Kickstarter announced on January 6 in a blog post that instead of continuing to work with Amazon, who discontinued the product they were using to process payments, they are partnering with the growing company, Stripe. The change is supposed to make it easier for creators to launch projects and for backers to pledge to them.
The reason that Stripe is so easy is in part because creators no longer have to sign up for an Amazon Payments business account, which can take a few days. Using Stripe, all creators have to do is enter their banking information when setting up their Kickstarter account. The same idea goes for backers – after choosing their reward tier they will no longer be re-directed to Amazon. All they need to do is enter their payment information, and voila!
Stripe is a growing company that was built for mobile devices and the web. They currently enable one touch pay for i0S, and recently raised $70 million in a venture funding round. The company, which was founded by two brothers, is now valued at around $3.5 billion. They do business with several large online companies, including: Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce, Reddit, Insacart, TED, The Guardian, and more!
The co-founders, Patrick and John Collison, wanted to create a platform with transparent pricing that was simple and easy to use. A Techworld post notes that they ranked John as the second most promising entrepreneur in Britain. Patrick tweeted in response to Kickstarter’s announcement of their partnership:
Amazon had processed $1 billion in pledges on Kickstarter, and has been working with them since the beginning. Kickstarter said they are happy about the change though:
“We took the opportunity to consider the best possible partner to process payments for creators and backers moving forward. After careful consideration, we decided on Stripe … we’ve gotten to know their team and product well. We’re thrilled to partner with them.”
Another interesting thing noted by Gigaom was that, “Amazon processed U.S. projects only, while Kickstarter relied on other payment processors to handle its international traffic. Stripe, however, will become Kickstarter’s global processor.” Kickstarter commented that they should be fully switched over to the new service by next week. They reassured creators not to worry – new projects can still launch as usual, and Kickstarter fees will be staying the same (5% in platform fees and 3 to 5% for Stripe).
This switch should make it easier for potential backers who are less tech-savvy to support the crowdfunding campaigns they like. Instead of having to sign up for two whole new services, they just need to log into Kickstarter quickly and enter in their credit card number or other payment information. The switch should also make mobile payments easier, so more people can back Kickstarter campaigns on the go!
