Merrill offers access to the banking convenience of Bank of America and investment capabilities of Merrill Lynch to help simplify the financial lives of our clients.
Clients manage their Merrill Edge Self-Directed investment accounts and Bank of America bank accounts via our online platform, phone capabilities or at many Bank of America financial centers.
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Stripe Payments
Score9 out of 10
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Stripe is a payment gateway software solution which supports a range of payment related needs such as subscription management and recurrent billing via Stripe Billing, integration with third party payment services via the Stripe Connect API, assistance starting an Internet business which accepts payements via Stripe Atlas, fraud prevention via Stripe Radar, and payment analytics via Stripe Sigma. Additional features and modules include Stripe Issuing, which allows users to create,…
$0.02
per charge
Pricing
Merrill Edge
Stripe Payments
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Sigma
$0.02
per charge
Radar
$0.05
per screened transaction
Issuing
$0.10
per virtual card
Terminal
2.7% + 0.05
per successful charge
Integrated
2.9% + 0.30
per successful charge
Atlass
$500
one-time fee
Premium Support
1,800
per month
Customized
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Merrill Edge
Stripe Payments
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
$0 online stock, ETF and option trades, with no annual account fees or balance minimums.
It is very poorly suited for any person or company that wants any of the following: 1) The ability to place extended hours trades in a reasonable way. See my previous note for details. Their extended hours trading is really unworkable. 2) A decent amount of time to take care of margin calls, plus notice of the call within a few hours of it starting. 3) Get routed to a person who can actually help you, 4) A company that listens to customer feedback, and improves their platform. It is likely suitable if you don't care about any of the things above. The page load times are good enough, the regular trading UI is good enough and the login process works well
We had a client who wanted a QR to use in their marketing, which enabled their clients to donate to us. It was so useful to be able to set it up, and we can track the views and donations received using this code. Another client with issues with our website wanted to set up a monthly subscription, so I sent her a payment link, which worked brilliantly. For clients that want to make one-time donations, it also lets the client choose the amount. The only scenario where we haven't been able to help is when clients want to change the card associated with the payment - whilst we understand it is for security/gdpr, it means they have to cancel and set up something new, which poses the danger that we may lose them as a customer.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
They only give clients 2 days to cover margin maintenance calls, even though FINRA (the regulator) allows them to give clients 5 business days. For example, TD Ameritrade gives use 4 to 5 business days if there is a margin maintenance call. That is between 100% and 150% more time than Merrill gives. Even worse, Merrill doesn't notify clients of a margin call until 10am, the day after the margin call started at 4pm. That's 16 hours into the 48 hour period, so 33% of the 48-hour period to cover the call has already passed by the time Merrill notifies you. I asked a rep why this is, and he said that their computer systems don't work in real-time and operate on a batch system, which doesn't update until the next day.
Thus, even though they have an outdated computer system that delays notice by 33%, they still choose to have a 2-day requirement rather than switch to a 3 or 4 or 5 day requirement. FINRA requires brokerages to give clients a minimum of 2 days to cover. So Merrill is only giving clients the absolute minimum required by the government. They could give clients 150% more time, but they don't.
Their phone prompt system is poor, and much of the time results in you talking to someone who doesn't know how to, or can't handle your reason for calling.
If you place an extended hours trade, it always has to expire at the end of the day. By contrast, there are other brokerages where you can place a trade and make it be "good to cancel" and applicable to both the regular hours and extended hours. For example, if we want to buy 100 shares of Apple at a certain price, we can place an order for it that last for 3 months (good til cancel) and the order stays active from 7am until 8pm for the next 3 months. If the price moves to our buy point in extended hours, we fill the order.
But at Merrill, to do the same, we have to: a) place an extended hours order early in the morning, and it always expires when the regular session starts. b) thus we have to place the order again at 930am so it will be active til 4pm. c) then we have to place another new order at 4pm for the 4pm to 8pm session. And that always expires at the end of the day.
Thus, for each order that we want to fill, we have to place 3 trades per days, and be online at the start of 3 different sessions to place those trades. Because there are many stocks we want to buy or sell at certain price points, this means a huge amount of effort ... plus being online early in the morning, and a multiple specific times each day. If someone wants to schedule a meeting with me, it can't overlap with 930 to 10am, or 4 to 430pm or the half hour at the start of the opening session. Another issue with this is that it often can take 15 minutes to place all of the trades, so if the share prices moves into our buy/sell range in the first 10 minutes of a session, we can miss out on filling the order because the order for that particular stock wasn't entered in yet for that session.
I notified Merrill of this several years ago, and then two other times every 1 or 2 years ... and they still haven't fixed their approach. As a result, I've moved most of our holdings to another brokerage that handles it correctly.
They don't improve their system, and they don't seem to listen to customer feedback. I'm experienced at website development, and it would take a single web developer only about 1 or 2 weeks of work to fix their system so that clients can place one order and have it be active in regular and extended hours for the next 3 months ... versus having to place 3 orders a day for 90 days (basically 270 orders) to accomplish the same thing. They probably have more than a dozen web developers. But they don't do improvements that would save customers a ton of time and effort.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Stripe is the leader in the industry when it comes to any type of industry. All that is needed is a plan and then implementing that plan either with a developer, or through the help of Stripe's customer service team to assist in getting you setup. The ease of use time it takes to get up and running is second to none
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Stripe offers a very easy-to-navigate platform with many different functions. From linking it to our website and accounting platform to tracking our payments, being able to issue a refund quickly if required, and setting up QR codes and payment links for subscriptions or one-time donations, it really covers so many aspects that we need and use on a weekly and monthly basis.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Stripe's support is nearly perfect – great attention to detail, fast response times, and a willingness to really dig into issues and get to the bottom of them. In the five years we've been using Stripe, the only negative thing I can say about their customer support is that it seems like there has been a slight shift to less technical front-line support agents, which means it's more likely your issue will have to be escalated before you get more information. This, however, has happened as Stripe rolled out more real-time support features like call and chat, and that really isn't workable if you're escalating everything right off the bat. It's absolutely an acceptable trade-off.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I rate Merrill a 1 out of 10 compared to the ratings of these brokerages I've used with 10 being best and 1 worst: Interactive Brokers: 7 Etrade: 7 TD Ameritrade: 10 Merrill Edge: 1 We rate TDA best and have moved most of our holdings over to them for several reasons including: 1) You can place a single order and have it be Good Til Cancelled (for 3 months) active in both extended hours and regular session. Saves a ton of time, and it also results in better fills of orders at better prices. 2) They give 4 to 5 days to handle margin calls. 3) They regularly improve their platform to save customers time, while also giving them more options/features to do more and more things.
Stripe is easier to use and offers better support and rates. My favorite part with Stripe is probably their ready-to-use plug-in that's offered for me. We have multiple eCommerce stores and we rely on our payment process going smoothly. The plug-in from Stripe is free, constantly updated, secure, and very easy to implement.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Positive impacts across the board since I typically buy and hold.
I was able to easily transfer my old 401k to an IRA using their customer service teams- super fast, easy and most importantly I didn't have to worry about messing up the transfer and having tax consequences.
It makes getting money from your clients really easy
It gives your clients the guarantee that their payment information is totally secure and confidentially used and kept
It is very easy to integrate with online assets of the company
In a couple of occasions, some companies have wanted me to use Stripe for them to pay me, and I have had a couple of hiccups. This was more related to the way that these companies set up the Stripe integration of my account to their platform. In both cases, the integration has not been possible and to this date, I still do not know why with exactitude.
As I said before, the commissions kept by Stripe could be lower, and shared with the CC companies, rather than having us clients pay for all of o it.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
