Stripe Reader

[posguy]

Stripe makes none of the hardware that is currently available (the BBPOS Chipper™ 2X BT or Verifone P400). Not sure which processing platform they are riding atop of these days (perhaps Tsys?) but we maintain a separate First Data account and CardConnect integration since Stripe's support for certain BINs of business cards is lacking. Said banks expect a breakdown of what was taxable to be sent along with the transaction, otherwise the transaction will be declined.

2.7% + $0.05 per transaction is expensive for in person payments. We are averaging 1.2% (since debit is so cheap) for our First Data account, with next day funding (Stripe has variable delivery, sometimes taking up to a week).

[edwinwee]

(I work at Stripe.) Keep in mind that Stripe Terminal has upfront pricing: there are no additional software, PCI compliance, or monthly fees (or even equipment lease payments!). When factoring in these additional fees that many legacy players charge on top of the payment processing, Terminal oftentimes has more favorable pricing (along with working alongside your existing online Stripe transactions).

If you want funds in minutes, we have Instant Payouts in the US, Canada, and Singapore now, which lets you cash out to a debit card right away for a small processing fee. Our standard bank transfers are limited by existing banking infrastucture (e.g. the ACH network), but most transfers land within 2 days.

For BINs support—I'm sorry for those issues. Would you be able to email me and I can see if we can work on this? [e-mail]

[Mandatum]

The best thing about Stripe was they made payment processors move. By showing them what good looks like, by showing them there's value in creating an easier, modern platform - their competitors are missing out on a massive market of SMB's that won't care enough for the 1.5% difference in costs.

Which is admittedly crazy, but there's a lot of people out there making purchasing and implementation decisions that don't really care about the bottom line.

[notwhereyouare]

I’m seeing something similar with my company. Around 1-1.5% for our transactions with next day funding.

Granted, we do pay a monthly fee that we wouldn’t with stripe. But with our volume, we are saving money

[joshstrange]

Yeah, I was excited about this news but I'm having a hard time not wanting to go with CardConnect and a Bolt reader due to the lower costs. I really like the Stripe docs but there are some products (including a would-be-cool-to-have feature of something I'm currently working on) that are just impossible with the fees Stripe charges. I would almost swallow the 2.9% if not for the $.30 hit per transaction. As it stands today I'm fully built on Stripe but after I prove it all works in "production" I'm considering switching to CC. While their docs suck in comparison there is just way too much money (and un-buildable-features) that are being left on the table when it comes to Stripe.

For reference: I use CC for my $dayJob and while it's far from as nice as Stripe in just about every way, it's easy enough to code against. Just be ok with having to build out more infrastructure and store more data on your end to get close to what Stripe provides. That said, I think I'm ok with that if it means not having to pay $0.30/transaction and the high %.

[dangerboysteve]

In Canada my wife was using https://www.helcim.com , they work with Elevon. Great service overall. We were paying an average of 1.9% for in-person chip and that was due to to all the reward cards and Amex. Interac debit (not visa debit) was 9 cents per transaction. Next day deposits as well.

[toomanybeersies]

Looks exactly like a Square reader [1].

I wouldn't be surprised if they're from the same OEM, just with different firmware.

[1] https://squareup.com/au/en/hardware/reader

[tdeck]

Came here to post this, but as a former Square employee I can tell you they designed the "puck" reader from scratch years ago and contracted directly with the manufacturers. Stripe clearly copied the industrial design but I'd imagine the internals are different. It will be interesting to see how Stripe fares with this - in person payments are a very different ball game than online. PayPal and Amazon have tried with what seems to be limited success.

[blackguardx]

Square designs all their own stuff. It looks similar because Square did a good job on their chip reader and because there are only so many ways you can make a chip reader without a keypad.

[adamrezich]

I remember ordering a free one of those before I even had a smartphone, back when I only had an iPod touch! I must still have it in a drawer somewhere

[runawaybottle]

That’s because Stripe is coming for their lunch.

[andrethegiant]

Is it just me or has Stripe come out with like 4 new products in the last month?

[ibraheemdev]

Stripe Tax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27459712 - 6 days ago

Stripe Identity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27502993 - 2 days ago

Stripe Terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534884 - 3 hours ago

Stripe Reader - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534156 - 2 hours ago

[jonespen]

I guess this went under the radar (heh), but they also introduced a new React component called Stripe Payment Element, to help with local payment methods around the world: https://twitter.com/jordanstaniscia/status/14052064129473822...

[e28eta]

I think the push of announcements is linked to Stripe Sessions: https://sessions.stripe.com/

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

With a value of $95B, they are the largest yc alum now. They can afford to invest in building lots of new products.

