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

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#261

Post by mmerlin » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #145

gfodor wrote: post #23

This is why we need a decentralized Internet payment system, like email. This was a non-controversial opinion not long ago.

A payment system like that would run face first into Know Your Customer (KYC) laws and bet shut down. This isn't a hard problem for technical reasons, it's all political. It's about preventing money laundering and trying to fight crime via financial instruments. But it also means any payment system that doesn't implement these restrictions will almost instantly be overrun by criminals because they are highly motivate…

I wonder if criminals didn't have so much money to launder, would bitcoin have ever managed to jump the "belief gap" to the extreme degee it did, from computational bits of cryptographically unique data into actual spendable dollars?

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#262

Post by x86_64Ubuntu » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #146

It looks like there's a common flaw in modern abuse detection systems: they have no long-term memory. Stripe's abuse detection should be factoring in the age and long-term activity of the account, and support staff should be able to provide additional information to customers with established histories. Some of Stripe's policies make sense when dealing with new accounts, but a recurring factor in these complaints is…

A long term memory is nice. But we see such similar things get exploited. Like how people will get a high seller rating on Amazon selling one product, and then switch it out for a lesser product while keeping the old seller/product ratings. So the user looks at the seller and product ratings over the past year, but at the point and time they choose to buy, they are going to be burned and the bad seller makes off with the money.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#263

Post by codehalo » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #235

humanistbot wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've literally never seen a link to an HN comment go viral on social media, such that my non-HN friends would read it. It happens for blog/medium/substack posts all the time.

But for what reason? The styling?

HN reads like grumpy old tech and finance guys in Dockers pants and Alligator t-shirts stuck in 2000.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#264

Post by pc86 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

smoovb wrote: post #234

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…

So if Stripe is one of the best "low risk" processors, who is the Stripe of "high risk" payment processors?

There is no such thing. High risk means high transaction costs, high underwriting costs, and lots of insurance/legal/compliance work.

Your best bet is to pay the slightly higher fees by going directly through your actual bank.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#265

Post by yamtaddle » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #164

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if ChargeBee bans you, you are still dead because that's a single point of failure. No, you should have several payment processors, and rotate them regularly to check they work.

It's been a while since I dealt with this side of ecommerce - how can you have several payment processors, and rotate them, without having to handle card data yourself? (Most folks aren't really equipped to do that.)

    display_cc_form_that_handles_cc_data_so_we_do_not_have_to() {
        which_one = random_number(3)
        switch which_one {
            case 1:
                display_authorizedotnet_form()
                break
            case 2:
                display_stripe_form()
                break
            default:
                display_paypal_form()
        }
    }

Plus the same integration work for each one that you'd have to do anyway (which may be little or none if you're using a platform that integrates all of them via plugins or settings or whatever)

Like maybe don't literally randomize it request-by-request, but that's how you'd be ready to use multiple processors, and you could do something a little more complex to, say, rotate which one you're on every Wednesday, or whatever. Or just have it ready so a one-line code change or config toggle switches which one you're on (that's only worse because if something's not used frequently in prod, there's a good chance it doesn't actually work, even if it once did)

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#266

Post by rstupek » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #256

WalterBright wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also learned the hard way to never rely on a single payment processor. It was an expensive lesson. Of course, being thick-headed, I had to learn this lesson twice before it stuck. Always have at least two payment processors. If you've got a lot of money on the line, get a third lined up, too.

Yep, as I was reading OP's story I kept waiting to get to the part where he switched to his backup payment processor and life went on. My brain: "You do have a backup payment processor, don't you? Don't you??" If you're running a business and you find that it is utterly dependent on some single point of failure, you'd think that would be something you'd want to correct ASAP.

I think the part you missed is he's using Stripe Connect and its 35% of the merchants through him that lost the ability to process cards?

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#267

Post by pc86 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #230

apeace wrote: post #198

I had a very similar experience, except it was on our launch day . We hadn't charged a single live customer yet, but we had done plenty of tests using the Stripe testing environment. So we go live with a huge launch event, and we have customers signing up in droves. When they get to the last step -- payment -- they get an error. Logging in to the dashboard I didn't see any indication that there was anything wrong wit…

> Next time I build something with Stripe I'm going to test it in production before launching I'm genuinely curious why you wouldn't have done that anyway? I pretty much always do, precisely so I can experience a full end to end user experience.

I mean yes, shame on them for not charging themselves $1 or something in production, but still, it's insane for Stripe to have no indication on the dashboard that you're not actually able to charge real cards real money.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#268

Post by collyw » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #231

i_am_jl wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's unreasonable to think that a blog post has an easier time gaining traction than a HN comment outside of HN users.

How, other than SEO? If you want to share a link to it, you already can.

Name a blog post that has stuck with you because you learned something useful. Could you search for it and find it easily? Now do the same for an HN comment.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#269

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

bagels wrote: post #10

mikece wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? PayPal and Stripe don't advertise that they will only do business with organizations with which they agree. To accept a business as a client for a mission critical service like payment processing and then summarily cancel or suspend service without notice should be able to be prosecuted the same as someone who vandalizes a physical storefront to the point they cannot open for business. This is non-tri…

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

The part where they said everything was fine and then re-locked so much a week later is completely unacceptable even if the business does violate the TOS.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#270

Post by jjeaff » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #225

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…

I also learned the hard way to never rely on a single payment processor. It was an expensive lesson. Of course, being thick-headed, I had to learn this lesson twice before it stuck. Always have at least two payment processors. If you've got a lot of money on the line, get a third lined up, too.

It is a hard lesson with an expensive solution.

I agree with you, as you grow, you have to diversify. However, services like Stripe Connect are more difficult and time consuming to replicate. Stripe connect handles the processing of many different accounts and handles skimming the commissions and then depositing the proceeds into the individual bank accounts of your users after doing some cursory KYC. This service is of course not compatible with similar services offered by other processors, so you will have to write all the handling logic and integrate with the KYC providers and possibly separate ACH deposit providers on your own.

In other words, there is a lot of lock-in with services like Stripe Connect.