Challenge

Just three years after Stripe was founded, Payment’s parent company, PocketVendor, jumped at the opportunity to use the company’s API to create an independent analytics app called Paid that integrated exclusively with Stripe products. As PocketVendor grew, it implemented an integration with Stripe Payments. “At the time, Stripe was working on scaling, and it didn’t have any mobile apps yet,” said Ryan Scherf, CEO and founder of Payment. “We saw this massive surge of interest in our integration with Payments and followed that.”

When Stripe launched its own app with the Stripe Dashboard, PocketVendor’s reporting features were also available in the official Stripe app, so PocketVendor focused on its role in the payment process and Payment was born: a mobile app that enables users to connect a Stripe account to their mobile device and start charging customers in less than 30 seconds. While Stripe has a number of no-code solutions, Stripe Terminal, which enables businesses to build their own in-person checkout process to accept in-person payments, requires technical resources to implement.

Payment set out to meet this need by offering a no-code solution for small businesses interested in syncing their Terminal hardware to their Stripe account in minutes without any developer expertise or the time or budget for engineering resources. “I wanted Payment to work for everyone,” Scherf said. “People who have no-code solutions for their websites want other no-code ways to run their business. They just want all of their payments to go into one place, whether they’re online or in a brick-and-mortar store.”

Payment was able to design an easy way for its users to accept payments, sell products, and track customer information, but to complete its offering, it needed a payment processor that could manage the infrastructure behind the intuitive UX. It chose to double down on its partnership with Stripe to simplify payment processing, so it could focus on providing the best point-of-sale experience.

Solution

Since Payment is built to support Stripe users, the company works closely with Stripe to grow together. “Payment is an independent company, but it exists because Stripe enables people like me to build a single-person business,” Scherf said. “You could try operating a business with other payment providers, but it would require custom implementation that I could no longer do by myself.”

At the heart of this close relationship is Payment’s use of Stripe Connect. With Connect, users can log in to Payment with just a Stripe ID and start accepting payments from customers immediately. “I provide my customers with a user-friendly POS, and that’s my bread and butter,” Scherf said. “Everything else, from the login flow to payouts and settlements is handled by Stripe.” This approach has also helped Payment expand internationally; as Stripe adds new payment methods and currencies to the platform, Payment can immediately enable them for its own users and use it to attract new ones.

As a Stripe partner, Payment users have access to the entire suite of Stripe products, including Stripe Billing, Stripe Invoicing, Stripe Tax, and Stripe Radar. To add improved support for in-person payments, Payment also adopted Stripe Terminal and the M2, WPE, WP3, and S700 reader models. “For me, Terminal is the most important thing that Stripe has ever added to its product suite and then some,” Scherf said. “We were able to get rid of our old physical readers, along with all the extra fees, and instead have a clean, professional-looking system with an easy-to-use API.”

With all of these products together, Payment gives businesses the power to update and manage inventories from anywhere, automates tax calculation, offers customisable tip options, and even allows businesses to opt customers into subscriptions during in-person transactions.

As an early adopter and collaborator, Payment also works closely with the Stripe team to fully understand the market and opportunities to help customers of both platforms. “I can’t say enough good things about Stripe’s technical teams that I’ve worked with over the last ten years to support Payment,” Scherf said. “Stripe has always been a developer-first company, and the fact this hasn’t changed is a testament to Stripe’s commitment to its users’ teams.”

Results

Processing more than $555 million in sales for 153K+ customers around the world

Working with Stripe, Payment has become a core driver for nearly 153,000 users because it links a business’s back-end payment processing with its customers’ point-of-sale experience. “Payment provides businesses with a simple point-of-sale system connected to Stripe, so they can run their businesses in-person and online,” said Scherf.

Using Stripe Billing and Stripe Terminal together, Payment customers can sign up a customer for a subscription service at an in-person event and then manage that subscription from the Stripe Dashboard. Payment has used this combination of Stripe Billing and Terminal together to process more than $100 million worth of transactions per year.

Developing a platform driven by customer demand

As Stripe grows, Payment’s options for its customers also grows. “If I have 100 customers requesting to add WeChat Pay or payment links, I can easily implement them, so I follow closely behind Stripe’s feature releases,” Scherf said.

Payment has also been able to use Stripe Invoicing to give its customers a flexible way to build in-person product carts for checkout. “Stripe’s flexibility means that I can trust its products and build off them to meet my customers’ needs,” Scherf added.

Supporting more than 6,300 businesses with in-person payment hardware

Since the launch of Stripe Terminal in January 2019, Payment has supported more than 6,300 Stripe readers and more than 2,400 Tap to Pay on iPhone connections for businesses looking for a simple, in-person payments solution. “Having access to Terminal changed our business. It looks professional, it has an out-of-the-box, easy-to-use API, and it's the hook that then gets our users engaged with other Stripe products,” Scherf said.

With Payment and Stripe Terminal together, small businesses can do away with dated card readers and directly connect their point-of-sale software to their Stripe account, rather than going through a clunky, third-party system. Since Payment is a no-code solution, these businesses can simplify these payment challenges quickly. “Changing point-of-sale systems is a massive pain point, and with Terminal and Payment, we can make that change easy,” Scherf said.

Payment is now used as a point-of-sale solution by companies ranging from private jet operators to plumbers and gardeners looking for an easily accessible way to execute in-person customer payments, and it continues to find ways to improve support for an increasing number of customers around the world.

About Payment

With Payment, global businesses of all sizes can collect in-person payments, enable subscriptions, and set up sales tax easily, all with their Stripe accounts. Learn how.