Small Business Sunday: Accept Credit Cards The Web 2.0 Way With Stripe

Processing credit card transactions online was a challenge years ago, but then companies like Pay Pal and Authorize.net paved the way for a new way to pay and get paid online. There was a social change, a tipping point where buying things online went from being scary and unsafe-feeling to the norm.

Pay Pal was a major pioneer in this space lowering the barrier of entry so that anyone with a website could accept payments. Authorize.net was the step-up for more serious merchants that didn’t want to direct users through the less-than-glamorous Pay Pal interface.

Here’s the problem, there really hasn’t been very much change in the payments space for quite a while. Well I’m excited to say there’s a new entrant to the space – Stripe and it looks like they’ve created the next evolution of web payment gateways.

Stripe labels themselves as a platform that provides “Payments for developers.” What this really means is that they make it incredibly easy for developers to integrate their solution into their own platform. This is the payment system we are using for Appraiso and I can tell you that our developer has been blow-away by how easy it has been to integrate Stripe into our software.

Solutions like Authorize.net offer similar functionality but with a much more laborious and somewhat archaic process for the developer. I think they have had so many customers, for so long, they haven’t felt the need to update their development platform. This means that it takes longer to setup your payment gateway and there are greater chances of errors.

Stripe goes the Web 2.0 route of making things simple both for the user and the developer. We are fans and I think you will be to. I’m not being paid a dime by Stripe to write this article, it’s a solution we use ourselves and I think you’ll be very impressed if you take it for a spin!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton