Well for an expats, it's really a gamechanger not having to play three card monte selecting the correct card to use for each transaction. You would be surprised how many transactions are (accidentally?) geofenced based on where your card is issued from, and Paypal pretty much solves these.
Similar same happened to me, but in my country. I got a virtual stripe card to pay for the conference I was supposed to attend to and the fixing of problems took like five business days
Not good. Stripe rejects anyone even close to the regulated cannabis space (with no room for appeal) but PayPal will accept these tranctions. So, this would put a non-zero amount of businesses (that don't even touch that deadly, deadly plant) in a tight spot with this monopolisation of the industry.
> but their banks/underwriters do not have a limitless appetite for risk.
I'm trying not to be snarky here, but I really can't believe anyone can truly believe this.
They almost blew up the global financial system. About once every two decades. What's the risk of accepting some transactions related to weed? (They can always charge more to offset the risk)
It's not about financial risk, it's simply an attempt to exert control over what people could do with their own money.
Someone new will arise to fill the market gap if there is demand. Saw it firsthand here with the Marijuana industry in Michigan shifting around payment providers to accept credit card transactions after it was legalized. A lot of hoops had to be jumped through. I think it still has the potential to be bad, but it does give opportunities.
> Stripe hit a $159 billion valuation on Tuesday and said it was on track to reach an annual run rate of $1 billion this year.
Wow! This is the quality of reporting from CNBC? The $1B ARR number is just for Stripe's Revenue products (Billing, Invoicing, etc). That doesn't include their main business (payments-related products).
Maybe if you're being pedantic but let's assume they generate $1B to $3B in payments revenue on top of that non payments ARR. I don't see why you'd assume the former isn't likely to grow and so you might as well think of it as recurring. It's just low margin.
In this case they reported Stripe's annual run rate — a metric that's roughly comparable to annual recurring revenue, but for non-recurring business models.
Stripe and PayPal have pretty different sets of tradeoffs. There's plenty of reasons to dislike both, but at least right now you get a choice between them. I really hope they won't merge.
It's hard to turn a sinking product around. There's a cultural problem, and those are very difficult to solve.
There's a Munger quote that I don't quite remember, but it went something like this: "When good managers are put into a terrible culture, it's the culture that wins."
When a manager with a reputation for brilliance takes on a business with a reputation for poor economics it’s the reputation of the business that remains intact
When Seagate (then a reputable hard drive manufacturer) purchased Maxtor (then the bottom-of-the-barrel for both price and reliability) I hoped Seagate would rehabilitate their newly acquired facilities and bring them up to the same quality.
I used to live in the United States and recently moved to Germany. Using PayPal for payments is a lot more common here than Germany. In fact I connected my Uber account to my credit card via PayPal and my partner pays for a lot of things online via PayPal.
PayPal is also used for transferring money between friends and family quite frequently
I have been trying to help someone in Guatemala receive payments from international tourists and PayPal seems to be the best option we've found, even though I don't like using it (horror stories about money being stranded in locked account, etc).
> Dutch people always complain that in Germany they can't use their phones to pay.
I pay p much everywhere with my phone using the Sparkasse apps NFC payment. Maybe it's a north/south divide (assuming the dutch are mostly visiting the north, as I am in the south).
Stripe is overvalued by about 10x judging by Block and PayPal.
Best case scenario: Stripe gets larger, gets bloated, slower, eats some competitors, becomes their competitors. The street presses down on their valuation as their growth races toward single digits. Congratulations.
Block is fetching ~13 times op income. PayPal is fetching ~7 times op income.
Not sure about Block and Paypal, but AFAIK a good portion of transactions on Stripe are made as part of recurring subscriptions or similar. Those can't be migrated to other services easily, so for the time being Stripe will likely continue profiting from them and from the growth of whatever businesses use it for such subscriptions.
People always want the upstart hotness. Look at the shiny growth (which is meaningless if they're just going to end as a slow growth obese giant anyway, it's all rinse & repeat).
Maybe Stripe sees the end writing on the wall and they're going for it while the bubbly action is there.
Readit News
For example, when you're traveling abroad and can't buy a service online with your card, you can be 95% sure that Stripe is the payment processor.
Stripe doesn't want to reject anyone, but their banks/underwriters do not have a limitless appetite for risk.
I'm trying not to be snarky here, but I really can't believe anyone can truly believe this.
They almost blew up the global financial system. About once every two decades. What's the risk of accepting some transactions related to weed? (They can always charge more to offset the risk)
It's not about financial risk, it's simply an attempt to exert control over what people could do with their own money.
"Sorry, your Stripe account got closed because of 'crowdfunding' because you dared link it to a Ko-Fi account."
And that's how I lost my Stripe account...
Wow! This is the quality of reporting from CNBC? The $1B ARR number is just for Stripe's Revenue products (Billing, Invoicing, etc). That doesn't include their main business (payments-related products).
Still a rich multiple at 40-70x
I feel like PayPal is slowly degrading, I hope Stripe would find a way to modernize it.
There's a Munger quote that I don't quite remember, but it went something like this: "When good managers are put into a terrible culture, it's the culture that wins."
I was disappointed.
PayPal is also used for transferring money between friends and family quite frequently
I think the reasoning was to be less dependent on the US. I hope to see it exceed – more competition is great.
I pay p much everywhere with my phone using the Sparkasse apps NFC payment. Maybe it's a north/south divide (assuming the dutch are mostly visiting the north, as I am in the south).
Best case scenario: Stripe gets larger, gets bloated, slower, eats some competitors, becomes their competitors. The street presses down on their valuation as their growth races toward single digits. Congratulations.
Block is fetching ~13 times op income. PayPal is fetching ~7 times op income.
Maybe Stripe sees the end writing on the wall and they're going for it while the bubbly action is there.
I am curious what changed in 2 years to reach $159 valuation and assuming deal goes through, how they fund PayPal buyout.