Today at Disrupt NY, Stripe co-founder John Collison participated on a panel with Hill Ferguson (PayPal) and Sahil Lavingia (Gumroad) about digital money. He shared that Walmart’s Goodies.co is now using Stripe to process payments. Convincing a big company like Walmart to switch to Stripe is a big achievement for the startup.
During the panel, Collison shared what made Stripe possible. When asked what his thoughts were on credit card companies, he first stated that “credit cards are this instrument that everyone has. Fundamentally, these companies bring a very valuable service.” But he then shared his thoughts about fees.
“It makes it very difficult for merchants to manage their businesses,” he said. “There is no cost to using Stripe. We have one clear transaction fee and that’s it,” he continued. Credit card companies provide payment processing on their own, but Stripe’s simplicity and easy integration process from a developer standpoint make it a compelling offer.
“That was a big opportunity for Stripe, but you kind of think that it shouldn’t be,” Collison said. Many small developers already switched to Stripe, even saying that PayPal was too cumbersome to use. Even though the company still has a lot of work to do to ramp up international support, big companies are already starting to notice Stripe’s strengths.