Challenge

Dubsado was founded in 2016 by husband-and-wife team Jake and Becca Berg. Both were running their own small, creative businesses—photography for Becca, web design for Jake—and they saw the need for a platform that would help entrepreneurs in creative industries to run their businesses more efficiently. For these customers, who typically get paid by the project, collecting payment for their services in a timely manner (and in a way that aligns with their brand) is key. That’s why Dubsado’s goal of automating business tasks extended to helping users collect payments for their services, and after some experimentation, the company launched Dubsado Payments in 2021. The white-labeled offering brought all payment capabilities together under Dubsado’s platform, allowing subscribing customers to send and execute contracts, send invoices, process client payments, set up recurring billing, and more.

In their initial choice of payment provider to power the platform, Dubsado prioritized low credit card processing fees—an especially important consideration for its core customer base of sole proprietor creative businesses for whom every dollar counts. However, soon after launching Dubsado Payments, Dubsado began to notice serious drawbacks from that decision.

“Lower fees meant a lower quality of service from that payment provider,” said Becca Berg, cofounder and CEO of Dubsado.

Namely, customers experienced difficulties with onboarding and transparency. Reputable customers were frequently flagged in the Know Your Customer (KYC) verification process, and their payouts were being held for additional verification without any explanation from the provider. The resulting flood of customer queries caused a massive slowdown in Dubsado’s customer care response time. Additionally, the provider didn’t support certain payment methods—such as buy now, pay later (BNPL) solutions—which would give Dubsado customers a competitive advantage and help them meet their clients’ preferences. Taken together, these issues led to a significant dip in customer loyalty.

Dubsado tried switching to another low-cost payment provider, only to encounter the same poor service it experienced with its first. At that point, the company knew it had to shift gears and find a more reliable and forward-thinking partner that offered advanced capabilities but still accommodated the price sensitivity of Dubsado customers.

Solution

Dubsado switched to Stripe in 2024, partnering with Stripe professional services for its implementation, to take advantage of the embedded payments capabilities in Stripe Connect and power Dubsado Payments.

By choosing Stripe-hosted onboarding, Dubsado’s small development team didn’t have to design its own onboarding flow to add users to new Dubsado Payments accounts. Stripe’s handling of KYC and compliance simplified the identity verification process and saved Dubsado from the burden of keeping up with an evolving and complex set of regulations. Stripe also helped handle the process of migrating existing customers onto the new platform, further easing the burden on Dubsado’s team.

Implementing Connect and enabling Instant Payouts immediately solved the problem of delayed payouts. Meanwhile, Connect’s compatibility with Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite allowed Dubsado to design a payment flow that matched its brand, delivered a seamless brand experience, and expanded payment methods for customers. Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite includes Stripe Elements, a set of embeddable UI components; access to 100 different payment methods, of which they added BNPL options Klarna and Affirm; and Link, an accelerated checkout that autofills customer payment details.

Stripe professional services helped Dubsado navigate its Stripe implementation, providing technical and Stripe expertise to ensure the implementation aligned with Stripe and industry best practices. The team hosted workshops for Dubsado to prepare the company for operating on its new setup and for the migration process, including test runs to ensure a smooth migration for all customers.

As Dubsado migrated users to Stripe with Stripe professional services, the teams began exploring ways to help users manage the change in credit card processing fees over their previous payment provider. To explore the use of optional surcharging, Stripe connected Dubsado with Redbridge—a longtime member of the Stripe Partner Ecosystem that has deep experience implementing surcharging solutions for a variety of businesses.

Over the course of several conversations and educational sessions, Dubsado and Redbridge settled on a surcharging solution that would comply with rules and regulations across the US—where a large majority of customers operated—and around the world. Working together, the two teams created a system that tokenized payment details, allowing Dubsado to detect whether the card being used was a debit or credit card to avoid adding a surcharge to debit payments. Additionally, they used metadata API to ensure compliance with data transmission requirements and verify that customers received the correct refund amount. They also came up with a strategy to communicate the details of the solution to those customers, which included an educational webinar.

Results

Reduction in onboarding time and more consistent payouts improve the customer experience

The implementation of Stripe-hosted onboarding immediately reduced onboarding time for customers, while the integration of Connect with Instant Payouts eliminated the problem of reputable customers being flagged during the KYC process. Now, whenever a payout issue comes up, the Stripe support team quickly addresses it. As a result of these improvements, customer complaints have dramatically decreased and customer satisfaction has improved.

Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite allows Dubsado to expand payment options with no development resources

With the Optimized Checkout Suite, Dubsado could quickly and easily launch BNPL options Klarna and Affirm through the existing integration, with no additional code required. In just 3 months, the total transactions processed using BNPL options rose by 56%.

“The ability to go in and turn on these payment methods has been a huge time-saver for Dubsado, because our developers are able to focus on other things while we push our company forward with these new initiatives,” said Berg.

Adoption of surcharging solution leads to increased profits for 17% of Dubsado customers

Within 90 days of introducing the surcharging solution, 17% of Dubsado customers had adopted it, moving closer to Dubsado’s goal of 22%. Together they collected $1.2 million in additional revenue through surcharging, helping customers protect their profits.

Dubsado expects the percentage of customers adopting the surcharging solution to increase as they gain greater familiarity with its benefits. “The customers that have adopted our surcharging solution are singing its praises like crazy,” said Berg. “It works as intended, and they’re loving it.”

About Partner

Redbridge is a business management consulting firm that helps organizations around the world—from Fortune 1,000 companies to small startups—navigate complex treasury, payments, and financing projects. Redbridge also offers a suite of software products to help clients manage these aspects of their business.