Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stripe Atlas

stripe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 402 posts

Re: Stripe Atlas

#111

Post by eis »

pentae wrote: post #87
eis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need the US for that though. You can incorporate for example in Hong Kong with ease and even better tax advanteges. For digital nomads in Thailand I think the bigger problem is that they can't get long term visas and are effectively breaking the law unless they somehow work for a local company which isn't easy as those need 4 Thais employed for every foreigner. And even if you could get a corporate bank acc…

Hong Kong is a great place to incorporate for tax advantages, but a terrible place for getting merchant processing or a bank account. Remote openings are not possible. You can fly to Hong Kong and open a bank account in person, and they may (or may not) open one for you - but getting payment processing for a Hong Kong corporation with no processing history is basically impossible for the average person. I have a Hong…

I have not found it difficult to get a corporate bank account and merchant account in the past in Hong Kong with HSBC. Yes you have to go there in person but I don't see this as a big deal. We had CC processing and your agents should have contacts to get you set up. Things might have changed in recent years.

And no I am not wrong. If you don't have a work permit which you get by working for a Thai company, you are breaking the law as you are not allowed to work without a permit. Full stop. I have not said that working out of a coffeeshop is illegal.

Long term visa again only by working for a local company. And if you go for the fake 4 Thais emploees route, sure that can work but you can get into trouble anyways because you are effectively working around the law.

Setting up a Bord of Investors company is not a trivial thing. It can take up to half a year, you'll have to pass the interview at the HQ in BKK and show some real company prospects. This is not something for someone who does web design or coding for some foreign company out of his condo in Chiang Mai. It's for people who want to build a real physical business in Thailand. Much easier to incorporate somewhere else.

Re: Stripe Atlas

#112

Post by pbhjpbhj »

cookiecaper wrote: post #108
Fede_V wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something can be described as 'maybe' deceptive, than it probably is deceptive. I don't mean this flippantly - playing cute with being deceptive is not really helpful to customers.

Sure, but any business with a marketing department is "maybe deceptive", so it really just becomes a question of "how deceptive is too deceptive".

"Deception" means "purposefully misleading" - you can market products without being deceptive, though I'll accept it seems to happen very rarely.

Re: Stripe Atlas

#113

Post by pentae »

Keats wrote: post #101
pentae wrote: post #63

This is huge. As someone who is involved in the digital nomad community here in Chiang Mai, Thailand - getting incorporation and processing set up for a lot of people here is very difficult. Although places like Thailand are a great place for independent bootstrapping and there’s a solid network of entrepreneurs - one of the biggest hurdles is incorporation, banking and acquiring. This is taken for granted when you’r…

Unrelated but i'll be in Chiang Mai next month for a couple of days, could you give some names of interesting cafe/coworking space there? I'll be with my gf (a designer) that is also interested in digital nomadism so would be great to meet people doing that

Hate to tell you this but you chose the worst time of year to come. Google “Burning Season Chiang Mai” - I’d recommend sticking to the south of Thailand, particularly the islands, and then come up around April 10 for Songkran. Punspace is the big coworking space, I’d recommend booking a place in Nimman and trying the various cafes there. Kaweh is a good spot if its not too busy.

Re: Stripe Atlas

#114

Post by germanier »

lstamour wrote: post #98
eis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have to copy a whole page of various things that make you fall into that definition. Citizens and residents obviously are such US persons but there are others like having a US phone number. See my comment above.

Again, IANAL, and I'm Canadian with a US bank account but yet to "do business" in the US (just having an expense account does not qualify in most/all jurisdictions): Having a US phone number does not make you a US resident -- but having a US bank account means proving to the IRS and your bank that they should not withhold any taxes on your personal account. Having a US phone number does not in any way on its own requ…

Sure, that is correct in theory. In practice most European banks won't touch you with a ten-foot pole if they even just suspect you might need to fulfill US reporting obligations. Therefore they use a much broader definition This is not only about tax but all the cost associated in dealing with all the forms which makes you an expensive customer.

