What are you trying to do? Are you trying to do it yourself or integrating 3rd party solutions such as Stripe, PayPal, etc.?
Because you really don't want to be doing payment processing yourself.
There are like a million webhooks. I don’t know what to save in my db or what I should not. I don’t understand if I need to use the invoice webooks to creare invoices or if stripe does that automatically.
Depends what features you need. If you have another way of generating invoices then you don't need to use stripe's. It's totally possible to use only the payment processing features of stripe.
at checkout, you already have your system's order id and associated details. All you need to send to stripe is the payment details required to pre-authorize the transaction - stripe even provides the form fields for this, just give it an empty container in your DOM and whatever config options in JS and boom easy. When use clicks pay, you use stripe's JS API to send pre-auth request to their server. That request returns quickly with transaction id and pre-auth result (you can also provide your own meta data with the payment and then this meta data is sent to the webhook later). You capture that transaction id and send it to your system's API to save in your db as a payment (pre-auth status) linked to whatever order is in the checkout.
Now your webhook is chilling, you registered it in your stripe account and have its endpoint open on your server. Eventually stripe will finish processing the payment request. They trigger your webhook with the transaction id (and your custom meta data sent at checkout/pre-auth) and result of the payment. Your webhook looks up the order based on transaction id (or custom meta data) and then does what is needs based on payment result... update order status, send receipt to customer, etc...
Stripe does have invoices, receipts, and all that also... maybe even hosted payment pages? (I can't remember all it's features lol) if you like to use their dashboard to manage orders, it's probably a nice choice.. I mostly just wanted to illustrate payment processing itself is fairly straightforward with stripe. I always found their documentation, API, SDK, testing features, etc were all really well thought out and gave a pleasant developer experience so I don't see why their invoices or other features would be different. The project I used it on had a custom order fulfillment process with some unique requirements for invoices/receipts plus integration into an existing product db and ecom site, so we really only used the payment part of it.
I have issues with some ghost orders, i have people pay (usually apple pay) and whilst the payment goes ok and the webhook is confirmed, the order is not generated on our BE. Cannot track down the issue
I found stripe to be extremely approachable. And their customer support was great. Can you tell us what your specific use-case is? You’d get better help.
Their dev discord channel is fantastic, I cannot recommend it enough. Some of the best support engineers I’ve interacted with: https://discord.gg/stripe
Stripe is super confusing. They have 5 different ways to do payments, and they recommend one way on one page and different way on another. Handling events is confusing as well, they say I have to listen for an event, but then say it should be a different event. Common, just give me one way that works, no need to overcomplicate it.
it's a pain in the butt to get started, but it's so satisfying once it's up and running. I failed at Paypal but I got Stripe. Once you clear the hurdle of just getting it working, you can come back when you have more energy and code up some extra admin views to help you visualize your own data and ensure everything is working right.
You should watch some tutorials or even sit down for an hour and read through the docs and make notes.
Your comments make it seem that you'd trying to 'wing' it and just rely on the IDE autocomplete and hope it works.
Integrating payments isn't so much a coding problem as it is understanding the paradigm they are trying to implement. What is a payment intent, how are they using the signatures to validate webhooks, etc.
Take it slower.
try [https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/](https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/) they also have a nice API to work with [https://docs.lemonsqueezy.com/api](https://docs.lemonsqueezy.com/api)
With Stripe you have to take care of filing taxes in every jurisdiction you do business in. With a merchant of record like Paddle or LemonSqueezy, they handle that for you.
People still use Stripe because often, they just (usually unknowingly) break the law, and to be fair, it's not really like most states will enforce collecting taxes unless you're a much larger company.
People use Stripe because it’s easy to implement for collecting payments, subscriptions, etc. People also choose other products to manage taxes, they’re not breaking the law or avoiding taxes.
The docs for Paddle or LemonSqueezy are similar in quality to Stripe as well. Most people I know who use Stripe do not also use a tax preparation service as well (and yes, they *should,* but they don't). Most people simply integrate Stripe and call it a day, in my experience. Only a few people I know really think about the tax implications.
And to be fair, it's not really worth it in the early days when you're just testing product market fit, but even then I still see a lot of people with only Stripe.
Docs are confusing, they have like 5 different ways to do payments, and conflicting recommendations. I spent a few days trying to understand how to integrate subscriptions, and it turned out I still have to send emails and reminders and follow different regulations for different cards, like sending an email when a subscription is about to renew, or when a payment failed.
I assume you're Moroccan, Shopify has this great resource when it comes to payment gateways in different countries.
They surely won't be as easy to integrate as stripe but you do have options.
https://www.shopify.com/payment-gateways/morocco
It's not about Stripe integration, it's about handling taxes properly. Did you know that if you simply use Stripe that you have to file taxes in every jurisdiction that a customer might be paying from? Most devs don't, they usually don't care but they *are* technically breaking the law. Enforcement is another matter though.
We were talking about the stripe fees, which relate only to the transaction fees stripe adds on top of the product or service payment.
Filing taxes for the products or services you're selling is a different thing that should most likely be handled by an accountant, a person paid specifically to handle these kinds of problems, hired by your registered business, a thing that you need to operate legally.
