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Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#301

Post by polski-g »

incone123 wrote: post #46
pmx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This victim blaming has to stop. These companies shouldn't be able to just shut down an account like this, especially for something so critical and core to a business survival. We shouldn't have to live in a world where you need multiple backups for every service you use in case one decides to fuck you over for no good reason!

Not to agree with the grandparent comment, but we do live in exactly that world. Even as a private citizen I deliberately carry more than one kind of payment card.

You have a large selection to pick from! You can use Visa or you can use Mastercard.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#302

Post by elliekelly »

vertis wrote: post #252
elliekelly wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate seeing comments like this because Stripe’s hands are tied here. Anytime a bank or payment processor has frozen or shut down an account and you’re getting stonewalled it’s almost guaranteed to be an AML related issue and it’s against the law for them to tip a customer off that their account is being or might be investigated for suspicious activity. This isn’t Stripe deciding that you’re a fraudster and so you’r…

Sure, and my experience is outside finance (more spam and fraud prevention). Even if it is government under the hood you have to know what you're accused of. Not American so I doubt the US political system is interested in hearing from me, but I agree that's the only way of solving the deeper AML problems.

> Even if it is government under the hood you have to know what you're accused of.

This is exactly why the whole process is suspect. The government farms out the policing of certain financial crimes onto the financial institutions as a prerequisite for operating the business. If the government came along and froze your bank account you’d have a right to ask why and a right to get some answers. But instead the government pawns the responsibility off onto businesses and then prohibits those businesses from telling you why.

And so the BSA and Patriot Act effectively allow the government to take your property and take away your right to confront the government about why they took your property. And it’s all on merely a vague suspicion of misconduct. No proof whatsoever.

I can’t help but laugh at the irony— the federal government laundering their otherwise unconstitutional activities through the banks.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#303

Post by collegeburner »

candiddevmike wrote: post #299
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.

How do you handle recurring subscriptions with this setup?

Presumably you have to get certified with SAQ D for actually storing your custopmers payment info instead of tokenizing. Huge hassle.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#304

Post by marcosdumay »

rchaud wrote: post #212
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…

> a lot of experience seems to show that Stripe, Square and PayPal operate differently: they light up ANYONE, and then only underwrite when the account hits a critical threshold of revenue. Sounds similar to how subprime lenders doled out the mortgages without any due diligence. They skimmed their bit off the top in transaction commissions, but later dumped them before they became a compliance hassle.

As a rule, there's nothing wrong about a default to accepting making deals with strangers.

And that's the only thing similar in here. The payment processors are not selling anything by fraudulent claiming they evaluated their quality.

What they do have is a very bad customers service that is prone to a different kind of crime (withholding people's money) and create a very unique kind of risk they don't communicate to their customers.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#305

Post by layer8 »

collyw wrote: post #268
layer8 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s usually easy using Algolia when you have sufficiently unique search terms, but otherwise that’s what I meant by SEO. Any other reasons?

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#306

Post by mixmastamyk »

tmpz22 wrote: post #218

Just a reminder while this may seem like a Good vs. Evil clash between OP and Stripe we will never have all the facts. OP does not enumerate their business model or go into details about their customers and transactions. Stripe absolutely should not share internal customer information. While we may see Stripe chime in the thread, and make summary judgements, we will almost surely not have total visibility (and thus c…

True, yet not an excuse for lack of communication with a long term customer.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#307

Post by PeterisP »

yamtaddle wrote: post #265
eropple wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

The problem is with recurring payments. If you used this approach and 1/3 of your customers were initially billed through Stripe, then if Stripe bans you then you can't charge the next month's bill through something else because you don't have the stored data for it, you have to ask them to re-enter data in another processor's system.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#308

Post by atlasunshrugged »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #205
awinter-py wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seriously you should write this as a blog (or if you are trying to be pseud, let me interview you and I'll write it) if this is SOP it's important information

Would appreciate this blog or further deep dives; I’d like to take it to legislators and regulators demonstrating a regulatory gap.

What specifically is the regulatory gap here?

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#309

Post by jessaustin »

yaythefuture wrote: post #291
trollied wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. The OP account was created today. If it was a long-standing user with lots of comment history, then I’d be more inclined to wonder what was going on etc. Creating a new account on here to potentially get support is just plain wrong, and needs dealing with IMO. Should never hit the front page.

The problem is that my real HN account is my actual name. It'd be like 2 clicks to figure out what my business is.

Yeah, me too. I was wrong to suspect that you wanted to avoid associating your business with your HN content. So, are you trying to avoid leaving an online record of "this business helped Stripe screw over its customers"? Unless your customers have strong incentives not to talk publicly about their experiences, that ship has sailed...

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#310

Post by layer8 »

awinter-py wrote: post #250
layer8 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious what benefit you think publishing the comment as a blog post would provide over the existent HN comment (which also has its own URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32855106 ). Possibly better SEO?

Good question. Feels like there's two Qs in there: 1) when is long-form better than short form, 2) why write about problems at all? 2. Why write at all: consensus drives policy change, and information drives consensus. Writing, of any length, assembles information, bundles it into an argument, and (if the argument lands) becomes a 'capsule' around which consensus can form. 1. Why long form: room for nuance and resear…

Ok, I thought you meant publishing the same text as in the comment, but as a blog post. So what you actually meant was “please expand on this in longer form”. So “blog” not necessarily as a publishing medium, but as a genre of text.
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