Show HN: I built the tool I wished existed for moving Stripe between countries

https://www.stripemove.com/

48•felphos•5h ago

In late 2024, I had to set up a new Stripe account because I incorporated my company in a different country. Turns out it's not as simple as just changing the country in a dropdown, you have to start from scratch.

I had hundreds of users and using Stripe's dashboard to add all of the products, prices, coupons and subscriptions manually would take ages. I contacted a couple of services that help with this kind of migration, but their quotes were way over my budget. My next option was to use Stripe's API, which is very powerful but also very complicated. I'm a designer who can code, but I didn't feel confident doing it alone, so I asked a friend, an experienced developer, to help.

It proved to be quite challenging, with many details and caveats we had to learn as we went. What we thought would take a couple of days took us a week.

After this experience, we teamed up and built https://stripemove.com, a tool that guides you through this whole process, explaining and automating that hard week we went through. It handles the technical complexity while keeping your business running. Customers keep paying on your old account while everything transfers in parallel, then you flip the switch when ready.

It's a very niche tool, built for founders who need to change their company location for personal or business reasons. For entrepreneurs buying companies established in other countries. For people in the same situation I was in a few months ago. Basically the tool I wished existed, and for a fair price. Designed to get you through this inconvenient process and back as soon as possible on growing your business.

Would love to hear from anyone who's dealt with similar Stripe migrations. What was your biggest pain point?

Comments

joshstrange•4h ago

I think you might want to rename, having “Stripe” in the name is asking for trouble.

absoluteunit1•3h ago

Was wondering about this as well. Might fly under the radar for a while but if your project grows you might draw attention from Stripe and having to rebrand later on will become difficult.

Also, what if you want to support this type of migration for other payment processors in the future? This name ties to just Stripe.

Also, tiny grammatical nitpick: the subheading should use the word seamlessly, not seamless there I think.

rstupek•2h ago

It's unlikely to fly under the radar as Stripe founders and employees are regularly on HN.

diggan•3h ago

I don't know the ecosystem, but seemingly Stripe themselves lists some projects/products/organizations that themselves have "Stripe" in their name, as part of the "Stripe Partner Ecosystem": https://stripe.partners/?search=stripe&sort=relevance

Still, risky to use someone else's trademark regardless, if they suddenly don't like you anymore they'll start to enforce it at the worst moment.

kevin_thibedeau•3h ago

Their chief counsel will insist on enforcing it immediately. You can't be lax about protecting your trademarks some of the time.

gruez•2h ago

>I don't know the ecosystem, but seemingly Stripe themselves lists some projects/products/organizations that themselves have "Stripe" in their name, as part of the "Stripe Partner Ecosystem": https://stripe.partners/?search=stripe&sort=relevance

The issue isn't having "Stripe" in the product name, it's having it in a way that implies it's by Stripe, mostly by putting it first. The top 3 hits from your linked search don't really have that issue. "Stripe Move" makes it sound like it's a product from stripe, "Move for Stripe" would not.

felphos•16m ago

We went with it because the other services I mentioned also had Stripe in their names and have been operating for a few years. At the moment our product is so connected to Stripe that we felt having Stripe in the name was necessary to make its purpose clear. We added to our content that we are not affiliated to them, if we have to change the name in the future that is something we will have to deal with.

absoluteunit1•3h ago

Oh interesting - I didn’t realize how much of a headache switching countries can be! Bookmarked as I might have to do something similar in the future.

diggan•3h ago

> I didn’t realize how much of a headache switching countries can be

Indeed, and in some areas, it's easier to make the move with the government, than getting all the for-profit services to accept your country change.

For example, Sony/Playstation straight up refuses to change the country on your account, so even though I lived in Spain for more than 10 years, Playstation Store is still in Swedish and using SEK, and when I reached out to support they told me to create a new account if I wanted to change the country.

Google is another company where moving countries is really disorganized. I still get emails in Swedish, and a "payment/billing account" (different from "payment method") is still somehow locked to Sweden and cannot be changed or removed.