[colinmcd]

They're announcing these in anticipation for Stripe Sessions, a two-week developer conference of sorts. [0]

[0] https://sessions.stripe.com/

[bnt]

Impending IPO?

[ronyfadel]

I guess it’s related to the IPO? A good time to scratch off low hanging fruits from your product roadmap to beef up your offering.

[ffggvv]

think they had their big yearly conference where they announce all their new stuff, so it isnt like they are just madly executing and releasing new products everyday in general.

[agnesv]

Not just you, saw multiple of their new products on HN

[thawab]

Visa has a product where businesses accept contactless payments on Any NFC-enabled Android phone[1]. I thought that might be something stripe go after instead of it's own hardware. Interested to know why.

[1]https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...

[iamacyborg]

PIN on Glass is the endgame here, where any mobile device can effectively become a full featured payment terminal.

From experience there's still a large mental barrier from folks willing to process a payment on an individual's mobile device though. Some degree of separate physical widget provides more trust to the transaction.

/edit

Neat, it looks like the company I used to work for finally released their offering to the market.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/dojo-becomes...

[barrkel]

The most common scenario in which I've made NFC payments to non-fixed points of sale is with street market stalls. Food trucks and the like.

There, vendors would prefer to have a cheap NFC terminal to take card payments than have to leave a much more expensive phone within public reach to take payments. Opportunistic thieves wouldn't find much value in an NFC terminal even if it isn't very cheap.

[ThatPlayer]

According to the video, it is end to end encrypted. So I could see it easier on PCI compliance if my phone never actually gets unencrypted credit card numbers.

[542458]

If you punch “1337” into the pinpad it redirects you to their jobs page - cute.

[J5892]

I came to the comments solely to see if anyone found secret codes.

Edit:

Found the key sequence handling code

  addToKeySequence(t) {
        if (this.keySequence.push(t),
        this.insertCardScreen.createShowDotsAnimation(this.keySequence.length).play(),
        this.keySequence.length < 4)
            this.insertCardScreen.createHideLogosAnimation().play();
        else {
            switch (this.keySequence.join("")) {
            case "1337":
                this.handleWpp();
                break;
            case "4242":
                this.handleInsertCard();
                break;
            default:
                this.handleInvalidCode()
            }
            this.keySequence.length = 0
        }
    }

[dang]

I merged this comment into this thread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534884 but I'm not sure if it belongs here or there.

[random3]

Also cute: "1649 roles across all locations and all teams."

[user3939382]

Is it my imagination, or do the offerings from Square and Stripe continue to converge?

[edwinwee]

(I work at Stripe.) The offerings are meant for different use-cases. Stripe Terminal’s great for developers looking to deploy in-person payments at tech-forward companies. Square’s great for coffee shops and other SMBs!

[ksec]

I was curious and look up Square, they dont tend to go on news headline as much as stripe in tech circle.

I didn't know they went IPO, and they have a market cap of ~$100B. Wow.

[dangwu]

It shouldn’t be surprising. That’s how you steal customers.

[pbreit]

Surprisingly they have not encroached much on each other’s business, particularly Square moving very slowly into card-not-present.

[swah]

I don't remember ever "swiping" a card and I'm in Brazil - in there any other market than US for this?

[elric]

The last time I had to swipe a card in Belgium was in the 1990s. That was swipe-and-pin. At no point in my life have I ever had to sign a manual signature for a payment.

Lately contactless payments (with and without pin) have been gaining in popularity. Most payment terminals now support them. I'm sure there's a market for Stripe Reader in the US, but I can't imagine there being one over here. Unless they're a lot cheaper than the current providers; or they start accepting a lot more payment methods.

[JshWright]

You say that as if "the US" isn't a big enough market to justify a product (swiping is pretty rare in the US as well though, EMV is pretty universal, and contactless is gaining ground quickly).

[themoose8]

Americans travel with their cards, too

[eloisant]

I don't really see what that bring compared to Stripe Terminal.

Other than the fact that it doesn't have a keyboard for typing PIN code, which makes the chip reader useless for many cards (all of them in France at least).

[sydthrowaway]

Funny.. I always get confused between Stripe and Square. This won't help.

[vmception]

Beat me to it

and I get the impression that Square already has decent saturation in point of sale systems. Anyone that wasn't already vendor locked, or would have been cash only, is using Square already. Other the past year I've seen many leapfrog that straight to Venmo (haven't seen any vendors using Square's Cashapp personally). If you aren't in the system you're illiquid.

