February 27, 2012 at 17:01stripe - online payment for programmers
I tried a very interesting startup service for receiving payments with stripe plastic cards , based in San Francisco.
Judging by their blog, they opened recently, according to information on the Internet, in December 2011. It is noteworthy that among the investors of this service are the three most influential Silicon Valley venture capital funds (Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz), as well as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who are the founders of PayPal. Such a company of investors immediately draws attention to the project.
They argue that the complexity of payments on the Internet lies not in finances, but in the code, that their service is simple and created by programmers for programmers, and that they will not need to use payment aggregators. They solve all the problems of card payments, including storing card data, periodic payments and withdrawals to your bank account. They say that they collaborate with several of the best financial institutions in the world.
I created an account there and decided to try to fasten the payment through this service.
For the impatient: you can try it here , the source of what works there can be found here: index.php , pay.php and php lib stripe.
I must admit that, as a developer, I was very pleased with their service. I will try to describe why:
I noticed that they have a very interesting security decision, it concerns the painful topic of storing and forwarding plastic card data (cvc, etc.). They suggest taking buyer's card data on the store’s page, but the store doesn’t forward them anywhere, but calls the method of creating a token based on the card’s data and the account’s public key, which actually calls java-script from their server. As a result, the store receives a token that can be sent and stored, it can only be decrypted on stripe servers (and in case of token leakage, it will be possible to pay for it only to the specified store). It seems to me that this is an interesting and safe solution: there is no transfer of open private data, all encryption takes place on the client (in the browser), moreover, with a script that lies on the strip servers (for more details see index.php)
I’ll give an example of a code that implements a $ 10 payment in my test account:
If I were a store and would like to use credit cards, I would love to try them. But not without a fly in the ointment, or rather a bucket or barrel. At the moment, they work only with US resident legal entities. True, they argue that soon the geography will expand.
Who knows anything interesting about them or digs out from them in the documentation - supplement me in the comments.
Judging by their blog, they opened recently, according to information on the Internet, in December 2011. It is noteworthy that among the investors of this service are the three most influential Silicon Valley venture capital funds (Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz), as well as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who are the founders of PayPal. Such a company of investors immediately draws attention to the project.
Ideology
They argue that the complexity of payments on the Internet lies not in finances, but in the code, that their service is simple and created by programmers for programmers, and that they will not need to use payment aggregators. They solve all the problems of card payments, including storing card data, periodic payments and withdrawals to your bank account. They say that they collaborate with several of the best financial institutions in the world.
I created an account there and decided to try to fasten the payment through this service.
For the impatient: you can try it here , the source of what works there can be found here: index.php , pay.php and php lib stripe.
Impressions
I must admit that, as a developer, I was very pleased with their service. I will try to describe why:
- everything is quite simple, clear and well-documented, which in general is not enough
- powerful api with great features
- Libraries are written for many popular languages, which greatly speeds up development. Libraries are open and on github
- convenient for developing and testing a feature with an account mode toggle switch: test / live ( screen )
- price 2.9% + $ 0.3 per transaction, cheaper than many competitors
- friendly store interface
- easy to track payments in your account and make refunds (Refund Payment button, screen )
- You can not store anything in your databases. Map data is stored on stripe servers. You can also get history and other data from their servers
- Really easy to plug in. Almost any programmer will master fastening to his site in a day
Security
I noticed that they have a very interesting security decision, it concerns the painful topic of storing and forwarding plastic card data (cvc, etc.). They suggest taking buyer's card data on the store’s page, but the store doesn’t forward them anywhere, but calls the method of creating a token based on the card’s data and the account’s public key, which actually calls java-script from their server. As a result, the store receives a token that can be sent and stored, it can only be decrypted on stripe servers (and in case of token leakage, it will be possible to pay for it only to the specified store). It seems to me that this is an interesting and safe solution: there is no transfer of open private data, all encryption takes place on the client (in the browser), moreover, with a script that lies on the strip servers (for more details see index.php)
Code example
I’ll give an example of a code that implements a $ 10 payment in my test account:
1000, // amount in cents, again
"currency" => "usd",
"card" => $token,
"description" => "[email protected]")
);
?>
Conclusion
If I were a store and would like to use credit cards, I would love to try them. But not without a fly in the ointment, or rather a bucket or barrel. At the moment, they work only with US resident legal entities. True, they argue that soon the geography will expand.
Who knows anything interesting about them or digs out from them in the documentation - supplement me in the comments.
