Stripe Pros and Cons: In-depth Review – Sloboda Studio (2024)

The business life is full of necessary decisions that we have to make time and time again. One such decision is choosing and implementing an online payment system. The question about which payment gateway to use is very prevalent nowadays. If you are looking for a payment solution like the Stripe payment gateway for your Ruby on Rails App, you definitely will find some options. Choosing online payment gateway solutions for your business is one of them.

We chose to review the Stripe integration first, as this method is more common for us and our clients.

Let’s find out what is the Stripe payment gateway.

What is Stripe?

So, what is Stripe payment? Stripe is an international system that allows people and businesses to make or receive payments online. Stripe serves as a mediator between buyers and sellers. This service handles all issues connected with credit card payments, including data storage security, regular payments, and withdrawals.

Why Use Stripe?

Stripe offers several advantages for businesses. It provides a developer-friendly platform, robust payment infrastructure, and global reach and supports various payment methods. Stripe’s extensive features include subscription management, fraud prevention, customizable checkout, and seamless integration options, making it a popular choice for online businesses seeking reliable and scalable payment processing.

Universality

Stripe seamlessly integrates with various online platforms, making it easy to set up and accept payments on your website or app. We have some examples of our work too – you can review our Salita project, where we have Stripe payment gateway integration.

This payment gateway also supports over 135 currencies and major credit cards. In turn, this allows its clients to accept payments from customers worldwide without worrying about currency conversions or compatibility issues.

Stability

Stripe boasts a robust infrastructure known for minimal downtime and smooth processing of transactions. It helps reduce the risk of errors or delays during critical checkout moments. Stripe also prioritizes security with features like firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and regular penetration testing. The gateway also accounts for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance, which ensures the safe storage and transmission of sensitive cardholder data.

Transparency of Payments

Stripe offers a transparent fee structure with no hidden costs for either your business or your customers. Businesses also receive detailed information about each transaction, including the amount, currency, customer details, and any associated fees. This level of transparency allows for easy reconciliation and financial management.

Reliable reputation

Stripe has a long-standing reputation as a secure and reliable payment processor. The security we mentioned before combined with fraud prevention tools can protect your business from fraudulent transactions. Their proven track record in combating fraud minimizes your risk and safeguards your financial assets.

Usability of the interface

Stripe provides comprehensive documentation and developer tools, making it easy for developers to integrate the payment gateway into your existing platform. The gateway offers a clean and user-friendly checkout experience for your customers, minimizing friction and maximizing conversion rates. More so, as your business grows, Stripe can scale with you. Its scalability can accommodate an increasing volume of transactions without compromising performance.

The core functionality of Stripe

• Accepting payments

Does Stripe accept international payments? Yes! By generating a one-time token, Stripe quickly and securely validates the sensitive details of the credit cards (such as expiration date and CVV code) and handles the transactions.

Stripe international payments

• Creating the subscriptions

With the Stripe payment gateway solution, you can charge your customers on a daily basis using a subscription. You just need to create one using your Stripe dashboard and set the price of your future subscription.

Stripe subscriptions

• Stripe Sigma

Stripe Sigma is an analytics tool that will help your business track payment data. By sending simple SQL queries, you can obtain the recent statistics of your business and export it to a CSV file. The system stores all previously performed queries, so you can run any one of them, at any time.

Stripe Sigma

• Stripe Atlas

Stripe Atlas helps any global business start-up, from anywhere on Earth. With Stripe Atlas, it is possible to remotely register a US-based company located in Delaware. The newly established legal entity will have all the necessary documentation to begin operations, an account in a US bank, and access to the services of consultants.

Stripe Atlas

Stripe Pros and Cons

Stripe is famous for its high speed and high-security payment processing. For business owners and developers, the Stripe payment gateway provides convenient payment software for website integration. Let’s learn more about the pros and cons of Stripe.

Pros of Stripe

Detailed Documentation

Stripe is focused on developers, so it has extensive documentation, written in a simple language, so anyone can understand its API, products, and features. The documentation also contains ample ready-made solutions for the various programming languages, as well as possibilities for online payment software solutions testing and customization for Stripe gateway.

Custom Libraries

Stripe has custom libraries for a majority of programming languages, including Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, Javascript, and Node.js, allowing developers to focus on the product. With the use of these libraries, it is no longer necessary to write the additional subprograms in order to integrate the API in the initial codebase.

Testing Environment

Apart from the main documentation and libraries, Stripe has created documents and a bug-free testing environment. The online payment software provides dozens of sample credit card numbers for testing, including invalid numbers that return specific error codes.

Cons of Stripe

Geo limitations

The truth be told, geo-restrictions appear to be the weak point of many payment gateways, and Stripe just isn’t an exception. Stripe is available for business only in 39 largest countries, mostly European, Asian and American. And, though Stripe accepts payments from anywhere in the world, it remains to be an issue for the business owners from the countries out the list.

Requires a developer

If you decide to integrate Stripe payments and add some features or just customize existing ones, this will require technical skills or developer resources to customize. Though the documentation of this payment gateway is simple enough, you’ll still need to perform some coding to make it all work properly.

On the other hand, it is not really a disadvantage of Stripe as all of the payment gateways require some development help.

Alternatives to Stripe

And which online payment system is best? The popular alternatives to the Stripe payment gateway have pretty comparable features to Stripe.

MANGOPAY

It has a small API and supports users via phone in English, German, and French.

Adyen

It has a clear documentation and is easy to integrate, too.

Paypal

It has comparably larger fees (2.9%+$ 0.30 per one transaction), and is much more difficult to integrate.

Dwolla

Like Stripe, supports users 24/7. It also has a live chat for users, as well.

Skrill

It allows people to perform credit card and email transactions. You can even withdraw cash from ATMs.

The Stripe payment gateway is the perfect choice among website payment solutions, enabling you to choose from various payment systems and instruments.

Our Expertise in Stripe Integration

At Sloboda Studio, we have been working with online payment processing for 10 years now. Here are a couple of the most typical cases of Stripe payment gateway integrations.

Veeqo

Veeqo is a British retail platform for order management. Some time ago Veeqo used to process all the payments manually. But as it became a big logistic platform, such a manual payment system required a lot of time and resources.

Our Solution:

We made the payments at Veeqo fully digital by integrating a Stripe gateway, we provided a system with the ability to use different payment methods.

Scandinavian Cleaning Marketplace

This cleaning marketplace connects customers with professional cleaners in their area. The customers can book cleaning services for their apartments.

According to the customer’s business model, a payment for the cleaning should be transferred to the cleaners after their work is done. Therefore, issues with conducting the payment used to occur.

Our Solution:

We decided to integrate Stripe payments and set up notifications about payment failures. Once a payment fails, it triggers an email notification about the unpaid cleaning. This notification invites the customers to log into the dashboard, where they can see what is the reason for the payment error and pay for the service again.

Conclusion

In Sloboda studio, we see Stripe online payment gateway as reliable, convenient, and easy to integrate. This system is the most frequently chosen by our clients, and we know this firsthand from our own experience.

So if your project needs a Stripe integration, feel free to contact us – we are always ready to help.