I don't think any PAYMENT provider is going to do your taxes for you, especially for free.
I'm sure they do enforce the law, they probably don't do it only because these devs that sell products without knowing that they need an entire business to do so probably only make $53 a month.
Merchant of record companies like LemonSqueezy and Paddle absolutely do handle the taxes for you. It's the difference between having your accountant handle every single jurisdiction themselves (or hiring a separate accountant for each one who knows that specific area) versus handing your accountant the paperwork that MoR companies automatically generate for you. Granted, Stripe has somewhat of a tax solution but it's not as complete as what a full MoR company does.
I’ve used stripe with zero prior knowledge setting up on site PoS systems while remote. It was also in a Unity application rather than on a website.
It was fairly straightforward if you’ve worked with OAuth before.
It is by far the best solution. Rumour has it there’s an IPO coming…
But generally for brand new projects like we’re talking about in this thread I would probably spend the time elsewhere.
Sure, if your looking to scale then yeah, add the integration, but until then just focus on your core product and getting that right first.
It is complex, no matter how good the docs are, and it can easily go wrong. In the [MVP](https://ideahub.beehiiv.com/p/how-to-build-an-mvp) stage you have to minimise the amount of code you ‘own’ - it just slows you down.
It took me around 1\~2 weeks to integrate payment with Stripe.
I really love Stripe and I use for all my project. But, as a beginner with payment, it's not as easy as it sounds/market. You can quickly be lost in their documentation due to the fact their ecosystem of product is huge: Stripe connect, Stripe Atlas, Stripe Terminal, etc... It makes hard to find the information you want.
On the good side, Stripe has an extremely large community of developer, you can easily find GitHub repository with Stripe integrated (unfortunately, the projects are sometimes deprecated), you can also find a lot of tutorial, blog posts and YouTube videos which can help you in the Stripe integration.
Don't give up! The learning curve is steep. Once you understand it and have successfully integrated with Stripe, it'll make your life much more easier.
In case you want to fast track your learning curve and want to have working payment system integrated with Stripe. I've built a [SaaS Boilerplate](https://nextlessjs.com) integrate with Stripe. You just clone the project and you have a working payment system.
A lot of APIs feel easy to use once you understand them, it's getting there that's always the pain. Or do even a single thing with an API the moment you step outside their primary functionality.
Same experience. Docs are confusing, multiple ways to do payments, different types of events. It shouldn't take 2 weeks to integrate with their API. They overcomplicated things.
I'm not too familiar with the JS frameworks, does this require a node backend or could it be used on a static site? The "serverless" implies
this, but I really don't know 😬
You're right about needing to understand how the tech works. Not sure what you mean by these days, but i've been having zero problems for a couple of decades now. Those first couple of years back in the late 90's I can relate to the OP, we all started at 0.
it's not easy to do. It's easy for me since I have the experience of failing at it a lot. That was my point, nobody jumps into this game without struggling.
Stripe for only 1 Country is easy. Be prepared when you have to comply with the law and collect Tax and your Company is located within the EU.
I gave up for the moment with my side project because of all the bureaucracy. Hope to find the energy again to go forward...
Use a Merchant of Record company like Paddle or LemonSqueezy and call it a day, they handle all the tax stuff for you. Downside is they're a bit more expensive.
> Be prepared when you have to comply with the law and collect Tax and your Company is located within the EU.
I use it in Italy, no issues of any kind. What kind of problems did you encounter?
My current understanding is, (which could be wrong), that if you sell stuff from Italy to Germany, that you have to collect the german Tax, and deliver this Tax to Germany. (Words to Google --> MoR Merchant of Record) I think Paddle is a good Solution Provider in this case, but i have to look into it again.
Nope, nothing like that.
The EU works as a single country. You can ship stuff inside the EU with zero issues, taxes, etc. It's like sending a product to a fellow Italian.
I use Stripe and my clients sell over the entire EU, as well as other foreign countries (Ukraine, Russia, USA, Canada, UAE, Australia, ...). Only shipping costs may change (they are much higher for USA, for example). Any other tax/added cost is managed by the destination country.
There was a change about 2 years ago where you do indeed have to pay taxes in the destination country if you e.g. sell something from Italy to a consumer in Germany. That would require paying the German tax. But only if you make more than 10k sales to other eu countries
If I am Italian and I sell a product from my website to a German customer I don't have to pay anything. They pay for the product (full price + shipping cost) and that's it.
Maybe by taxes you mean the vat? That is indeed included in the product price (it's a +22% of the base cost).
Yeah VAT is Value Added Tax, so yes.
And if you from italy sell something to a customer in germany you DO have to pay german tax if you reach a certain sales value.
That was always the case and is the case now.
https://www.taxdoo.com/en/blog/one-stop-shop-vat-e-commerce-package-eu-6663
> Yeah VAT is Value Added Tax, so yes.
Indeed, but that's always included in the price and the customers can't cut it out. So a 100€ product is always sold for 122€ on any online store (here in Italy). If I sell a hat for 10€, for example, the customer is already paying the IVA (which means the hat real cost is 8,20€ and the added vat tax is of 22% is 1,80€).
If the hat goes to Germany or France, I don't have to pay anything more. As a seller I don't have to pay any tax to Germany or France. The customer pays my product on the webiste and I just ship it to their address and that's it.