Re: Stripe Atlas

#115

Post by pbhjpbhj »

amalag wrote: post #99
kiloreux wrote: post #52

I live in Algeria, and we can't use credit cards here, my bank account doesn't support debit cards transfer and if I veer receive 10$ from outside the country, then I'm in for 1 day of questioning the resources for those money, This is a great use case for my country and great initiative from Stripe, Thank you.

How would you receive the money from the US bank account then?

Would they need to, they could perhaps [mostly] purchase capital items by transfer of funds directly from the USA bank to the seller?

Re: Stripe Atlas

#116

Post by zrail »

impostervt wrote: post #69

I wish you could incorporate an S corp for side projects. C corps need boards and stuff - a bit much for my hobby projects. But, event for hobby projects, if I expect to make income (at some point) I usually set up an LLC and maybe even start a bank account. And I also use Stripe to collect payments.

I tend to just use my existing LLC for hobby projects. If any of them actually take off I'll set up a DBA or maybe another LLC subsidiary. Multiple S corps seems like overkill.

Re: Stripe Atlas

#117

Post by joelcollinsdc »

soneca wrote: post #75

Wow! This solve so many problems that our startup (www.worldpackers.com in Brazil) have! We are a global marketplace, so we have to charge people from everywhere, and stripe still doesn't cover Brazil. Opening a Delaware company is a must have as we are starting a series A fundraising. And the network, wow! BUT... I wonder how achievable is the direct application as a way for getting in the beta. We are not part of a…

love the idea for your startup. hope to use it this summer!

Re: Stripe Atlas

#118

Post by bambax »

glossyscr wrote: post #82

I just checked the prohibited businesses https://stripe.com/de/prohibited-businesses I am fine with most of them being prohibited but at some points it's getting quite restricted: 1. Virtual currency that can be monetized, re-sold or converted to physical or digital products or services or otherwise exit the virtual world 4. Sexually-oriented or pornographic products or services 9. Engaging in deceptive marketing pra…

This list is almost poetic, it folds onto itself several times, and includes

Illegal products or services

in position... 36!

Re: Stripe Atlas

#120

Post by ianhawes »

zrail wrote: post #83
glossyscr wrote: post #82

I just checked the prohibited businesses https://stripe.com/de/prohibited-businesses I am fine with most of them being prohibited but at some points it's getting quite restricted: 1. Virtual currency that can be monetized, re-sold or converted to physical or digital products or services or otherwise exit the virtual world 4. Sexually-oriented or pornographic products or services 9. Engaging in deceptive marketing pra…

Most of these are from Stripe's partner banks, and/or they've proven to be exceptionally prone to fraud and chargebacks.

With regards to adult content, the perception is that chargebacks would be higher, but in reality this is mostly a relic of the late 90's when credit cards were first accepted online. Porn pioneered the infinite continuity ("recurring subscriptions until you die") that is incredibly widespread nowadays.

At the moment, there are few non-merchant account ways to legally accept payments for adult content. They include such companies with terrible APIs/websites like: CCBill, Epoch and Verotel. They've successfully lobbied Visa & MasterCard to give them exemptions to provide "IPSP" services for "high-risk" adult content. In reality, working with them is probably the biggest risk. They often enforce arbitrary 30/60/90 day payment holds, require 10-20% reserves, and shut down accounts with no warning and withhold the entire amount processed indefinitely.

I'd like to see Stripe continue to do innovative things in the payments space and work with their payment partners to allow adult-content, at the very least with per-account authorization. The status-quo has been set by Ron Cadwell & CCBill: We will keep your money indefinitely, provide an awful API, and require 'hosted payment forms' (with no custom CSS; terrible UX) because no one is allowed to compete with us.

Patrick, the ball is in your court.

Post reply on HN