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TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

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Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#51

>You cannot call Stripe. They do not have a phone number. Not sure whether this person was specifically locked out or something, but I've had consistently good experience with Stripe's phone support. As they note email (and chat) are a joke, but phone reps are highly knowledgeable and have quickly resolved my issues.

According to the reddit thread, when your account is locked, the ‘Chat’ and ‘Give me a call’ options get grayed out.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#52
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their dev support on discord This is also a red flag

Using Discord for support is a major red flag.

As opposed to IRC? Slack?

Discord has excellent moderation tools, is economical and relatively user friendly (compared to IRC). If you desire a public space for your community to engage with you in real time, I'm not aware of a better alternative.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#53
post #35

I have no idea how companies like Stripe and to a great extent Revolut made it to forefront of banking. They are Uber of banking industry. And have done shady things. As the time passes and VC money runs out; these companies will implode

As someone who’s worked there: stripe won’t. Everyone in the company can see the business metrics. People wouldn’t be staying if that were true.

I have a close friend, working for Uber since 5-6 years now. I don't think he ever expected company to engage in anything shady. SWEs are higher up than service counter staff but in the game of business they are not far from being expensive pawns. Sorry

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#54

As Stripe keeps growing this seems to be a more recurring problem, as it seems to be with most companies that eventually get too big to care about the little guy. Which leads to my question: is there a smaller alternative similar to the Stripe of five years ago which might appreciate our business more?

PastePay is a great alt to Stripe. Check them out https://www.pastepay.com. I posted this elsewhere in this comment section. PastePay is a “smaller service”. It is more customer focused than Stripe.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#55
post #17

Stripe is going the way of PayPal it seems. Many people learned this lesson the hard way with PayPal now they will learn it with Stripe I guess. You have no real recourse when these companies decide to steal your money and their incentives are very much to do so as they get to hang onto it for extended periods. I don't think it's a coincidence that this happened as we go into economic downturn and layoffs. Too bad th…

Stripe like paypal is not to blame in this story. The problem is the credit card payment standard. Transactions can be charged back up to 180 days. This means that by giving the merchant the money right away, Stripe runs the risk that a transaction will be charged back and that the merchant wont have fund to cover it.

Stripe like any other processor runs an algo to determine the risk profile of each transaction to decide if you get the money immediately or not. If you have a sudden high ticket transaction, the odds this will be charged back are much higher. This is why they freeze that money up to 180 days.

It sucks, but it is how the credit card system works. Someone has to cover the chargeback risk.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#56
post #20
post #11

If it was, say, a $30000 charge I could give Stripe the benefit of doubt, but $3300 is a pretty ordinary amount for any retailer. Could be e.g. a laptop sale, or three phones? When I see Stripe's apology here it will not be enough for me - not at least without a detailed blog post / postmortem. Until/if that moment happens, I'll regard Stripe as an untrustworthy entity and will recommend doing the same to do anyone I…

> When I see Stripe's apology here it will not be enough for me I'm actually just starting a business using Stripe for handling payments, and this makes me very concerned. Is there an alternative service one could use? Is there a way not to give these shady companies power to steal all my money?

Maybe look at Klarna. This is not an endorsement, I've never worked with them, but as a consumer i like using sites that use them for payment.

https://docs.klarna.com/

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#57
post #20
post #11

If it was, say, a $30000 charge I could give Stripe the benefit of doubt, but $3300 is a pretty ordinary amount for any retailer. Could be e.g. a laptop sale, or three phones? When I see Stripe's apology here it will not be enough for me - not at least without a detailed blog post / postmortem. Until/if that moment happens, I'll regard Stripe as an untrustworthy entity and will recommend doing the same to do anyone I…

> When I see Stripe's apology here it will not be enough for me I'm actually just starting a business using Stripe for handling payments, and this makes me very concerned. Is there an alternative service one could use? Is there a way not to give these shady companies power to steal all my money?

Checkout Adyen. They’re practically the same.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Discord for support is a major red flag.

As opposed to IRC? Slack? Discord has excellent moderation tools, is economical and relatively user friendly (compared to IRC). If you desire a public space for your community to engage with you in real time, I'm not aware of a better alternative.

What about good ol' forums? Indexable by search engines and proper moderation tools that have stood the test of time.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#59
post #35

I have no idea how companies like Stripe and to a great extent Revolut made it to forefront of banking. They are Uber of banking industry. And have done shady things. As the time passes and VC money runs out; these companies will implode

Stripe has an excellent developer experience which makes it easy to integrate it online.

I think people forget how much effort it took to accept credit cards at the time Stripe launched, too. Not just technical, but having to get a merchant account, which would be through a bank, who'd want to sell you a rented point-of-sale and a contract for a minimum amount of fees per month, and a rate hike for being a "risky online business".

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#60
post #30

Quoted post unavailable.

Because not only they are not a solution to payments in general, not only their deflative nature will never make them good at being "money", but they are not even the solution to this very specific problem as well.

Because the solution to this problem is providing a better customer care or face losing business and legal action.

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