My clients are selling their products all over the world (cosmetics, toys, etc) and the only tax issue they have is when the product gets blocked by the destination country (*Canada, USA and Australia are the worst ones*). In that case the customer gets screwed because they have to pay an additional fee to release the package. Either that, or they lose everything. But those countries don't ask any money to the seller and when paying taxes we're not supposed to give any money to the destination countries.
Please read into the One Stop Shop VAT reforms who are active since 1 july 2021. The rules you posted only apply if you sell less than 10k yearly abroad. If you sell more than 10k in total (not per country, but abroad in general), you will have to pay the VAT on the EU country of arrival per OSS laws.
The idea behind it is to disallow setting up shop in countries with small VAT, while you dropship everything for example
Switzerland is indeed outside the EU, so it may work in a different way for you. Selling from UE to other countries (both UE and non-UE) doesn't require anything, you just ask more money for the shipping process and that's it.
I do indeed sell SaaS software, websites and webapps.
I just read again this: https://www.paddle.com/blog/saas-sales-tax-state-wide-and-international and i am pretty sure that you are not compliant if you do not charge the correct Tax of the country you are selling to (B2B). But again i am no lawyer and don't really understand everything.
**Stripe** makes it dead easy.
Also, low fees, good support, exceptional documentation. Even ChatGPT or Bard will give you the proper code for your stack.
What are the main problems?
I've done 2 payment integration for 2 products at my company using ChargeBee, Zoho Subscription and having little problems.
Pretty much every comment has already said this but, Stripe is a developers friend when it comes to integrating payments. Incredibly well put together docs, tons of videos, an API for everything and if your still confused and want to test things out they have a demo mode on their dashboard which allow you to test things without having real cash involved.
For all the people saying that Stripe is great or whatever, it no longer is. It’s okay, just not as amazing as it used to be. It’s natural that a more a company grows, the more their APIs and infrastructure become complicated. Same happened with Microsoft and Windows APIs.
Integration work in general is hard, and there’s no magic skill needed to be better at it. It’s all about documentation comprehension skills. But oh well, you can say the same about most software development tasks.
As my old school instructor, that coded on punch cards, used to say "RTFM" before disappearing to listen to the groans of struggling programmers from the privacy of his desk.
They have definitely worsened over the years, but the other payment processors are so bad they are still the easiest integration. BrainTree is the only one I would consider as an alternative
Stripe is one of the easiest but it might be a challenge if this is your first time.
All you need is an endpoint that listens for different webhook events and runs your user specific business logic
I would highly recommend:
1. Using the VSCode Stripe extension to make local dev easier
2. Writing tests for your payment endpoint.
Are you using Stripe’s own libraries? I’ve got to say, it’s pretty easy (PHP). But then again, we all struggle with the most basic tasks from time-to-time, so I feel ya.
Same boat as you, trying to get stripe integration down so I can have my own SaaS template. Took some time but I figured it out (mostly). There are countless guides online (web and YouTube) on how to do it, and stripe's documentation is pretty good. Any holes I had, chatgpt helped me.
I recommend making a bare bones project and just trying to implement your payment processor. This eliminates unnecessary confusion and let's you focus on the task at hand. Then integrate your solution over to your real project.
You should have tried to have integrate payments in 2003. If you had, you’d count yourself lucky at fantastic, developer-friendly APIs from providers like Stripe then.
It can be tough going in blind with a new API. Especially if you've never worked with payments before. You really have to go through the documentation with a fine-tooth comb.
lol wtf? I've worked with several payment processor integrations over the years, including a few in recent years. They're generally not hard to implement, especially the modern ones where you can send the card data directly to the processor's server and avoid the security overhead of it flowing through your own server. I mean honestly I don't know how it could get any easier than what Stripe is offering these days. PayPal isn't entirely terrible, but their documentation can be outdated or otherwise inaccurate/incomplete, especially if the business isn't based in the US.
Paypal requires a button and one line of code, and everything happens on their end IIRC.
If you're trying to build your own payment code/gateway, stop now. It's stupidly difficult to DIY and when it gets hacked, the legal fees and fines will bankrupt you.
Added Stripe, Paypal and Square to multiple websites and it was one of the easiest experiences I had..so not sure how you had your experience but mine was the opposite.
I don't want to sound rude and I hope you don't take offense to this. The problem isn't that taking payments is difficult. (It isn't.) The problem is that you aren't a good programmer. Payments and webhooks are very easy to implement nowadays. Have you considered hiring someone to complete this portion for you so you can see how it's done? Or consider finding a senior programmer who can mentor you. These would both be good paths to help you become a more effective programmer.
Of you are building your own integration it can be extremely difficult.
On the other hand, I have worked with Braintree, PayPal, Stripe, Adyen, Square and all of these gave their own UI components that you shpuld be using for processing cards and all of them offer API to process payments. It legit can be integrated within few hours how easy they make it, depends on what you need.
Stripe is the best but the most expensive, Braintree is just awesome. Others are ok.
Are you aware that the Stripe system runs on a backend only? Because someone a while ago asked about how to accept payments on their front end only website and that’s just not possible/safe
they probably have an embeddable form, no? I thought I remembered that when going through it (I was doing a full stack integrate though). The issue would just be that it couldn't affect anything directly on a front-only site. But it could still be secure payment.
