Their Pitch
Financial infrastructure to grow your revenue.
Our Take
It's payment processing that connects your website to banks and credit cards. Handles the boring stuff like card encryption and fraud detection so you can focus on selling instead of wrestling with payment forms.
Deep Dive & Reality Check
Used For
- +**Your payment forms abandon at checkout because they look sketchy** → Stripe's checkout looks professional and supports Apple Pay, Google Pay for one-click purchases
- +**You're manually chasing customers for expired credit cards** → Auto-updates card details and retries failed payments using machine learning
- +**Building a marketplace but can't figure out how to split payments** → Stripe Connect handles payouts to multiple sellers automatically
- +Supports 135+ currencies and local payment methods — no "sorry, we don't take your money" situations
- +Fraud detection that learns from millions of transactions — blocks bad guys without blocking good customers
Best For
- >Your current payment setup keeps declining good customers and you're losing sales
- >Building a SaaS or marketplace and need subscriptions that actually work
- >PayPal's clunky checkout is killing your conversion rates
Not For
- -Coffee shops or small retailers under $1,000/month — the 2.9% + 30¢ fees will eat your margins alive
- -Anyone wanting simple drag-and-drop setup — this is built for developers, you'll need coding or a developer
- -Brick-and-mortar stores needing point-of-sale — Stripe is web-first, get Square for in-person sales
Pairs With
- *React/Next.js (where you embed Stripe's checkout components so customers can actually pay)
- *Webhooks endpoint (your server needs to listen for "payment succeeded" events or orders get lost)
- *PostgreSQL (to store customer and subscription data that Stripe sends back)
- *Slack (where your team gets notifications about failed payments and chargebacks)
- *QuickBooks (for accounting, though you'll export transaction data manually)
- *Mailchimp (to email customers when their card expires or payment fails)
The Catch
- !The 2.9% + 30¢ is just the start — currency conversion adds 1-2%, fraud protection costs extra 5¢ per transaction, and chargebacks are $15 each
- !You'll need someone technical to set up webhooks or payments will randomly fail and you won't know why
- !International fees and currency conversion can double your costs if you're selling globally
Bottom Line
The developer's favorite payment processor — powerful but you'll pay enterprise prices even for your side project.