The discussion on the value proposition of stripe, especially the pricing was very enlightening. The main points were:
– competitors keep all the various fees and surcharge opaque (e.g. gateway fee, PCI fee, international card fee, Amex, etc.)
– Stripe sort of finds a middle point to make pricing match fair value (i.e. does not for failed charge attempts)
– the high degree of integration does save time and money since other competitors often still only provide paper channel statements and reports making it difficult to reconcile fees and so on.
– Patrick indicated they plan on improving the pricing as companies scale

Being a Rubyist I found it cool that the platform was built on core Ruby and Sinatra. 🙂
Overall I think that the focus that Stripe has on developers and easy integration is quite fascinating. So thanks for inviting Patrick.