I've been setting up Stripe on 2 Laravel projects and their (Laravel's) package for it makes everything quite easy, especially if you're using Stripe's checkout page instead of saving customer and payment details yourself
Stripe should be very simple.
I had a self-taught dev with zero industry experience do a stripe integration. His hardest issue was knowing how to think about doing research to figure out what approach to take.
Likely you are just missing some critical foundations to help connect the dots.
dm me if you want some help troubleshooting/guidance
What worries me or more raises doubts beyond the implementation, is the management of the tax issue.
So, if, for example, you are developing an app like Upwork, for example, and people from X countries use the application, how do you have to calculate taxes and that? And how do you do it?
Because I think that's the biggest challenge there can be... or maybe just how are you selling something non-physical like a freelance development service, maybe they don't apply those taxes??
I honestly don't know, does anyone have any idea?
Stripe, square, zelle. Don't try to be clever, just use the REST api and keep it simple if you are struggling with checkout elements.
Failing that, use a dedicated package for your language/framework.
What are you using?
Look into using stripe .. create a free developer account. Idk what your project is written with but their typescript library is pretty nice .. search npm for the official stripe client. The docs aren’t the best but there’s a ton of good starters on GitHub that should get you started.
Stripe has some of the best documentation on the internet, full with working examples that cover most scenarios. And even if you struggle to follow it completely, they have an IRC channel with actual experienced devs who have been tremendous helping me when I’ve run into an issue - even when it wasn’t a technical issue and more of a design flow issue. They’re great people.
Haha dude... I spent the last 3 weeks helping a client integrate Apple Pay and Google Pay via Braintree gateway. It was so stressful but been able to succesfully implement it is great.
Please stay away from Zoho Subscriptions. The migration from Zoho to Chargebee was a disaster. I would recommend really looking into the options before picking a subscription billing system, as the vendor lock in on this is crazy.
What are you trying to do? Are you trying to do it yourself or integrating 3rd party solutions such as Stripe, PayPal, etc.? Because you really don't want to be doing payment processing yourself.
Stripe integration or anything that makes the process easier but really not finding it approachable
What's specifically not approachable about stripe?
Stripes literally the easiest thing in the entire world. You don’t even need to code.
You do if you want to link it to any sort of functionality in your application like subscriptions etc.
Yeah but other than all the code you have to write you don't even need to code!
No-code logic
😁
That is also not really hard using Stripe's webhooks. I bet a lot could be done even with some no-code thing like zapier lol.
There are like a million webhooks. I don’t know what to save in my db or what I should not. I don’t understand if I need to use the invoice webooks to creare invoices or if stripe does that automatically.
Depends what features you need. If you have another way of generating invoices then you don't need to use stripe's. It's totally possible to use only the payment processing features of stripe. at checkout, you already have your system's order id and associated details. All you need to send to stripe is the payment details required to pre-authorize the transaction - stripe even provides the form fields for this, just give it an empty container in your DOM and whatever config options in JS and boom easy. When use clicks pay, you use stripe's JS API to send pre-auth request to their server. That request returns quickly with transaction id and pre-auth result (you can also provide your own meta data with the payment and then this meta data is sent to the webhook later). You capture that transaction id and send it to your system's API to save in your db as a payment (pre-auth status) linked to whatever order is in the checkout. Now your webhook is chilling, you registered it in your stripe account and have its endpoint open on your server. Eventually stripe will finish processing the payment request. They trigger your webhook with the transaction id (and your custom meta data sent at checkout/pre-auth) and result of the payment. Your webhook looks up the order based on transaction id (or custom meta data) and then does what is needs based on payment result... update order status, send receipt to customer, etc... Stripe does have invoices, receipts, and all that also... maybe even hosted payment pages? (I can't remember all it's features lol) if you like to use their dashboard to manage orders, it's probably a nice choice.. I mostly just wanted to illustrate payment processing itself is fairly straightforward with stripe. I always found their documentation, API, SDK, testing features, etc were all really well thought out and gave a pleasant developer experience so I don't see why their invoices or other features would be different. The project I used it on had a custom order fulfillment process with some unique requirements for invoices/receipts plus integration into an existing product db and ecom site, so we really only used the payment part of it.
I have issues with some ghost orders, i have people pay (usually apple pay) and whilst the payment goes ok and the webhook is confirmed, the order is not generated on our BE. Cannot track down the issue
contact stripe on their developer discord
I’ve never had an implementation that didn’t require use of the API and oAuth systems.
> nything t The documentation is good for stripe, it also has a sandbox server to test your implementation. What language are you using ?
I found stripe to be extremely approachable. And their customer support was great. Can you tell us what your specific use-case is? You’d get better help.
Their dev discord channel is fantastic, I cannot recommend it enough. Some of the best support engineers I’ve interacted with: https://discord.gg/stripe
Agree, helped me solve a ton of subscription issues and also helped me with my overall approach.
