Failures, buyouts and a bit of luck; the story behind PocketVendor and Payment for Stripe.
The Stripe API launched several years ago, Paid becomes the first analytics mobile app to roll up daily, weekly and monthly charge volumes. Although operationally intensive (to this day), Paid provided businesses owners with a glimpse of their daily revenue. The Stripe web Dashboard was/is not a responsive site.
Launch of Paid, the first analytics app for Stripe accounts. Included ability to charge customers as a side feature. No card readers, only manual input. Using the original Charges and Tokens API, the feature was needed so a spouse could run credit cards at a garage sale.
Two years ago we launched a little app for @stripe. Since then, we've helped over 8400 users through 16 versions. pic.twitter.com/WwuGwdlrwI
— Payment (@payment) May 7, 2015
At the beginning of the year, Payment was forked from Paid and rolled into it's own separate app.
Payment for iOS launches as a standalone, single-featured app.
Stripe launches a 1st-party app called Dashboard, with a stunning UI. The decision is made to end-of-life Paid after amassing 8,400 users over the course of a year and begin focusing only on Payment.
One month after shutting down Paid, Payment proves to be the more lucrative business. After struggling for a year to find the right business model (IAP, subscription, etc) for Paid, Payment proves a simple 1.2% fee works well.
1,500 charges this month passed through Payment with over $300k in volume 💯
— Payment (@payment) August 1, 2015
Steady, organic growth results in over $400K in total volume processed in the month of September.
Huge milestone! Today we surpassed $400,000 in @stripe volume for a single month (and we still have 6 days left). 🎉 pic.twitter.com/eYcX2ndIqG
— Payment (@payment) September 24, 2015
A huge milestone comes and goes, with new users and more payments being added every single day.
We've processed over 10,000 charges for @stripe since January. pic.twitter.com/a4RQqPLgkL
— Payment (@payment) October 12, 2015
The year 2015 turned out to be an incredible time to launch Payment, mostly latching on to the success and adoption of Stripe.
We're 11 months into processing payments for @Stripe. We've processed $3.5M in charge volume for 5,000+ users.
— Payment (@payment) December 17, 2015
We were seeing double digit month-over-month growth.
Organic growth continues as Payment ranks #1 in the App Store for the keyword 'stripe' for the better part of the past year.
New milestone: today we passed 20k charges processed with @Stripe since Jan 2015. Average charge amount: $221. pic.twitter.com/7QuLZnBYnl
— Payment (@payment) January 28, 2016
Added support for all available Stripe currencies, which unlocks the app for global customers.
$6M in Total Volume and growing! pic.twitter.com/6CBLhjpPEf
— Payment (@payment) March 23, 2016
Payment posts it's first 4-figure daily profit with over $100K in total volume processed in a single day.
Such a great milestone. Yesterday we processed over $100,000 in @stripe charges in a single day. pic.twitter.com/iOYgns0PrP
— Payment (@payment) April 22, 2016
In just under 6 months, Payment has already doubled the amount of transactions happening within the app.
Just passed 50,000 total charges processed with @stripe.
— Payment (@payment) June 29, 2016
💳 → 💵 pic.twitter.com/foP0IjkCvk
A complete rewrite of the architecture behind Payment (Objective-C to Swift), which paves the way for the launch of Payment 2.0.
Surprise! Payment 2.0 has been rebuilt for performance and to pave the way for card readers. 💳 Go update!https://t.co/Sdk0zAtrhQ
— Payment (@payment) July 11, 2016
We launched our Android app, which was similar to the launch of Payment 1.0; a bare bones charging system built on Stripe.
We launched the first official card reader integration with the Magtek iDynamo, a handheld swiper that plugged into the lightning port of an iOS device.
Big news! We’ve partnered with @MagTek to bring card readers to your @stripe account.https://t.co/OBMkUk0Dxn pic.twitter.com/ehfR5600G1
— Payment (@payment) September 29, 2016
Another 6 months past, and volume and payments double.
Businesses around the world have trusted Payment & @stripe to charge their customers.
— Payment (@payment) December 12, 2016
Our latest milestone: 1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣,0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ charges! 💳
We were seeing double digit month-over-month growth and the time had come to begin to focus and invest in the business.
The steady organic growth continued throughout the year
Over the last 2 years, we've processed $25M in payments via @stripe for small businesses around the world.
— Payment (@payment) February 10, 2017
For the second consecutive year, the growth of Payment app's transactions more than doubles throughout the year.
After 3 years of helping @stripe customers across the glove, we’ve processed over $60M for 30,000 businesses.
— Payment (@payment) January 8, 2018
💪💳
We were seeing double digit month-over-month growth, and it was time for Payment to become a full-time job.
Although it was an extremely difficult decision, it was time for the founders to go their separate ways. With a clash of directional vision for their company, it was ultimately decided that it was time for one of them to move on.
After struggling with complex integrations with several different card reader companies in the past (CardFlight, Magtek and Payworks), we were ecstatic when Stripe launched their own plug and play Terminal devices.
We became the first and most trusted partner for Stripe Terminal, originally launching with the BBPOS Chipper 2X BT card reader.
Did we mention we now have an EMV card reader? Support Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay, VISA Paywave, MasterCard PayPass, AMEX ExpressPay and Discover D-PAS.
— Payment (@payment) February 25, 2019
Get it today at: https://t.co/FD75VJ3VoS
Oh, and you get card present rates at 2.7% + 5c per transaction! Bonus!
User growth continues to trend upwards, even as a half dozen copycat apps have started to saturate the App Store.
50k users trust Payment for @Stripe to collect card present payments.https://t.co/OBMkUk0Dxn
— Payment (@payment) April 27, 2019
Added support for some of the top requested features including Stripe Billing, SCA (Strong Customer Authentication) and Tipping
Finally focusing on our brand, we spent most of the summer and fall acquiring both @payment on Twitter and payment.co domain
2K App Store reviews with a 4.8 rating
Our business was also affected by the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 and the pandemic.
The pandemic took a toll on most businesses, and our customers were no different.
Since the pandemic brought plenty of downtime, we took the opportunity to finally update our brand including the apps and website.
With a large amount of uncertainty around what's next with the pandemic, Payment operates at about 50% capacity for several months.
As the pandemic begins to thaw, we're still seeing constant user growth, but revenue per user is drastically down from previous years.
After launching Stripe Terminal card readers in 2019 we've eclipsed having 1,000 card readers deployed around the U.S.
Card readers roll out to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
As the holiday season comes and goes, December 2020 turns out to be our best month to date. We've fully recovered from the pandemic to the previous levels.
Although user growth had always been constant as people were trying to figure out new ways to get paid and support their families, Payment was slowly recovering back to pre-2020 levels.
3K App Store reviews with a 4.8 rating
With Spring upon us and the vaccine widely available, April has begun to trend upwards above and beyond what we had expected.
We have processed over $250,000,000 in total volume for merchants. This would not have been possible without the excellent tooling of @stripe.
— Payment (@payment) April 16, 2021