As I feel I’m getting super close to being able to launch beta, I’m starting to research payment processing. What are you all using to process payments?
I’m building an industry specific CRM/Scheduling app and want to be able to paywall certain features and run payments on credit cards. I’d love to hear what everyone is using and the type of app you’re processing payments for. I’m guessing I’ll go with Stripe because they’re world famous for their APIs, but I’ve also loved Link when paying for things online.
That’s an important warning to anyone thinking of using Stripe - sign up and start the approval process today, even if you’re not planning on needing it for week or months.
It’s very difficult to take payments for a digital app in this new world post trump, nearly every country in the world charges vat and expects there share of the correct taxes. Vat is a nightmare for selling digitally. It means you can either only sell in a few countries where thresholds allow or you have to use a payment system that handles the vat payments for you. I think paddle was mentioned on Reddit. Stripe I am not sure how they now handle vat. If they do it for you. You won’t like all the new VAT rules so I have opted to try to make adverts based income as a first choice for my apps.
Stripe. Super easy and scales well and has pretty sophisticated invoicing tools if you need them. They are also a good bet on a company that will stay current with new innovation and maybe even pioneer it like with stablecoins if that becomes more mainstream for payment.
As everyone here has mentioned, Stripe has almost everything now, its the best option unless there is a reason ot use PayPal or another service. Stripe even has Klarna and Affirm. Its very well documented and replit already supports it,.
Yeah, I started implementing last night. Getting used to their settings pages and setup in sandbox. Have the paywalls up, still trying to figure out how to get the right checkout pages implemented and the ability to swap between monthly/annual options.
I was talking to chatgpt about Stripe Tax, seen at:
which looks like a bespoke all in one solution which will handle tax for us,
BUT Chatgpt says it works differently and doesn’t provide a full solution to all our needs: Chatgpt answer is this:
“Conclusion: Will you be free of registration / red tape everywhere?
No, Stripe Tax does not relieve you of all registration and compliance obligations. It makes handling tax logic vastly easier and more automated. But in many jurisdictions, you will still:
Need to register for VAT / sales tax when your taxable sales cross a threshold or you fulfill “nexus” conditions
File returns and remit the collected tax to that jurisdiction
Comply with local invoicing, records, and administrative rules
“
which makes me worry about how to solve any of our apps going global with new vat rules and registration in multiple countries.
In other words, a red tape nightmare, anyone know of a solution to this:
Is Chatgpt wrong? Is there a way to work with stripe to get them to submit the tax on our behalf under a global VAT number (I can but hope) or is there an alternative payment system?
Stripe user here too, now when I have implemented it few times I can instruct the agent pretty well to implement it and don’t need so much fixing afterwards.
Any suggestions on prompting? I have it close to implemented I think, just had a few issues with how I defined ‘Customer’ in my app so I need to work through that in the next few days, but it took quite a few tries to get Stripe embedded.
It’d be helpful to know -
What API endpoints are you using?
What products in Stripe (are you using anything like Connect, Identity, etc)?
I don’t think there will ever be a silver bullet for VAT / Sales Tax. The issue lies with government, it’s nearly impossible because there are always Federal / State / Local differences in tax rates. On top of that, there are additional differences on the type of good/service. Then, on top of that, rates change annually, so it’s constantly dynamic. 195 countries, and 90,000 local governments in the US alone.
Unless the UN agreed on a standardized VAT/Tax database and a standardized process to make changes, we’ll never see a perfect solution.
Welp, that was a quick thread.
t4p gg