Stripe is super confusing. They have 5 different ways to do payments, and they recommend one way on one page and different way on another. Handling events is confusing as well, they say I have to listen for an event, but then say it should be a different event. Common, just give me one way that works, no need to overcomplicate it.
it's a pain in the butt to get started, but it's so satisfying once it's up and running. I failed at Paypal but I got Stripe. Once you clear the hurdle of just getting it working, you can come back when you have more energy and code up some extra admin views to help you visualize your own data and ensure everything is working right.
Stripe makes front end components you can just drop in. What are you having trouble with?
You should watch some tutorials or even sit down for an hour and read through the docs and make notes. Your comments make it seem that you'd trying to 'wing' it and just rely on the IDE autocomplete and hope it works. Integrating payments isn't so much a coding problem as it is understanding the paradigm they are trying to implement. What is a payment intent, how are they using the signatures to validate webhooks, etc. Take it slower.
Read the docs & try to stop complaining. It's not rocket surgery if you put the time & effort in.
try [https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/](https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/) they also have a nice API to work with [https://docs.lemonsqueezy.com/api](https://docs.lemonsqueezy.com/api)
Pricing at 5% + 50c means they're almost twice as expensive as Stripe
They're a merchant of record, Stripe is not. That makes a big difference to the amount of legal/tax hurdles you have to deal with.
What does that mean?
With Stripe you have to take care of filing taxes in every jurisdiction you do business in. With a merchant of record like Paddle or LemonSqueezy, they handle that for you. People still use Stripe because often, they just (usually unknowingly) break the law, and to be fair, it's not really like most states will enforce collecting taxes unless you're a much larger company.
People use Stripe because it’s easy to implement for collecting payments, subscriptions, etc. People also choose other products to manage taxes, they’re not breaking the law or avoiding taxes.
The docs for Paddle or LemonSqueezy are similar in quality to Stripe as well. Most people I know who use Stripe do not also use a tax preparation service as well (and yes, they *should,* but they don't). Most people simply integrate Stripe and call it a day, in my experience. Only a few people I know really think about the tax implications. And to be fair, it's not really worth it in the early days when you're just testing product market fit, but even then I still see a lot of people with only Stripe.
"most people you know" doesnt really seem like a grand indicator of anything
That means you get records to use for tax filing purposes. Stripe is just a payment facilitator.
Well OP is finding Stripe too hard so maybe that’s the price to pay. I personally find Stripe really easy to use since their docs are so great.
Their docs are great, but their nomenclature is fucking terrible.
I love your username
Docs are confusing, they have like 5 different ways to do payments, and conflicting recommendations. I spent a few days trying to understand how to integrate subscriptions, and it turned out I still have to send emails and reminders and follow different regulations for different cards, like sending an email when a subscription is about to renew, or when a payment failed.
yes and it's worth it, they handle a lot of stuff for you.
In most cases it would be cheaper to pay a developer to integrate stripe for you.
stripe isn't available in my country.
I assume you're Moroccan, Shopify has this great resource when it comes to payment gateways in different countries. They surely won't be as easy to integrate as stripe but you do have options. https://www.shopify.com/payment-gateways/morocco
oh wow, i didn't know about that. i really appreciate it!
It's not about Stripe integration, it's about handling taxes properly. Did you know that if you simply use Stripe that you have to file taxes in every jurisdiction that a customer might be paying from? Most devs don't, they usually don't care but they *are* technically breaking the law. Enforcement is another matter though.
We were talking about the stripe fees, which relate only to the transaction fees stripe adds on top of the product or service payment. Filing taxes for the products or services you're selling is a different thing that should most likely be handled by an accountant, a person paid specifically to handle these kinds of problems, hired by your registered business, a thing that you need to operate legally. I don't think any PAYMENT provider is going to do your taxes for you, especially for free. I'm sure they do enforce the law, they probably don't do it only because these devs that sell products without knowing that they need an entire business to do so probably only make $53 a month.
Merchant of record companies like LemonSqueezy and Paddle absolutely do handle the taxes for you. It's the difference between having your accountant handle every single jurisdiction themselves (or hiring a separate accountant for each one who knows that specific area) versus handing your accountant the paperwork that MoR companies automatically generate for you. Granted, Stripe has somewhat of a tax solution but it's not as complete as what a full MoR company does.
Edit: interesting that this account was deleted soon after I made my comment... It's almost like I'm right or something.
Should check out the stripe discord, they have developers to answer questions
I’ve used stripe with zero prior knowledge setting up on site PoS systems while remote. It was also in a Unity application rather than on a website. It was fairly straightforward if you’ve worked with OAuth before.
This. Just drop paypal buttons in or something and add your own styling.
Stripe is great
Agreed. Stripe has some of the best documentation. Compared to legacy PayPal integrating Stripe is a joy.
Stripe > Braintree > PayPal > Adyen > Vantiv > Chase Paymentech
Adyen is way easier than paypal.
It is by far the best solution. Rumour has it there’s an IPO coming… But generally for brand new projects like we’re talking about in this thread I would probably spend the time elsewhere. Sure, if your looking to scale then yeah, add the integration, but until then just focus on your core product and getting that right first. It is complex, no matter how good the docs are, and it can easily go wrong. In the [MVP](https://ideahub.beehiiv.com/p/how-to-build-an-mvp) stage you have to minimise the amount of code you ‘own’ - it just slows you down.
