Stripe, a payments service, publicly launched today to let developers accept major credit cards.

The Stripe.js API lets developers build their own payment forms without the need for a merchant account or gateway. The API supports computer languages including Ruby, PHP, Phython and more. While there are no setup fees, monthly fees or minimum charges, Stripe will take 2.9% plus $.30 for every successful charge.

"I saw this on the front page and had to upvote-- I've been using Stripe since early June and can say that it is the best payment platform to develop on, period," user sabalaba writes on Hacker News. "It's just lightyears ahead in terms of development time, PCI compliance issues, and overhead. Not only that, but the guys at Stripe are extremely responsive to customer service questions and issues. These guys are trustworthy professionals and gentlemen."

Other companies in the payments industry include Square, Google and PayPal.

Silicon Valley-based Stripe was founded by brothers Patrick Collison and John Collison in January 2011. Before founding Stripe, the brothers founded auction and marketplace management system Auctomatic, which was acquired by Live Current Media in 2008. Stripe has received $2M from investors including PayPal founders Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, Sequoia Capital and Andreesen Horowitz.

SCREEN SHOTS

After signing up, developers will see a Getting started tutorial. Stripe provides a "charge" test template for developers to embed on their sites.

The Dashboard gives developers a breakdown of payments from the last seven days and "This month." It also reports the total amount processed and average charge of transactions.

The Payments tab provides a more detailed report of transactions.

The Customers tab shows you all of the customers you have created. Click "create_customer" to create a new customer object.

The "create_customer" API call lets developers create new customer objects like a credit card, coupon or email address.

The Recurring tab includes Plans, Coupons and Retries. The Plans tab lets developers create and manage pricing plans.

The Coupons tab lets developers create and manage coupons. Developers can easily create a coupon code, set percentage discount, duration and more.

The Retry tab lets developers set how frequent Stripe should retry payments after failed attempts.

The Transfers tab shows transfers you've made.

The Your account tab shows both publishable and secret API keys. Here, developers can also manage their bank account settings.

CONTACTS & LINKS

Stripe
Website: https://stripe.com/
Twitter: @stripe

Patrick Collison, Co-founder
Twitter: @patrickc
Google+: https://plus.google.com/114330698750485964215/posts

John Collison, Co-founder
Twitter: @collision
Google+: https://plus.google.com/101432973898372890868/posts