bmiedlar

Having built on Authorize.net and a few other gateways before Stripe, I'd say yes - but the value that justifies the rake isn't the nicer API, it's what you no longer have to own. The moment you're paying out to third parties you're on the hook for KYC, identity verification, and the whole compliance/risk surface around moving other people's money. Connect absorbs that. Handing those pieces off so I stay compliant on payouts and can actually focus on the business is worth far more to me than the basis points. With other gateways I was assembling all of that myself.

This matches what I'm seeing. I've been building software for a long time, but building more now with AI than I ever could with a traditional team. But the throughput that's helpful is from knowing what to build and what tradeoffs matter. The AI doesn't have that. It's a force multiplier on experience, not a replacement for it.