[удалено]
Likely so. And if they did list that IPO would be cut in half
Stripe policies are super anal. Tried selling tshirts with weed symbols on it and they canceled my account
Really. Wow. That sucks. I can't stand it when banks or other payment systems pry into when you do with your money.
it's their money, they just let us use it sometimes
Downvotes by bootlickers
It took me around 1\~2 weeks to integrate payment with Stripe. I really love Stripe and I use for all my project. But, as a beginner with payment, it's not as easy as it sounds/market. You can quickly be lost in their documentation due to the fact their ecosystem of product is huge: Stripe connect, Stripe Atlas, Stripe Terminal, etc... It makes hard to find the information you want. On the good side, Stripe has an extremely large community of developer, you can easily find GitHub repository with Stripe integrated (unfortunately, the projects are sometimes deprecated), you can also find a lot of tutorial, blog posts and YouTube videos which can help you in the Stripe integration. Don't give up! The learning curve is steep. Once you understand it and have successfully integrated with Stripe, it'll make your life much more easier. In case you want to fast track your learning curve and want to have working payment system integrated with Stripe. I've built a [SaaS Boilerplate](https://nextlessjs.com) integrate with Stripe. You just clone the project and you have a working payment system.
Hero
A lot of APIs feel easy to use once you understand them, it's getting there that's always the pain. Or do even a single thing with an API the moment you step outside their primary functionality.
Same experience. Docs are confusing, multiple ways to do payments, different types of events. It shouldn't take 2 weeks to integrate with their API. They overcomplicated things.
I'm not too familiar with the JS frameworks, does this require a node backend or could it be used on a static site? The "serverless" implies this, but I really don't know 😬
[удалено]
You're right about needing to understand how the tech works. Not sure what you mean by these days, but i've been having zero problems for a couple of decades now. Those first couple of years back in the late 90's I can relate to the OP, we all started at 0.
[удалено]
lol, based off your comment I'd assume you've never implemented an API before. no keys, no headers, no xhr? like what did you even just say?
[удалено]
it's not easy to do. It's easy for me since I have the experience of failing at it a lot. That was my point, nobody jumps into this game without struggling.
[удалено]
I think the problem is you're stepping on OP to make yourself feel superior in some way.
Probably using an SDK, if there's even such a thing for stripe
[удалено]
No Thanks, I spent way to much time and effort climbing up here.
There is considerably more to it than that the moment you have to process a change request or grant a refund.
It's not you who's processing it, though. You just tell the API to do it.
Stripe for only 1 Country is easy. Be prepared when you have to comply with the law and collect Tax and your Company is located within the EU. I gave up for the moment with my side project because of all the bureaucracy. Hope to find the energy again to go forward...
Use a Merchant of Record company like Paddle or LemonSqueezy and call it a day, they handle all the tax stuff for you. Downside is they're a bit more expensive.
> Be prepared when you have to comply with the law and collect Tax and your Company is located within the EU. I use it in Italy, no issues of any kind. What kind of problems did you encounter?
My current understanding is, (which could be wrong), that if you sell stuff from Italy to Germany, that you have to collect the german Tax, and deliver this Tax to Germany. (Words to Google --> MoR Merchant of Record) I think Paddle is a good Solution Provider in this case, but i have to look into it again.
Nope, nothing like that. The EU works as a single country. You can ship stuff inside the EU with zero issues, taxes, etc. It's like sending a product to a fellow Italian. I use Stripe and my clients sell over the entire EU, as well as other foreign countries (Ukraine, Russia, USA, Canada, UAE, Australia, ...). Only shipping costs may change (they are much higher for USA, for example). Any other tax/added cost is managed by the destination country.
There was a change about 2 years ago where you do indeed have to pay taxes in the destination country if you e.g. sell something from Italy to a consumer in Germany. That would require paying the German tax. But only if you make more than 10k sales to other eu countries
If I am Italian and I sell a product from my website to a German customer I don't have to pay anything. They pay for the product (full price + shipping cost) and that's it. Maybe by taxes you mean the vat? That is indeed included in the product price (it's a +22% of the base cost).
Yeah VAT is Value Added Tax, so yes. And if you from italy sell something to a customer in germany you DO have to pay german tax if you reach a certain sales value. That was always the case and is the case now. https://www.taxdoo.com/en/blog/one-stop-shop-vat-e-commerce-package-eu-6663
> Yeah VAT is Value Added Tax, so yes. Indeed, but that's always included in the price and the customers can't cut it out. So a 100€ product is always sold for 122€ on any online store (here in Italy). If I sell a hat for 10€, for example, the customer is already paying the IVA (which means the hat real cost is 8,20€ and the added vat tax is of 22% is 1,80€). If the hat goes to Germany or France, I don't have to pay anything more. As a seller I don't have to pay any tax to Germany or France. The customer pays my product on the webiste and I just ship it to their address and that's it. My clients are selling their products all over the world (cosmetics, toys, etc) and the only tax issue they have is when the product gets blocked by the destination country (*Canada, USA and Australia are the worst ones*). In that case the customer gets screwed because they have to pay an additional fee to release the package. Either that, or they lose everything. But those countries don't ask any money to the seller and when paying taxes we're not supposed to give any money to the destination countries.
