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

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#331

Post by ddalex » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

sudden_dystopia wrote: post #287

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 is how an auto insurance company I used to work for wrote policies. They didn’t underwrite them until there was a claim and then they would rescind the policy and deny the claim when they found a “material misrepresentation”. They called it underwriting on the back end.

This seems like straight fraud.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#332

Post by numtel » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #279

numtel wrote: post #248

Reading about these kinds of issues strengthens my belief that ecommerce using stablecoins is the way forward.

If only the blockchain were powered by crypto users’ endless supply of confirmation bias.

Please do tell your alternative plan for allowing anyone to join the market (permissionless) while also preventing counterfeiting

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#333

Post by ajhurliman » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

I’m really surprised that they’re allowed to operate this opaquely as a money transmitter. I’m not familiar with the specific regulations of holding a MTL, but you’d think with the amount of tight regulation we have in other areas (eg real estate) that money transmission would at least require disclosure of account status in a timely manner.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#334

Post by btilly » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

vertis wrote: post #87

The worst part about these type of cases is not being able to get a straight answer. There is a whole subset of big tech that has taken the "you must be a fraudster therefore we can't unfuck the situation" approach to customer support. It's an arms race with fraudsters that eventually sucks in legitimate businesses.

The problem is that Stripe has identified you as possibly being a fraudster. Any information that they give you about what they suspect and why is information that a real fraudster could use next time to try and evade the detection algorithms.

It is like this with virtually any security system. Adding feedback you can use for debugging also makes the system much easier to compromise.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#335

Post by theptip » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #324

theptip wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s against the law for them to tip a customer off that their account is being or might be investigated for suspicious activity What law do you think forbids this? In my experience running global payments through multiple rails, on an OFAC/risk ping you typically get a request for enhanced due diligence, which normally looks to the payee like “send me a picture of your drivers license”. The most common result is t…

The Bank Secrecy Act. And I don’t “think” it. I know it.

Which bit of the BSA?

edit: As I re-read the thread I see that I am thinking more of onboarding KYC, as opposed to this case which would be ongoing-activity investigation. So that would explain the difference in expectations here. Still interested in learning more about the regs for ongoing investigations if you have time to share!

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#336

Post by iso20022 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

theptip wrote: post #293

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…

> it’s against the law for them to tip a customer off that their account is being or might be investigated for suspicious activity What law do you think forbids this? In my experience running global payments through multiple rails, on an OFAC/risk ping you typically get a request for enhanced due diligence, which normally looks to the payee like “send me a picture of your drivers license”. The most common result is t…

In the UK at least, section 333A of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002? (Disclaimer: not a lawyer)

See https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/anti-money-laundering/t...

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#337

Post by PeterisP » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #326

PeterisP wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck, not going to happen. Democratic systems won't change these laws because there is no popular support for change - there is a reasonably large 'law-and-order' and 'corruption-as-main-concern' voter demographic who strongly support these laws, and the niche of HN techies and libertarians who'd oppose them is insignificantly small in comparison; and authoritarian systems won't change these laws because their l…

I acknowledge that that is the prevailing sentiment, and the obviously correct conclusion. And yet I can't accept that kind of defeatist thinking. To embrace defeatism on that level is to basically accept that nothing will ever change, and we know that things do, occasionally, change. It's not always clear exactly what it takes to create wide-scale societal change, and yes one could easily spend their whole life enga…

It's not passive giving up - many people, including me, consider the social change you want to drive as harmful in aggregate, and would fight against it; and I'm asserting that at the moment we are in the majority.

I understand the idealistic benefits of freedom of payments, however, the KYC/AML restrictions are there for valid reasons that simply have much more magnitude of importance (for example, the scale of corruption and its social harm is so big that even a slight decrease in that due to KYC/AML enforcement far outweighs all the current social costs of KYC/AML) and removing them would mean that in aggregate the bad guys have won. I'm not saying that you're a bad guy, but you are an "ally of convenience" to them as achieving your position would let the bad guys win and I would consider it immoral to allow that.

We definitely should strive for better, more accurate AML/KYC implementations that have less impact on legitimate trade. But arguing for removing AML/KYC just because of that is effectively throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#338

Post by donmaq » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

toss1 wrote: post #150

Ancalagon wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're saying Stripe thinks those businesses are scams, illegal, or otherwise in gray areas that Stripe would rather not support. There's probably some automated decision-making happening on the backend so there are edge cases where good business are getting shut down on accident.

If that is the case, that is fine. Then Stripe can FORKING SAY SO UP FRONT. And those businesses can grumble but go elsewhere Implying that you are happy to take on responsibility for infrastructure of someone's business, then unilaterally and without notice or opportunity to cure any issue, is pretty much tantamount to theft. Stripe in this case appears to be accepting money, then failing to provide service, and in…

> I don't like externalizing problems to other parties as a business model

You just described the entire gig economy

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#339

Post by tptacek » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #330

tptacek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it matters deeply, because some product categories are so rife with fraud (or are positioned so prominently in the fraud value chain, from carders to cashers) that they can't be served cost-effectively by conventional payment processors.

That still does not excuse the total information blackout.

I don't know what that statement has to do with my comment or the comment I replied to.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#340

Post by sroussey » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

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.

The “gap” is a customer choice though. I ran payments myself in 1999 and had to get a merchant account and deal with the bad APIs of the time. People can do this today. Or use Stripe. Not a great choice, but still a choice.