The House of Stripe

As a services implementation specialized partner with Stripe, we are often asked about whether our Stripe expertise extends into the business strategy side of the Stripe implementation. The short answer is yes, and if that is enough, then you can stop reading here, but I recommend that you keep going. When people first start thinking about Stripe it feels a whole lot like the below image. The money goes from the customer, through Stripe, and ends at your business.

It’s rarely this simple. Everyone would love for it to be this straightforward, but making sure that we build out the solution that aligns with your business goals and is executed strategically is of the utmost importance. The right strategy is similar to how plumbers think about building out the plumbing in a house. The way the average person thinks about plumbing is similar to the way that many think about Stripe.

Though it may seem extremely simple, there are a number of variables that a plumber needs to consider when designing a good pipe system in a new home. Some of them are:

• Based on the water supply, what type and size of pipe do I need to use to ensure that the residents have adequate water pressure?
• How can I design the network of pipes such that water has the shortest distance to travel to and from each fixture?
• Where do the pipes need the most insulation to protect from excessive heat and cold?
• Where do I install pressure regulators to ensure that certain sections of the house have plenty of pressure while also guaranteeing that excess water pressure will not damage fixtures?
• How do I work within the space constraints of a given house based on the structure of the house and the number of required fixtures?

I could list many more considerations that a plumber will have through the house-building process, but this article is not about plumbing. It’s about how Echobind uses the right Stripe implementation strategy to help you reach your business goals.

Let’s take a look at one of our clients who had some novel needs and how we planned out the strategy to ensure that we met each and every one of their business needs.

Their needs

Echobind’s client ran a platform that allowed users to donate to individuals and families who had fallen on hard times. Before they engaged with Echobind, they made every payment to the beneficiaries via paper check. However, many of these families could not wait for a check to arrive in the mail, so the client wanted donations and the disbursement of funds to move away from checks, especially since some checks never made it to their destination. Other than those needs, they had a few others:

• They wanted site visitors to be able to tip the organization so that they could keep the site running. This meant that we needed to update the Stripe logic to make funds have multiple destinations.
• They didn’t want any of the Stripe fees to be deducted from the funds that the beneficiaries received. To do this, we organized the flow of money such that Stripe fees came directly from tips, and the money donated would arrive to the beneficiary in full.
• Oftentimes the campaign organizer and the end beneficiary were different people. This meant that we needed to create a way for beneficiaries to create a Stripe account that received funds from the campaign without them needing to be involved in the campaign.
• People would sometimes create campaigns for non-profit organizations with whom they did not have an association, so they still needed the ability for money to run through Stripe while also being able to cut a check at the end of the campaign.

This led to some exciting custom work that was outside of the bounds of Stripe’s boilerplate offerings. Echobind’s technical and product teams came up with a solution that allowed Echobind to exceed the client’s needs while also massively simplifying what the client thought would need to happen.

Your needs

Though that client’s needs were swiftly met, their needs are not your needs. So here are a few of the considerations we take into account when designing your Stripe implementation:

• Who needs to interact with the system?
• What platform will they use to interact with the system?
• How will they interact with it?
  • Are you making an online marketplace, a place people log into in order to pay bills, or is your organization generating payment links for services and the customers receive those payment links via WhatsApp message?
• What special regulatory considerations are needed in your industry?
  • Medicine is a far different beast than E-commerce, and we have done both.
• What special considerations are important to your organization?
• How much do we need to account for complexity vs simplicity on each side of a given transaction? In one instance we had a client who just needed to create a charge. The customer then needed to be able to dictate the pace at which they would pay the charge, allowing them to do full upfront payments or creating up to a five-year payment plan. This strategy significantly decreased defaults on payments by making them far more manageable for each customer.
• Do you need to prorate payments, like an apartment complex, or are you creating a subscription service that starts on the day it was created?

There is a whole lot more we think about when it comes to serving our client's strategic needs. Not only are we thinking about the Stripe of it all, but we also think about how the Stripe implementation will fit into your overarching product and business strategy.

If you have any questions about how we can help you with Stripe, feel free to contact lex@echobind.com.