Same for Asia. I'm reckon the revenue generated by expanding their services overseas would be well worth the additional headache.
Can anyone more knowledgeable (who knows about this industry or finance) enlighten me regarding what could be the possible reasons that may be stopping this company from doing so despite all this demand?
Seriously guys, stop this. It's never as simple as "oh man Stripe needs to come to [country I just so happen to live in] because they'd make so much money it can't be that hard." Yes, it can and it is. Stripe is doing everything right - focusing on a quality product and taking small steps to make it available to as many people as possible without damaging the quality of that product. It's a hell of a lot easier for someone in Germany to rip off Stripe and comply with all the German regulations than it is for Stripe to come in with no assets on the ground and figure it all out.
They could be in Asia and the entire EU in under a year, I'm pretty sure. Their platform would implode and we'd all talk about how Stripe used to be good, and now it's worse than PayPal and how the executives screwed the pooch.
To do things right takes time. Months, even years. If Stripe isn't available in your country, maybe you should build it.
Disclosure: I do not work for Stripe, but I've worked with their API as well as the APIs of Piryx/Rally and PayPal. Stripe's is the best (Piryx is a close second but they've transitioned to Rally and last I checked Rally didn't have an API), and I'm as huge a fan as I could be having never processed a penny of real money through their servers.
I am genuinely curious as to what is stopping them from doing it (considering Paypal, 2checkout, etc are already doing it). I think I have some understanding about it now after reading SoftwareMaven's comment.
> It's a hell of a lot easier for someone in Germany to rip off Stripe and comply with all the German regulations than it is for Stripe to come in with no assets on the ground and figure it all out.
Unfortunately, that is just as bad and does not solve the problem, because most online businesses cater to a global audience (unless dealing in tangible products) so any payment processor just limited to Germany can never fully compete or replace competitors who do.
I would assume that Stripe would like to be in every locale and demand has nothing to do with it, they are just having to make sure they're fully compliant in each major area of the world they want to enter. That is probably a very large obstacle to overcome.
Sometimes it is best to go for it. I remember reading an interview of the Paypal co-founder in which he said that when his site was launched he saw a lot of demand from eBay users but since they thought their site was not ready(?) for that, the fought tooth and nail to keep them away. But then something changed and they started allowing eBay users to use their service and the rest is history.
It could be a similar turning point from Stripe as well. Every time this comes up a good portion of the thread is dedicated to them not being International. Maybe if they just started doing this on a trial basis they will see how much business they have untapped. Or maybe some other business can use this leverage to offer similar services to instantly enter the market.
This is not a case of "the experience isn't quite right". Finance is a heavily regulated area and failure to dot your i's and cross your t's could mean jail time or fines consisting of very large sums of money. Furthermore, failure to understand how to protect against fraud in each region is a costly mistake (one PayPal spent $300M learning).
Sometime "launch it and hope for the best" is not the right answer (though it very often is).
Stripe already works everywhere for customers, so it's compliant, right? I.e. Stripe can accept credit card payments from everywhere. The current problem is setting up payments for businesses. Could someone explain why the recipient country matters?
Startup idea: Set up US based company that redirects money to countries outside USA.
I know nothing about the regulation hurdles of payment processing, but I would assume that there is a massive difference between laws regulating how to make payments from a foreign country and how to accept payments as a company in a foreign country.
Can anyone more knowledgeable (who knows about this industry or finance) enlighten me regarding what could be the possible reasons that may be stopping this company from doing so despite all this demand?