When P(payment provider outage) x (expected lost revenue in case of outage) > (costs of implementing and maintaining an independent alternative payment processor and automatic failover), then hoping for the best and writing a comment about pain in case of outage is still the best strategy.

Lets say it takes 2 engineers 3 months to build an another payment processor + failover, at $120k salary + 40k in benefits and taxes a year a piece.

stipes SLA was 99.980% uptime for the last 90 days

0.02% * revLoss > 160k * 2 * .25/year

OP's app would have to be earning 400mm a year. Not likely but possible.

400 million a year if all revenue comes from impulsive people that won't simply try again an hour later.

Most likely it's worth taking the revenue loss rather than building a redundant payment provider. That doesn't mean taking the revenue loss doesn't hurt.

Exactly. If it starts happening frequently, maybe it's worth looking into. But I think there's a middle ground between 'worthy of complaining on hacker news' and 'need to implement and support a redundant backup payment system.'

KATG listener since 2006. Awesome to see you on here.

I’m reading your reply like “Yup. Yeah. Totally. Wait, what?!”

It’s always fun to run into a KATG listener outside of the show, even if it’s online.

I’ll show this to Keith and Chemda :)

You’re right, you would never believe the amount of effort required to make an HN post. I’ve often not only implemented backup payment provider solutions instead, but also tertiary ones. In fact, in lieu of this comment I was 90% of the way to starting my own payment network.