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

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#341

Post by idontpost » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:52 PM UTC

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…

> Stripe absolutely should not share internal customer information

Not even with that customer?

That's a really dumb take.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#342

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

iso20022 wrote: post #336

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…

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...

[deleted]

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#343

Post by hef19898 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:54 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…

Added benefit, those real service providers, banks, cannot let you hang for that long without repercussions. Especially if it is reasonably sized business accounts and clients they have quite an incentive not to. Not all rosy of course, but much better it seems than those oyhet payment providers.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#344

Post by elliekelly » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:54 PM UTC

abigail95 wrote: post #327

elliekelly wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 governm…

I'm trying to understand your position here: You think AML/KYC laws, as they currently exist, are unconstitutional? edit: That's a fine position to have, but it's a fringe one, and I don't think you should be offering it as a reason why Stripe does what it does that's generally accepted by everyone else.

No. I don’t think it’s unconstitutional which is why I said “otherwise unconstitutional”. And you’re (perhaps deliberately) completely misunderstanding and conflating my two comments. I am quite confident that OP’s problems with Stripe are AML related which is not at all a “fringe” position.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#345

Post by wpietri » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:54 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #208

wpietri wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely sucks for the merchant companies ending up on the pointy end of the TOS. But you also need to consider the payment company side of things. They face a relentless tide of fraud and shady merchants. If they are too transparent about exactly how they detect a problem, that makes it much easier for the criminals, scam artists, and dodgy merchants to get around TOS enforcement. The real culprits here are the…

> If they are too transparent about exactly how they detect a problem, that makes it much easier for the criminals, scam artists, and dodgy merchants to get around TOS enforcement. I get that, but I don't see how actually telling people what term of service was violated gives too much leverage to the bad guys.

Neither do I, but I wouldn't expect to see it without really understanding the bad actors and what they're up to. So this could be their best effort. Or it could be that they're just going with a blanket "say nothing" policy because it's too hard to create a more nuanced policy that the CSRs can apply consistently. Or it could just be laziness and a lack of customer focus. It's impossible to say from the outside.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#346

Post by jtbayly » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:54 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.

What company!!!??? Please don't just leave all of us hoping we aren't the unlucky guy that is using that company.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#347

Post by cpurdy » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #315

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 curious why you would still consider them a trustworthy business partner after what happened?

Exactly. After reading this thread, the chance that I would ever choose to use Stripe is exactly 0%.

What a disaster.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#348

Post by systemvoltage » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #201

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…

> PayPal and Stripe don't advertise that they will only do business with organizations with which they agree. https://stripe.com/legal/restricted-businesses

> Firearms, explosives and dangerous materials

> Guns, gunpowders, ammunitions, weapons, fireworks and other explosives. Peptides, research chemicals, and other toxic, flammable and radioactive materials

Why does the payment processor get to dictate whether I can run a defense ordnance company or run a scientific chemical supplies store?

Some of this stuff needs to be challenged in the court or regulated so that payment processor has no say whatsoever in whatever their belief system says about legitimacy of a business.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#349

Post by soared » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:57 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #245

According to previous posts* this company sells something related to cannibis. I'd love to know why certain categories are always flagged or silently banned. Cannibis, sex toys, porn, crypto, etc. Payment processors seem to always give these categories the worst service and whenever a company is nuked like this, it's usually one of these categories. Why is that? It almost feels like there's some secret government org…

In addition to the other comment about cannabis, crypto is financial and comes with many laws and regulations that a payment process would need to be very aware of and follow.

Porn is ripe with fraud/theft/bad actors/etc.

It’s not a shadow government, it’s common sense.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#350

Post by tough » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 6:59 PM UTC

hartator wrote: post #298

joecot wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is between the company having their own merchant account with a bank (which is what most large companies do) using an online payment gateway, and not having one and leveraging the processor's instead (which is what Stripe, Paypal, etc provide). When you apply for a merchant account you get that approval and underwriting, but with a hefty application fee for obvious reasons. If your payment gateway shut…

Interesting. What will be the provider you recommend? Any local banks?

I think the best solution here, is add a payments orchestration solution to your stack.

There are others, I know of this spanish startup integrating with stripe.

In this way,you can have both your bank TPV/ Payments and Stripe working alongside, if any fails just put the other, or the one giving better prices by default, etc

https://monei.com/es/features/payments-orchestration/