I think you're seeing what the benefit is, though: it feels like you're just using an API to some company's DB.
Payment processing is one area is that just a complete nonstarter to homebrew on your own. It's fucking awful. There's no choice. Bank's still require you to transfer them files via ftp to make transactions.
And god forbid the legal, and technical mess when you want to accept foreign currency, or even multiple CC providers.
Work in fintech, can confirm. Moving money around the global banking system is a pus-drenched no man's land of technological anguish and despair. Every time you think you've seen the worst of it, you find out you were wrong.
Cryptocurrency gets a bad rap here (most of it rightfully so), but one thing is for sure, once you use it you realize how broken digital payment infrastructure is. With crypto, I can trivially send any amount of money very cheaply across any sort of borders. Also, accepting crypto as a merchant is extremely easy even to roll your own custom solution.
Yeah, I have no doubt that it's better than what the banks are offering.
"Homebrew on your own" is more or less what Stripe's API felt like though; the perspective I'm coming from is that I run a little one-person SaaS company with a simple and fairly standard subscription model, and I was surprised by the amount of "plumbing" you need to do for this.
I used them for a side project. Once you find the right documentation it's straightforward to integrate, but finding it took 3 days and 2 support requests.
Payment processing is one area is that just a complete nonstarter to homebrew on your own. It's fucking awful. There's no choice. Bank's still require you to transfer them files via ftp to make transactions.
And god forbid the legal, and technical mess when you want to accept foreign currency, or even multiple CC providers.