To actually get the residency with the government, I basically had to queue at the police station for some hour, then go to the bank and then I'm 100% done with my move. I'm surprised how much easier it was to deal with the government about this move, than companies that I actually pay money to...

jon-wood•3h ago

I would be very tempted to invoke GDPR in this situation. Company's have an obligation to hold accurate data about you[1], which clearly neither Google or Sony are currently doing if they think your payment account is in Sweden, or your local currency is SEK.

[1] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...

NitpickLawyer•2h ago

"Understood, we have now processed your complete account removal per GDPR. Please create a new account with us soon. Good luck." =)

This is a half-joke, half-serious possible near future thing with LLM-based support agents.

jwr•44m ago

Microsoft is incapable of switching countries as well. I can't use Azure because of this.

felphos•20m ago

I had no idea either until I was in the middle of it! It was quite a stressful process, especially with a tight deadline.

x13•3h ago

How are you handling this?

https://stripe.com/legal/marks

Use or incorporate any of our Marks in your own trademark, service mark, trade dress, trade name, website name, domain name, corporate name, or social-media handle (or any other source-identifying use), or use any trademark, service mark, trade dress, trade name, website name, domain name, corporate name, or social-media handle (or any other source-identifying use) that is likely to be confused with any of our Marks.

felphos•25m ago

It's a concern we raised while starting the project but the other services I mentioned also had Stripe in their names and have been operating for a few years. Because our product is so connected to Stripe we felt that it was necessary to make its purpose clear so we took the gamble and added to our content that we are not affiliated to them. If we have to change the name in the future that is something we will have to deal with when the time comes.

mtmail•3h ago

We've been in that situation 5 years ago. Stripe's customer service moved the data (customers, subscriptions) over for us.

Edit: I've been corrected by my collage. Stripe only copied customer records. We had to manually stop and recreate the subscriptions.

felphos•2h ago

Exactly, that is the only part automated by Stripe.

pimlottc•2h ago

*colleague

elemeno•3h ago

nit: on the front page it says "transfers everything seamless", I think you want to say "seamlessly" instead.

adriand•2h ago

“Transfer everything with few clicks” should be “Transfer everything with a few clicks”; although the former version is not grammatically incorrect it’s not how this phrase is typically used.

felphos•20m ago

Thanks. Fixed.

pxue•3h ago

why do this instead of using a merchant of record?

xyst•2h ago

Stripe should just have this native as part of platform. Hope it gets acquired.

janmo•2h ago

I was in the same situation as the OP 2 years ago and because of the migration nightmare I kept both accounts, new subscriptions would occur in the new account while old ones would stay in the legacy account.

Stripe has many issues, the missing migration is one. In my case there is alos the fact that there is no "company name" field and there is no way to issue an invoice correction for subscriptions... This makes it problematic for B2B use cases. I have alrady contacted them multiple times to ask them to add these very basic features but to no avail.

Had I known this before I would probably not have used them.

soared•1h ago

Where/what object would you like to use the company name field in?

Can you describe a situation where you need to do an invoice correction on subscriptions (ie how do you handle this now)?

citizenpaul•1h ago

>I contacted a couple of services that help with this kind of migration, but their quotes were way over my budget

I guess I'm "that guy." Have you considered that the reason is this as you say is niche thing and there simply is not the market to make it profitable? That is the reason they have to charge out of your budget for it to be worth their time?

Maybe the maintenance and upkeep of the site is low enough that it doesn't matter. (I do hope so i'm not here to watch people fail.)

I would actually target it at those exact businesses rather than individuals. B2B tool. Let them handle the mess of sales negotiations and change your pricing model to the number of accounts or something like that. Accounting firms always have a million high priced tiny tools they use for odd cases. Ask me how I know.....

egorfine•16m ago

May I suggest price increase?

Your business model means no retention and no return customers. This is mostly a one-time transaction thus it won't generate sustainable revenue.

And this one transaction is absolutely crucial for the business in need of it.

I might be your customer soon. I have less than 2,500 customers and I would consider any amount under $1,500 a no-brainer "shut up and take my money" for the move - and probably even a larger amount.

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