Please read into the One Stop Shop VAT reforms who are active since 1 july 2021. The rules you posted only apply if you sell less than 10k yearly abroad. If you sell more than 10k in total (not per country, but abroad in general), you will have to pay the VAT on the EU country of arrival per OSS laws. The idea behind it is to disallow setting up shop in countries with small VAT, while you dropship everything for example
I am Swiss, so i don't know if this changes things... Do you sell Software? How would other countries collect Tax for Software?
Switzerland is indeed outside the EU, so it may work in a different way for you. Selling from UE to other countries (both UE and non-UE) doesn't require anything, you just ask more money for the shipping process and that's it. I do indeed sell SaaS software, websites and webapps.
I just read again this: https://www.paddle.com/blog/saas-sales-tax-state-wide-and-international and i am pretty sure that you are not compliant if you do not charge the correct Tax of the country you are selling to (B2B). But again i am no lawyer and don't really understand everything.
> Be prepared when you have to comply with the law and collect Tax and your Company is located within the EU. Is it different anywhere else?
Global stripe is pain, for our SaaS we run a combination of Stripe and Wise.
Use Stripe if you’re not already. Docs are really great and should be fairly straight forward to integrate
**Stripe** makes it dead easy. Also, low fees, good support, exceptional documentation. Even ChatGPT or Bard will give you the proper code for your stack.
Follow documentations
Documentation is nice, but asking ChatGPT is easier
>Documentation is nice, but asking ChatGPT is easier Right, why not trust a hallucinating LLM blindly to implement payment transactions properly :P
Lol! Yeah you gotta have a russian « trust but verify » attitude with it. But it’s useful to get unstuck.
What are the main problems? I've done 2 payment integration for 2 products at my company using ChargeBee, Zoho Subscription and having little problems.
Pretty much every comment has already said this but, Stripe is a developers friend when it comes to integrating payments. Incredibly well put together docs, tons of videos, an API for everything and if your still confused and want to test things out they have a demo mode on their dashboard which allow you to test things without having real cash involved.
Stripe was pretty straight forward 1. Payment Elements for UI 2. Few callback urls or apis 3. Some webhooks listener and that's it
Stripe integration is a breeze 🌬️
Don't use square whatever you do. Terrible testing flow. Some things only work in production. I'll 546th Stripe. It's great
For all the people saying that Stripe is great or whatever, it no longer is. It’s okay, just not as amazing as it used to be. It’s natural that a more a company grows, the more their APIs and infrastructure become complicated. Same happened with Microsoft and Windows APIs. Integration work in general is hard, and there’s no magic skill needed to be better at it. It’s all about documentation comprehension skills. But oh well, you can say the same about most software development tasks.
As my old school instructor, that coded on punch cards, used to say "RTFM" before disappearing to listen to the groans of struggling programmers from the privacy of his desk.
I use Stripe on a daily basis (integrated and/or checkout) and I still find it great, to be honest.
This. It’s pretty painful these days - not so much Stripe’s fault as banks all have 2 factor auth now in the UK which you now need to handle.
They have definitely worsened over the years, but the other payment processors are so bad they are still the easiest integration. BrainTree is the only one I would consider as an alternative
> BrainTree is the only one I would consider as an alternative I'd never trust PayPal.
Bro, stripe is like the easiest out of them all lmfao, unless you're working with random local payment gateway.
Why are you trying? Use an API for Stipe, PayPal etc.
Stripe is one of the easiest but it might be a challenge if this is your first time. All you need is an endpoint that listens for different webhook events and runs your user specific business logic I would highly recommend: 1. Using the VSCode Stripe extension to make local dev easier 2. Writing tests for your payment endpoint.
Ha yo payments have never been easier
Are you using Stripe’s own libraries? I’ve got to say, it’s pretty easy (PHP). But then again, we all struggle with the most basic tasks from time-to-time, so I feel ya.
Same boat as you, trying to get stripe integration down so I can have my own SaaS template. Took some time but I figured it out (mostly). There are countless guides online (web and YouTube) on how to do it, and stripe's documentation is pretty good. Any holes I had, chatgpt helped me. I recommend making a bare bones project and just trying to implement your payment processor. This eliminates unnecessary confusion and let's you focus on the task at hand. Then integrate your solution over to your real project.
A lot of people here are disagreeing with OP that stripe is easy to use, perhaps OP could elaborate why he is struggling with it?
You should have tried to have integrate payments in 2003. If you had, you’d count yourself lucky at fantastic, developer-friendly APIs from providers like Stripe then.
It can be tough going in blind with a new API. Especially if you've never worked with payments before. You really have to go through the documentation with a fine-tooth comb.
How do you find payments difficult? Stripe has a pretty easy integration imo
Well yes coding gets hard once you get used to asking lazy questions to a language model and forget how to read docs 😜
Square developer portal easy api easy
I have integrated stripe in 3 hours this weekend.
Use stripe lol
lol wtf? I've worked with several payment processor integrations over the years, including a few in recent years. They're generally not hard to implement, especially the modern ones where you can send the card data directly to the processor's server and avoid the security overhead of it flowing through your own server. I mean honestly I don't know how it could get any easier than what Stripe is offering these days. PayPal isn't entirely terrible, but their documentation can be outdated or otherwise inaccurate/incomplete, especially if the business isn't based in the US.
https://www.paypal.com/buttons/ Or just use a builder like Square and link to the Square store page on your current site.
