales if your business has a global footprint. There is a key aspect to remember that there will be some additional charges if the buyer and seller currencies differ. The credit card company may impose a foreign exchange fee. If you want to know more about Stripe currencies, I’d recommend reading this guide.
iv). Flexible Invoicing
There are a series of steps invoices are processed through. You can cancel, delete, or undo an invoice anytime, known as voiding an invoice. For records, Stripe keeps records of every invoice, whether it was paid or not. If customers can not pay for certain reasons, such invoices are categorized as uncollectible invoices. When payments are successfully processed, Stripe marks them as paid invoices. So, you’ll have a clear picture regarding every invoice before finalizing it and sending it to the customer.
v). Quick Startup Launch— Stripe Atlas
Stripe is endorsed by the world’s popular entrepreneurs and investors. If you are going to launch your next digital business startup, Stripe Atlas has got your back. Startup businesses using Stripe Atlas have collected more than USD 2 billion in funding. Launching a startup has never been an easy job. A lot of paperwork is required, and legal documents need to be created. Stripe Atlas setup fee is $500 from submitting the legal documents to successfully registering the company.
Stripe Atlas is your sincere partner in your next business adventure.
vi). Feature-rich User Experience
The stripe dashboard offers you the best user experience to control all the financial activities. It’s a single platform fully equipped with charts, numbers, and analytics to monitor the business transactions. You can view the whole summary about the successful payments, sales volume, new customers, estimated future payouts, other connected accounts, subscriptions, and total balance. You can also leverage the dashboard access and share the restricted or full access with other team members.
vii). Pay as You Go— No Monthly Fee
There are no setup fees or monthly charges in Stripe. The sign up is free, and you’ll get hundreds of features, including real-time reporting, unified payouts, deposit tagging, SDKs, 450+ extensions, and embedded checkouts. Stripe charges 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card charge for all the cards and digital wallets. As your business grows, you will get a discount on large volumes of payments. Pay as you go is the best payment model because you’ll never get over-charged. You need to pay for the service you’ve used actually.
Wrap Up
Stripe is the love of entrepreneurs, successful working women, developers, and freelance content creators. Since 2010, Stripe focused on building a developer-first payment solution. It was Stripe that helped merchants to launch their startups and sell the merchandise online instantly. Before Stripe, getting a merchant account wasn’t easy. It was a nightmare because hundreds of pages of paperwork, days of waiting, and sometimes follow up documentation was needed. Since the launch of Stripe, e-commerce businesses have grown massively. Now with the help of Stripe, you can quickly launch your company, sell around the globe and start making cross-border payments.
Stripe is the No.1 choice of developers.
