Hello,

Just want to share my joy here, at the risk of making some people jealous.
As maybe a couple of persons may know, I spent about 10 months in Germany, and while I was there I opened a bank account. Now I was considering closing it because they were having a go at me with all sort of fees (if you ever go to Germany, I do NOT recommend Sparkasse Berlin as a bank) and I'm not using it that much anymore.

In the meantime, I applied for the Stripe Germany beta account - I knew Stripe was available in Germany as beta, but with not much hope - I guessed there must be much demand and the odds that I hear back from them are slim. I forgot about it...

Today, as you probably can guess by now, I received a mail that starts like this:

Join the Stripe Germany beta

Hi,

We're getting in touch because you asked to be notified when Stripe was available in Germany. Good news: we are up and running in private beta, and we're excited to invite you to take part.

(...)

So, now that I found the holy grail, I can share my joy with y'all!

Without much delay, I went ahead to activate my account and integrate Stripe to my invoicing system (Harvest), (which, by the way, I was also considering canceling to spare some costs...) and receive payments online for issued invoices.

During Stripe activation, I had to fill in a page with my personal details, like name, phone number, address in Germany (I hope they don't send any mail), bank account IBAN number, Tax ID number. As I chose "self-employed" from the company type options, not much fancy stuff was required.

The tax number is something I received in the mail when I was in Germany... they were prompt to send a letter (without me asking anything) at my registered address, with a tax ID number that would allow me to (yay!) pay taxes. But I am legally not obligated to pay taxes if my work is mostly with customers outside Germany - that's another topic, though.

So, after sending the activation request, I was a little surprized that my status was instantly marked as "approved". But while going through other pages on the Stripe, I came across a page saying that country regulation required that I confirm my identity. It didn't seem like something mandatory, maybe it becomes mandatory when you try to transfer funds to your bank account...

Anyway I tried going through that, again, half-dreading that they would send documents at my German address and require an answer, but no, it was something else...

Seriously, put my passport in front of the webcam!? That is so easy that it's scary. Can anyone with a photo of my passport / ID impersonate me?

Then I went to Harvest and enabled the option to receive online payments for my invoices through Stripe. At first I was a bit lost, I could not see the Stripe option anywhere. I had already enabled Paypal and Paypal Pro as payment options... it turns out that I had to switch the second option from Paypal Pro to Stripe, as I cannot have more than 2 payment options.

Then, still not wanting to put too much hope in that, I proceeded to create a bogus invoice that I will pay myself (using my Lebanese credit card) to see if it all works:

See how easy it is, not even the need to fill in your name!

Oh wow... it seem to work!
Finally, my Stripe Dashboard after this transaction:

Now I'm full of nerd joy at this new development, after almost loosing hope... There is yet one shadow of doubt that remains; I hope there will be no problem when transferring funds from Stripe to my bank account in Germany.

Now if someone would send me some work...

Cheers!