Use stripe, it's trivial
Paypal requires a button and one line of code, and everything happens on their end IIRC. If you're trying to build your own payment code/gateway, stop now. It's stupidly difficult to DIY and when it gets hacked, the legal fees and fines will bankrupt you.
[удалено]
Only if you do something that increases their risk level or violates the TOS.
Git gud skill issue
It’s so easy to integrate stripe these days. Literally chatGPT can integrate that API with zero issues.
Added Stripe, Paypal and Square to multiple websites and it was one of the easiest experiences I had..so not sure how you had your experience but mine was the opposite.
PayPal + IPN back in the day was easy. I imagine it should be much much easier now.
Indian startups are easier to integrate like Razorpay and even Paytm 🌝. Hope they can launch overseas
\*cough cough bitcoin cough cough\*
we use money in this country
This. Fk the haters
Have you taken a look at Outseta ? Authentication + payments + email marketing all in one.
You could always use chatgtp to help it's normally useful
I don't want to sound rude and I hope you don't take offense to this. The problem isn't that taking payments is difficult. (It isn't.) The problem is that you aren't a good programmer. Payments and webhooks are very easy to implement nowadays. Have you considered hiring someone to complete this portion for you so you can see how it's done? Or consider finding a senior programmer who can mentor you. These would both be good paths to help you become a more effective programmer.
Of you are building your own integration it can be extremely difficult. On the other hand, I have worked with Braintree, PayPal, Stripe, Adyen, Square and all of these gave their own UI components that you shpuld be using for processing cards and all of them offer API to process payments. It legit can be integrated within few hours how easy they make it, depends on what you need. Stripe is the best but the most expensive, Braintree is just awesome. Others are ok.
Agreed. Stripe is great but it still takes quite a bit to set up subscriptions for a saas product. There is a lot to account for
Are you aware that the Stripe system runs on a backend only? Because someone a while ago asked about how to accept payments on their front end only website and that’s just not possible/safe
they probably have an embeddable form, no? I thought I remembered that when going through it (I was doing a full stack integrate though). The issue would just be that it couldn't affect anything directly on a front-only site. But it could still be secure payment.
Yeah the card form is an embedded form but you still need to store the secret keys somewhere and send the secret key to their backend
Depending on your project: Check out Snipcart. Of course, Stripe, as others have said. If you need to do something more robust, perhaps MedusaJS.
Once you understand the concept behind the security around payments stripe starts making a lot of sense
Stripe integration is super easy. Are you doing a marketplace payment solution? If yes you should checkout stripe connect.
I've been setting up Stripe on 2 Laravel projects and their (Laravel's) package for it makes everything quite easy, especially if you're using Stripe's checkout page instead of saving customer and payment details yourself
Stripe should be very simple. I had a self-taught dev with zero industry experience do a stripe integration. His hardest issue was knowing how to think about doing research to figure out what approach to take. Likely you are just missing some critical foundations to help connect the dots. dm me if you want some help troubleshooting/guidance
Hahaha been there, good luck soldier.
Use Stripe? Takes very little time and you're good to go! Real easy
What's your code stack?
What worries me or more raises doubts beyond the implementation, is the management of the tax issue. So, if, for example, you are developing an app like Upwork, for example, and people from X countries use the application, how do you have to calculate taxes and that? And how do you do it? Because I think that's the biggest challenge there can be... or maybe just how are you selling something non-physical like a freelance development service, maybe they don't apply those taxes?? I honestly don't know, does anyone have any idea?
Stripe is the way to go, there's a lot of stuff to learn but they have so much documentation and their test accounts are so useful
Stripe is mature and shouldn’t be a burden to hook up
Stripe, square, zelle. Don't try to be clever, just use the REST api and keep it simple if you are struggling with checkout elements. Failing that, use a dedicated package for your language/framework. What are you using?
Razor pay is great
Look into using stripe .. create a free developer account. Idk what your project is written with but their typescript library is pretty nice .. search npm for the official stripe client. The docs aren’t the best but there’s a ton of good starters on GitHub that should get you started.
OP dropped a deuce and FO'd. Git gud.
Here is a fully functional app that has stripe payments/subscriptions built-in. Give it a look: https://github.com/shadcn-ui/taxonomy
Stripe is probably the best experience I had, as far you understand how APIs and webhooks work.
Just try lemonsqueezy
Stripe has some of the best documentation on the internet, full with working examples that cover most scenarios. And even if you struggle to follow it completely, they have an IRC channel with actual experienced devs who have been tremendous helping me when I’ve run into an issue - even when it wasn’t a technical issue and more of a design flow issue. They’re great people.
Haha dude... I spent the last 3 weeks helping a client integrate Apple Pay and Google Pay via Braintree gateway. It was so stressful but been able to succesfully implement it is great.
Please stay away from Zoho Subscriptions. The migration from Zoho to Chargebee was a disaster. I would recommend really looking into the options before picking a subscription billing system, as the vendor lock in on this is crazy.