In middle of a stripe Shakedown and feel like I this is something to warn others of.
We rent vehicles and implemented stripe in 2017. We process a massive volume and must have spent 1B+ with stripe so far.
We love stripe, the tools the software ect. But recently they have been closer to a mob boss than a vendor as they must know their customers are highly locked in.
Over time, our deal evolved into a multi‑year minimum annual fee commitment with “enterprise” pricing. On every renewal, the pattern has been:
Stripe pushes the minimum annual fees higher.
If we don’t naturally hit that minimum, they expect us to burn the difference on add‑on products and “nice to have” features just to satisfy the commit.
We’re warned that if we don’t find a way to hit the minimum, they can just take the full amount out of revenue.
What I would think of before picking stripe.
Make your integration portable. Don't use vender form/card logic. 2. Use an invoices platform that can easily switch card provider. 3. Push back on the small yearly minimum, as they will just raise it next time instead of focusing on you making more money stripe focuses on itself.
To anyone working at stripe, you guys built an awesome product, just wish you could maintain the culture that got you to where you are.
Good luck
At my company, we started off with Stripe since the API's make it very easy to get started, but since then we have added backup integrations with Adyen and Fis. Stripe API's are still the gold standard, but as you have experienced, that vendor lock in limits your options when they decide to jack up prices.
For businesses that do recurring payments/subscription, one important consideration when you get started is whether you can port out the tokenized card data if you do decide to move to a different processor. Definitely don't want to have to ask subscribers to re-enter their card details because the payment details they provided via Stripe cannot be ported.
What they're looking for is ongoing access to our bank account data, including current and historical balances, full transaction history, and account metadata. They explicitly say this data can be shared with third parties. This goes well beyond traditional payment processing and is closer to applying for a loan or credit product, except it's being framed as a general account requirement, and perpetually ongoing.
It's kind of insane, tbh. We've signed up with PayPal/Braintree and Authorize.Net and are thinking that we might make the switch next week.
Your "we had no idea" "advice to others: add redundancy to payments stack" is what, supposed to be sage advice? It's sort of basic SOP.
If you guys agreed to the gouge and are now playing victim, are we supposed to cry for your stupidity? I'm sorry. Not sorry, it's business. Not saying "stripe sales are right" just "you get what you sign up for". Dont' be a fool then come looking for sympathy and blaming, you exp[ect the competitive marketplace to grant you passage and add gold with no loss? Bah! Double bah! Triple humbug!
Your post may curry favor with devs (those innocents, those pure-of-heart) but those "at the corp level" will not be so easily fooled, deceiver!
I'm only slightly joking.
You can maybe use them for a quick prototype because the APIs/SDK just work well, but for anything serious look for alternatives.