Cost of SharpCap Jacked Up by Stripe?

[Harmonious]

I was going to order the forever license today and pay by Visa Card, but something seemed off in the pricing. With the friends and family discount Robin set he price at 90GBP which at today's rate is about 111USD. But when I get to the point of paying the price is 135 USD.

If Robin was next door and said "Ninety pounds will do it mate." I would gladly pay him the $112 cash in hand. If Robin asked for $135, I think I would do it immediately.

Visa says they will do as follows, 90 GBP = S111 (including a premium of 2.25% is a premium over the European Central Bank rate) and the processing bank here will take another 2%. So I pay an extra 4.25% over what I would pay if I were a bank, Seems fair to me. But who gets the 21% charge that Stripe adds? Not Robin I bet.

I am ignorant of the customary fees paid by a small business in the UK, but it does seem to me that a 21% transaction charge shocks the conscience, as the lawyers would say. Perhaps there is a better way?

[admin]

Hi,

actually, we set the various pound/dollar/euro prices, but since it involves a fair bit of effort to tweak them all, we don't update them very often. I suspect that when we last updated, the pound was somewhat stronger than it is at the moment, so we set a dollar price to work out at roughly the equivalent of the pound price plus a few percent to account for the extra fees on the foreign currency transaction.

You can of course just pick pounds as your payment currency and pay the current price in GBP. Your card provider will add a fee no doubt for a foreign currency transaction, but it may well come to less than the current dollar/pound price difference.

cheers,

Robin

[Harmonious]

Thank you, sir. As long as you get the money, or most of it, I'm good with your pricing. In fact, I just pushed the buy button, and it appeared in my inbox. I did not have even a moment to enjoy the anticipation.

The big question now is which of the three expiration dates will come first, mine, yours or the license in 3023?

May you live forever sir!

[oopfan]

I've recently researched Stripe's cost structure. It's quite complex depending on what additional services you want.

These figures are for a U.S. based company accepting a one-time payment: 3.4% + $0.30, add 1% if a currency conversion is involved.

Brian

[admin]

Hi,

glad you're happy with your new license - the thousand years thing is a bit of a laugh that came about because I originally wrote the licensing with no plan for lifetime licenses, so every license had to have an expiry date. When I decided to start doing lifetime ones, that was the easiest way to add them without requiring people to upgrade to a new version of SharpCap. I can also advertise them now and then as great value at only £0.12 per year.

For the payment provider fees, they are all similar in the end unless you have really high turnover. When I first added stripe it was about 0.5% cheaper than PayPal, but I think it is close to even now.

cheers,

Robin

[Harmonious]

I took your suggestion and paid in pounds. I checked the charge today and found it to be very satisfactory.