Stripe? The verdict is in, and we’re impressed!

In May, we announced the availability of gift payments via Stripe — making credit/debit card payments for your gifts easier and cheaper than they’ve ever been.

It’s a little odd to be excited about something as dry as payment processing, but facilitating this is a fundamental part of our service. Stripe makes it easier and smoother for your guests to send the value of their gifts to you.

Stripe’s largely targeted at online businesses rather than individuals, so they’re less well-known than PayPal — but they’re hugely respected in tech circles, and are trusted by companies like The Guardian, Virgin, TED, Wired and Salesforce for online payments processing.

Making payment using Stripe’s checkout is secure and fast — and incredibly simple: your guests won’t even leave your list pages to go to an external payments site. Your guests don’t ever need to set up an account of any kind, and can be based anywhere in the world.

What’s more, the process for setting up payments via Stripe couldn’t be easier, and for many of our customers, their fees are lower than PayPal’s. And if you’re in the UK, you can offer your guests a choice on how they’d like to pay — by card through Stripe or PayPal, or by Direct Debit through GoCardless.

We’ve been so pleased with how easy couples have found setting up Stripe payments, and how easily their guests have been able to pay, that for most couples we now actively recommend gift payments by Stripe over payments by PayPal.

Are there exceptions? Well, only really if you’re fuelling an ebay addiction and need to be able to spend your gifts the same day that they’re made. With Stripe, your money is automatically transferred to your bank account after a few days; with PayPal, funds are deposited in your PayPal account right away, and you can transfer them on-demand by logging-in to paypal.com. Also, if you want to be able to collect funds in a different currency from your own, PayPal will allow you to keep a balance in any currency it supports.

Unlike most other honeymoon registries, we don’t deduct a service fee from the gifts you’re given. We believe it’s better to have a simple, low, one-time payment instead. And we operate this in the same way that you’d take online payments as a couple: using PayPal, as a one-off Direct Debit through GoCardless — or now, as a card payment through Stripe.

As before, if you’re in the UK, you can choose either Direct Debit or card payments when you go through the checkout process on our site. And if you’ve already set up gift payments by PayPal on your registry, you can pay us via your PayPal account just as you’ve always done.

But if you haven’t, and you’re in one of the countries where gift payments by Stripe are available, we’ll offer card payments via Stripe for our service instead. It’s a great way of seeing how straightforward the process can be for your guests!

For more information on setting up gift payments via Stripe, take a look at our guide. And as always, if you have any queries, please just get in touch. We’ll be happy to help!