[bluewalt]

It's been almost 3 years Stripe Terminal has been announced and still no announcement for an actual release in Europe. As it was scheduled for the end of 2020 at the beginning, but "undefined" by now, it seems the Stripe teams encounter important difficulties.

After 5 requests to support, I'm sure they don't want to communicate clearly for a deployment in Europe, and this is hence a no go to choose Stripe as a payment solution to develop stuff like modern POS software. What a pity, I like Stripe so much...

[edwinwee]

We’re working on Europe now and Terminal will available soon! Could you email me and I can keep you in the loop? [e-mail]

[orliesaurus]

How do you enter a PIN code? i.e. Wholefoods accepts contactless payments and then guess what...you need a PIN code.

I guess an app somewhere (like on a phone or iPad) needs to be handed over to you to do that...? I really dislike PIN code backed payments, the whole touchless/contactless experience should be as fast as paying for the "tube" in London with an Oyster IMHO

[posguy]

PIN entry (for PIN Debit, Healthcare Savings Account, EBT, WIC) is not supported on the Stripe Reader M2 as there is no PCI-DSS compliant PIN Pad.

PIN Pads have the underwriting bank's encryption keys injected into them at a secure facility, and these pads have anti-tamper features (think thin ribbon cables that tear when opened, contact sensors to detect case opening, heat and vibration sensors, all battery backed where if the battery dies the PIN Pad is toast).

[jackson1442]

Generally mobile/web based payments don’t require PIN. I’ve never been prompted on a Square or Toast machine— only place I’ve ever been asked is on a traditional PINpad and Clover machines.

[chubs]

Pin is to be entered on the merchant's phone. The standard is called 'Pin On Glass' in the industry. Hope that helps :)

[ElFitz]

It may be inconvenient, but the main point is to help prevent someone from emptying our bank accounts by merely stealing our debit cards or walking around with a contactless payment terminal in the tube.

[throwkeep]

Please let us plebs invest in Stripe already!

[pimlottc]

How is this different / better than existing readers, for example, the one from Square?

[rvz]

Someone has thrown down the gauntlet at Square. [0]

[0] https://twitter.com/Square/status/1405222258206031873

[ZephyrBlu]

Really though, how many ways are there to make a white square box?

[shadeslayer_]

Another day, another Stripe product.

[roelmore]

Totally see the rationale for annexing this profit pool (offline / card-present transactions)....but this doesn't feel to me like it is aligned with "increasing the GDP of the internet" -- unless I am missing something. And I'd love to be missing something, because thinking about Stripe and their strategy is very fun.

[a-priori]

The best online merchants these days are about successfully mixing online and offline experiences. The term of art here, if you want to Google it, is 'omnichannel': the idea that their experience with the merchant should seamlessly span all the channels (online storefront, brick and mortar storefront, support channels, etc.). One major use case for Stripe Reader would be as a payment solution for omnichannel merchants.

Omnichannel commerce is a product of the Internet, and specifically an Internet that's capable of supporting commerce, because a business could not operate this way without it. Seen through that lens, Stripe is "increasing the GDP of the Internet" here.

Though, I admit, this is starting to stretch the limits of how much you can consider "the Internet" being a separate place.

[unwind]

I (almost) can't believe they didn't name it the Stripe Swipe.

On the other hand, being not in the US, swiping cards to read the actual magnetic stripe is really quaint and not something I do a lot of these days. And it would have been weird to name it for a minor/compatibility feature, I guess.

[eqbridges]

Not to mention that “to swipe” has connotations of stealing as well.

[herbturbo]

I'm currently implementing Stripe Terminal functionality for an iOS project using the BBPOS Chipper. Does this Stripe hardware do anything that the Chipper doesn't? Or are they simply moving away from generic looking 3rd party hardware?

[edwinwee]

Great to hear! BBPOS is perfect for iOS projects.

Besides the look, Stripe Reader works a bit differently—it can be docked on a counter or mounted on iPad/iPhone.

[yoloyoloyoloa]

Stripe is not available in my country. So seeing articles like this just makes me annoyed.

[rjmunro]

How can I check the amount if there is no screen on the device?

[edwinwee]

It's designed to be integrated with a mobile app via our Terminal SDKs (https://stripe.com/docs/terminal/sdk/ios).

[ripberge]

Would be great if it worked with their JavaScript SDK.

[djmashko2]

(Hi! I work at Stripe on the JavaScript SDK)

What types of features / compatibility are you looking for?

[max_]

This looks like a direct competition by to square

[bruce343434]

Enough about stripe on this site already. Nice ad campaign.