When Should You Leave Stripe? One Number Decides
At what point is Stripe no longer enough? Learn why $250K in monthly card sales can be a key threshold, when high-risk or single-market businesses should move earlier, and why direct acquiring and backup processors can give your business more control.
Transcript excerpt
When should you leave Stripe? If Stripe freezes your payments tomorrow, your business stops getting paid. So, I use one number to tell clients when Stripe alone isn't enough. The number is more than 250k a month in card sales. Past it, you get your own contract with an acquiring bank, which is the bank that processes your card payments actually in the background. What if I'm below that but sell mostly in one country? With high volume in one market, like for example the UK, you move away to local acquiring banks or provider built for that market specifically. And what if my business is high risk? Then you move even below that number to a direct processing bank or to a provider with its own merchant IDs, meaning the IDs that identify your business when you take the card payments. The first reason is always the price. Stripe is so big that the listed prices are one-size-fits-all. So, a direct contact gets you actually better rates. Stripe also freezes payments sometimes and your money is stuck. A direct relationship gives you a real person to call instead of just a support agent.
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