Patrick from Stripe here. This is a really good point, and one that's worth clarifying. I'm just back from a run, and can't reply in depth right now, but wanted to add this comment as a placeholder before the thread falls off your radar. Will update here within a few hours.
(And, PS, thanks for the kind words.)
[Update follows]
I don't think we've ever claimed that before Stripe you had to have a merchant account. We're of course aware that there were a a bunch of services that didn't require a merchant account before Stripe (not just PayPal, but also Google Checkout and Amazon Payments).
The point we always do try to make is that the vast majority of sites (and, especially, the best sites) end up using their own merchant account. Whatever about the feature sets of PayPal and similar systems, people still ended up preferring merchant accounts, and the traditional merchant account infrastructure powers most of the e-commerce on the web.
It turns out that there are actually pretty good reasons for this: the merchant-account based solutions gave you the most control over the end-user experience, the most control over the relationship with your customers, and so on. Merchant accounts were the best solution and still are the most widely deployed option.
To the extent that Stripe is competing with anything, we're competing with that.
And so, to get back to your point: it is, overall, a pretty subtle situation, and how best to make the landscape clear in a few sentences to someone watching TV -- or someone who doesn't know much about the industry -- isn't easy. We want to be as accurate as possible without compromising clarity or brevity. If you've any suggestions as to how we could do it better, they'd be much appreciated: I'm patrick@stripe.com.
(And, PS, thanks for the kind words.)
[Update follows]
I don't think we've ever claimed that before Stripe you had to have a merchant account. We're of course aware that there were a a bunch of services that didn't require a merchant account before Stripe (not just PayPal, but also Google Checkout and Amazon Payments).
The point we always do try to make is that the vast majority of sites (and, especially, the best sites) end up using their own merchant account. Whatever about the feature sets of PayPal and similar systems, people still ended up preferring merchant accounts, and the traditional merchant account infrastructure powers most of the e-commerce on the web.
It turns out that there are actually pretty good reasons for this: the merchant-account based solutions gave you the most control over the end-user experience, the most control over the relationship with your customers, and so on. Merchant accounts were the best solution and still are the most widely deployed option.
To the extent that Stripe is competing with anything, we're competing with that.
And so, to get back to your point: it is, overall, a pretty subtle situation, and how best to make the landscape clear in a few sentences to someone watching TV -- or someone who doesn't know much about the industry -- isn't easy. We want to be as accurate as possible without compromising clarity or brevity. If you've any suggestions as to how we could do it better, they'd be much appreciated: I'm patrick@stripe.com.