Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business • Hacker News Board

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#181

Post by leobg » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #135

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually a response from Patrick Collison in that thread that may shed some light on OP's case. https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1550136569482252289 ""What is happening?" => basically, a major uptick in attempted fraud over the first half of this year that necessitated making our systems stricter. But have an idea for a structural fix here. More soon. (DM me if you've had problems on this front.)" The DM p…

Making your systems stricter will have the obvious side effect of increasing false negatives. Not scaling support, or fixing what is clearly a fundamentally broken support system, is incompetent.

Exactly. Especially when your decision is hitting a business right where it hurts: Cutting off revenue and invalidating customer-facing payment links.

How can any founder rely on Stripe, much less recommend the platform, if you need to have a backup system in place “just in case”.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#182

Post by edwinwee » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

leobg wrote: post #166

posguy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you get a decision overridden by Edwin your pretty much stuck using an alternate payment process. I have been thankful Edwin was available here on HN, and Stripe definitely has a much more reliable product than competitors.

Who’s Edwin? Is that the username here? I’m having the same issue. Was hoping to resolve this using customer service rather than through social media. But I just can’t seem to talk to any real human at Stripe.

What issue are you seeing? Could you email me at edwin@stripe.com?

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#183

Post by yaythefuture » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #131

Stuff like this is why I think a business should have a system that abstracts away the payment processor. I use Stripe for invoices, but I can easily send an invoice through another platform if needed. For processing transactions on the web, I would always lean toward using a service like ChargeBee that allows me to setup multiple payment gateways. Getting off the ground quickly is one thing, but the moment that you…

We're built on Rails which has the extreme luxury of being able to use ActiveMerchant, which does exactly this. The problem is, abstraction falls apart when you're using functions that are specific to a product. Stripe Connect is is nearly impossible to replicate with an adapter.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#184

Post by posguy » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

leobg wrote: post #166

posguy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you get a decision overridden by Edwin your pretty much stuck using an alternate payment process. I have been thankful Edwin was available here on HN, and Stripe definitely has a much more reliable product than competitors.

Who’s Edwin? Is that the username here? I’m having the same issue. Was hoping to resolve this using customer service rather than through social media. But I just can’t seem to talk to any real human at Stripe.

See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32854831

Email Edwin and also reply to their comment on HN conveying the high level summary of what you think is going on with your account.

Normal Stripe support reps seem to stick to the script no matter what. Edwin has fixed edge cases for HN users in the past thankfully.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#185

Post by symfrog » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:28 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #131

Stuff like this is why I think a business should have a system that abstracts away the payment processor. I use Stripe for invoices, but I can easily send an invoice through another platform if needed. For processing transactions on the web, I would always lean toward using a service like ChargeBee that allows me to setup multiple payment gateways. Getting off the ground quickly is one thing, but the moment that you…

This is one of the reasons that I usually use https://killbill.io/

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#186

Post by adolph » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:28 PM UTC

mikece wrote: post #17

bagels wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does matter if it actually violates the TOS, or could be vaguely interpreted to do so I guess?

And how many times does a company claim you have violated TOS and then refuse to tell you how you violated the TOS? To act in this manner nullifies the TOS in my opinion.

Maybe there is a market for insurance to initiate a "Wrongful ToS Ban Lawsuit." I take no right/wrong position on the below gentleman but note that he did bring a lawsuit against Twitter for being banned and his account reinstatement coincides with a settlement of the suit. Right now the payment facilitators only have loss of an account in terms of incentive to reduce false positives in detecting fraud.

One year ago this month, Twitter permanently suspended a 340,000-follower account for “repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules.” The owner of that account, the former New York Times reporter and vaccine skeptic Alex Berenson, responded with a lawsuit demanding reinstatement. . . .

. . . Earlier this summer, Twitter put Berenson’s account back online, noting that “the parties have come to a mutually acceptable resolution.” Berenson wasted little time in calling out mainstream media for failing to cover the “pathbreaking settlement” that led to his return. . . .

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/alex-...

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#187

Post by mattbee » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:28 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #131

Stuff like this is why I think a business should have a system that abstracts away the payment processor. I use Stripe for invoices, but I can easily send an invoice through another platform if needed. For processing transactions on the web, I would always lean toward using a service like ChargeBee that allows me to setup multiple payment gateways. Getting off the ground quickly is one thing, but the moment that you…

Yup I did this at my last business in 2008; instead of changing payment processors we abstracted them away behind a pretty small API that also stored and charged card numbers. We could flip back and forth between two. PCI DSS gradually became a bummer around that time but it was a very slow introduction which we were able to cope with.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#188

Post by ahmedalsudani » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:28 PM UTC

orionint wrote: post #121

Used to work for a “high risk” payment processor, we inherited tons of accounts that were terminated by Stripe, Square, and PayPal. Here’s one small bit of inside info that may help the newer businesses out there: Most real payment processors (e.g. banks, merchant services companies) “underwrite” a company BEFORE allowing them to process. Underwriting means they look over the business model, financials, etc and make…

This explains all the mysterious and opaque decisions that are regularly posted here by affected businesses.

Thank you for sharing your insight!

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#189

Post by jstummbillig » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #131

Stuff like this is why I think a business should have a system that abstracts away the payment processor. I use Stripe for invoices, but I can easily send an invoice through another platform if needed. For processing transactions on the web, I would always lean toward using a service like ChargeBee that allows me to setup multiple payment gateways. Getting off the ground quickly is one thing, but the moment that you…

> Stuff like this is why I think a business should have a system that abstracts away the payment processor.

Realistically, more humanly, payment processors and other big tech companies that are basically societies digital gum and infrastructure can simply not be tasked with making these calls. I also don't think they are very keen to do it but in the absence of timely regulation they must.

There have to be more rigorous ground rules (what is the business allowed to do, what must they do, what is the user allowed to do, and what are they entitled to), by law, and quickly.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#190

Post by tlb » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

ianhawes wrote: post #40

I will take the OP's story at face value, but I think a common theme in these sort of posts is the "Stripe not happy with my business model" angle which typically does not actually include any details about the business model. For example, a few weeks ago the founder of Tailwind tweeted [0] about how Stripe had shut down their account when they were set to launch the Tailwind Job Board, despite many other job boards…

Yes, they almost always fail to mention it. Then it turns out they’re selling cannabis to Iran or something. And (rightly so) payment processors can’t tell us what the problem is. So I’m inclined to flag all such stories missing the obviously key information.