I'd really be interested in knowing why it's not "Stripe EU" instead. What sort of problems they had trying to do that, and what needs improvement for that to become reality.

Mostly because there's a bunch of subtlety around bank transfers and identity verification. The EU simplifies a lot of the regulatory framework but the actual operations still entail a decent amount of heterogeneity from country-to-country.

So it's because of technical/operational and not regulatory or legal problems? What about SEPA, or is that just for "regular people"?

I don't know for sure, but I guess the credit ratings are not available in all EU countries. ("Paperwork" is different in every EU country.)

They are already available in France (and apparently Ireland too):

https://support.stripe.com/questions/what-countries-does-str...

We're in private beta in France and Ireland. (I work at Stripe.) We try to make sure that things are very comprehensively tested before we allow public signups.

Great news, although I work now for a somewhat competitor.

Anyway I do more and more api for my personal projects (thanks to AngularJS and mobile) and the Stripe api & docs have been my main inspirations and technical references.

Can't wait to see you come to Germany, any plans for the beta yet ?

We're working on it.

How about Scandinavia - are those countries in the pipeline?

Yup. We are working on bringing Stripe to Scandinavia. Please sign up to be notified when we launch at https://stripe.com/global