Stripe is an online payment solution created by two developers from Ireland- John and Patrick Collison back in 2010. The goal of the online payment platform was to provide a payment gateway system for apps and websites. Stripe eventually forged a partnership with Visa, among other major credit card firms, and now is an established player in the FinTech field known for its robust security and flexible payment systems.
From a security viewpoint, Stripe is recognized for its efforts and achievements in fraud prevention. Along with PayPal and a few other gateways, Stripe was also a pioneer for recurring charges on the credit cards of customers on record after due verification. Stripe stands out by the ease with which you can integrate the system and the high levels of security that it has put in place.
However, Stripe goes way beyond simply being an online payment solution with which you take money from customers and deposit it into your bank account. The firm is expanding its area of operations and is in the process of developing a variety of feature-rich tools. These tools and other relevant resources will help businesses sell more of their product or service online without the hassles of working with a large number of accounts from different service providers. These are as follows:
- Billing - This lets you implement complex billing systems to suit any pricing model you choose.
- Connect - You can create marketplaces of your own where buyers and sellers can operate together.
- Radar - Use Machine Learning to detect potential financial frauds.
- Terminal - Your online business can now have a physical presence with the help of Stripe’s terminal feature.
- Atlas - This fully managed service facilitates all aspects of business creation.
- Sigma - An analytics tool based on the popular SQL database.
- Issuing - Finally, businesses can create, distribute and manage physical cards with Stripe’s Issuing feature
Why You Should Create a Stripe Account
Stripe is one of the leading online payment solutions and there are many, many potential reasons that encourage you to set up Stripe account. These include:
Transparency in Costs and Pricing
Stripe delivers on its stated goal of making online payments simple and convenient. With a Stripe account, you are charged 2.9% of the amount of the online transaction plus thirty cents per successful transaction. Typically, other service providers charge something on signup or as a monthly fee. But there are no such charges on the Stripe platform and the costs associated with Stripe are typically better suited for new businesses or those just beginning to explore the world of ecommerce. You can have zero customers, no revenue, and tight budgets and still use online payments for your product or service. You can choose to only pay when you are making money thereby reducing monthly overloads significantly.
You Can Integrate Stripe Very Easily
Stripe supports tight integration with almost all major eCommerce platforms including leading ones like Strikingly which doesn't cost much and CMSs like WordPress. Usually, you can add stripe as a payment gateway by using only the secret keys provided to you by your Stripe dashboard. Further developers can create custom integrations with relative ease thanks to the detailed and exhaustive documentation. Lastly, we should mention that Stripe offers credit card forms as popups that support all major issues like
- Error handling
- validation
- Security etc
Great Support
Stripe is widely acknowledged as having one of the best and most responsive customer support systems in the industry. In the rare case that you do indeed need any help with your Stripe account, the response is swift and effective.
Painless Chargebacks
Chargebacks are a major difficulty in online businesses. Stripe takes things forward by making the whole process of chargebacks as easy and painless as possible. Stripe uses a simple notification system along with an response interface that facilitates the task of chargeback management and contesting undeserved chargebacks simple and hassle-free.
Image Taken from Stripe Website
How to Set up a Stripe account
Setting up Stripe is a time-consuming process, and you might need to provide a significant amount of personal and business information.
Before you proceed to set up a Stripe account for your business make sure you have the following information figured out:
- Type of business (LLC, Corporation, DBA, Single Owner, etc.)
- Customer support phone number and email to share with customers in case they need help
- The physical address of the business office/home office
- Bank’s routing number
- Your bank account number
- Kind of monthly sales you expect for your account (If you don't know this or if the matter is not applicable choose the “I’m not really sure” option)
- Your business industry. You should try to choose the one closest to your area of business operations.
Now that we have the required information for setting up Stripe let’s dive in:
Step 1 - Activate your account
In the previous section, we logged in to the Stripe dashboard, let’s now click the “Activate your Stripe Account” link.
Step 2 - Start setting up Stripe
Click the “Start now” button on the page you arrive at upon clicking the activate link.
Step 3 - Provide the relevant information
It is now that the information you collected earlier will be of use. Common details would include:
- Business location
- Website url
- Website description
Image is taken from Strikingly user’s website
You will also need to provide other business information. The specific information that you will need to provide depends a lot on the business type (Single owner, LLC etc.) Single owners and single-owner LLCs will need to provide their SSNs. Business entities like corporations will have to submit different business information.
Step 4 - Add your phone number to your account
While two-factor authentication might be an option but in the dark days of hackers and the dark web, it is definitely a good idea to set up two-factor authentication with your stripe account. After all, this is critical business or blog financial data that is at stake here. Once you add your phone number to your Stripe account, Stripe will send a special text message to your phone containing and code that you have to input to finish the authentication process. Once you add two-factor authentication after you have set up a Stripe account every time you try to log in you need to furnish a special key available from your phone.
If you are unfamiliar with two-factor authentication, you might worry that a lost phone would mean losing your Stripe account. To prevent that Stripe provides you with a special backup key that you can use in case of any emergencies when your phone is inaccessible. As someone with account details can use your Stripe account even without the phone, it is a good idea to store this key at a safe yet easy-to-access location.
Alert - It is a best practice to perform the two-factor authentication process only after claiming your Stripe account and integrating it with your strikingly blog or store.
Special Alert- Go to your profile section by clicking on the relevant link in the upper right corner of the window and click on “Profile”. Double-check and ensure that you have provided all of the information accurately. Another best practice that you should do now is to navigate to the “Email preferences” section and make sure that the boxes next to the following at least are kept checked:
- Successful payments
- Disputes
- Invoice mispayments
- Webhooks
- Additional notifications you are particularly interested in
Voila! That’s it! Your stripe account is ready and raring to go after financial success!!!
How to add Stripe to Strikingly
After claiming your Stripe account, you are now free to add Stripe to Strikingly. Your strikingly Simple Store will then be able to accept debit and credit card payments securely using your Stripe account. Once you have set up your online shop with strikingly and have activated your Stripe account, you can receive payments almost instantly by connecting the two. Observe the following steps and add Stripe to strikingly:
Step 1 - Connect your stripe account to your Simple Store
Go to the settings section of your Strikingly admin page. Then select the “Accept Payments” middle menu section link and choose Stripe as your payment gateway of choice.
Image taken from Strikingly product
Step 2 - Connect to Stripe
Next click on the “Connect to Stripe” button and a new tab will open.
Image taken from Strikingly product
Step 3 - Login to Stripe
As you already know how to add Stripe to Strikingly and have an account with the service all you need to do is to log in to your account with the login credentials on this page.
Alert - Keep in mind that orders will appear with a “Coming Soon” button till you have successfully set up a payment gateway for use with your Stripe account.
Countries from which you can accept payments through your Stripe account
As per our last check, you could accept payments from any of the countries listed below:
- Australia
- Austria
- Belgium
- Canada
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Hong Kong
- Ireland
- Italy
- Japan
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Malaysia
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Singapore
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- United Kingdom
- United States
If you don’t find your country among the ones listed above, don’t lose hope. You can still use the PayPal gateway or opt for the offline payment option!
Overall, Stripe as one of the first FinTech payment platforms, makes it easy for businesses to accept payments. It also stands out by its safety features and great customer support.
