Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | controlHQ's commentslogin

Hi I am Kathryn! I am the founder of Control , a Stripe partner, and the company referenced in this thread.

First off, I would like to point out an obvious fact : this is my first post ever on HN. I have observed /admired all of the great discussions on HN for years and have never felt as though I have had anything useful to contribute (or maybe I was a bit intimidated :) However, a couple people messaged me about the thread that has been materializing here- so here I am! I hope I can add an interesting or insightful perspective.

Yes, Control has an iOS dashboard for Stripe merchants. And an Android app. And a web app , and we have an iWatch app in development. We have a number of areas where we are building out a set of capabilities for businesses to manage their payments better. In fact, we have a number of really cool ideas in our pipeline I think anybody who manages payments will find very , very interesting. Contact me to see our roadmap !

I have known that Stripe was building an iOS app for months (as Cristina pointed out , since September 2014) and I believe this is great! I think a free app for Stripe customers looking for very simple functionality is a smart move by Stripe. And the design is sensational, well done!

At Control, we are focused on building out many more capabilities that I believe businesses will find valuable . For example (just to give a flavor of our thinking):

- Real time alerts on transactional behavior indicative of potential fraud occurring - Expanded CRM tools in iOs, Android, and web - The ability to manage Stripe, PayPal , Dwolla, and more from 1 app

We have a number of payment platforms in our radar we want to build business apps around (we already support Paymill in Europe and nearly done integrations to PayPal, Conekta and PIN Payments). However, Control deliberately built around Stripe first because:

a. Stripe/Cristina has supported our business model from Day 1 and b. I truly believe Stripe's approach is the most significant innovation to happen in the payments industry in the last 10 years, because of their philosophy of opening their APIs to the broader developer /app ecosystem. We love Stripe and we love being able to add value to their customers

We are proud to be a Stripe partner and hope to continue growing and innovating alongside with them.

I should point out that one of our investors /advisors is the Hootsuite CEO, Ryan Holmes. The best advice Ryan gave me was not too worry too much about the prospect of Stripe releasing a free app, but to keep innovating and building distinctive value. Hootsuite's business wasn't materially impacted when Twitter launched their free app . I think this is a good analogy of our position.


Hey Kathryn, Zac from Pin Payments here. Stoked to hear you're working on supporting us! Do reach out if we can help with anything at all. (It's our first post here too ;)


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: