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The most annoying part of running a business shouldn't be getting paid. At least, that's what Stripe thinks. Stripe is a payment processing service that helps small business owners get paid for their products or services.
With Stripe, you can process payments from a website or app, and even collect money due from invoices. Ordinarily, setting up payment processing on a website involves a lot of coding, compliance, and connecting with payment processors to get your account ready.
Stripe solves this problem by offering a few different ways you can setup the payment processing service. The simplest option is to turn on an integration in a software that already works with Stripe, such as Squarespace, WooCommerce, Freshbooks, Harvest, and so forth. If you're not already using a supported service, a second option is to try Stripe Checkout, a prebuilt checkout form that you can add to your business without the need for coding anything to install it. Third, you can add Stripe to your website or app directly by using its APIs. The service includes pre-written code samples in a number of languages. You also get testing accounts and credit card numbers for testing payments before opening your site to customers. Stripe works for one-time payments and recurring subscriptions as well.
With Stripe, you can not only accept credit card payments, but also those from ACH bank transfers, popular European payment gateways, and mobile payment solutions including WeChat Pay, Alipay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay on mobile devices. It's a simple way to accept payments from anyone, anywhere in the world, no matter how they want to pay.
Once you've launched your site or app, you can login to Stripe's dashboard to see data about your account and manage your customers, products, subscriptions, and more. A dashboard shows your sales and successful charges, along with an option to switch your account between testing and live so you can try new changes without affecting your site. You can dig through customer data, see details about each payment, and report fraud or refund the payment in full or partially if needed.
For extra features beyond direct payments, you can list your product SKUs inside Stripe, or create subscriptions for your services. If you want to offer deals, you can make coupon codes for one-time offers, time-based coupons (perhaps a promotion of the month), and permanent discount codes to give out to employees, partners, or special customers. You can even limit coupons based on the number of redemptions, such as offering a deal to the next 100 people who purchase your product.
While Stripe accounts are only supported in certain countries, the company has a service, called Stripe Atlas that helps you establish up a U.S.-based company and bank account, no matter where you're physically located.
Getting paid doesn't have to be difficult. Stripe makes it easy for you while also giving your customers and clients a professional experience.