Live data from Hacker News

Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

news.ycombinator.com

351–360 of 705 posts

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#351

It sucks this happened to you, but like with all the PayPal hate stories, I notice you're very careful not to describe what type of business you operate.

FWIW, there was a story about this sort of issue on national radio (in the US) a few weeks ago. The gist of it was "I can't rely on Stripe for my payment system because they vanish too much for too long."

The businesses were very not shady, and nowhere near morally controversial.

My impression from that piece and these stories is that Stripe is having some technical problems and it's wreaking havoc everywhere.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

The bit at 31 USC § 5318(g)(2)(A) under the title “Notification prohibited.” FinCEN has also promulgated confidentiality rules thereunder. I don’t have a pincite for that but I believe it’s tucked amongst their record keeping rules.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 paym…

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

Because they have the legal right to do so? They could ban companies run by redheads, if they like. As long as they're not discriminating based on very specific sets of criteria established by law, they get to choose who they do business with.

The government requiring private citizenry to associate with everyone who wishes to associate with them seems like a very dark path to go down.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#354
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

Stripe has an internal list of "instant ban, no questions allowed" activities/triggers.

Think about how they can accept 100+ currencies without a relationship with some dodgy central banks in developing countries.

There are absolutely items on that list for political reasons.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Have you tried or considered lago? (getlago.com) I haven't heard of killbill, so will definitely look into them. Love that they're open-source as well and seems like they've been at it a long while.

Lago looks interesting, and promising if development continues, but nowhere near as feature complete or battle tested as Kill Bill.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 paym…

Why do you believe that private companies shouldn't have freedom of association? Or put differently, why should the government be able to force Stripe to do business with people who Stripe thinks would not be good for their business?

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#358
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the YCombinator startup way: scale large enough so that you don't have to worry about customer complaints until they threaten to go public and generate enough press to cause real damage. But in all seriousness, being a YCombinator startup is now a big red flag outside of the VC-funded bubble. My current employer, and the previous one, have strict no-YC policy for SaaS due to numerous issues with previous YC comp…

This is the first I've heard about a "no-YC policy for SaaS" outside of my own employer (after three back-to-back horrible experiences) but glad to see it's catching on. As executives and purchasing managers get more tech-aware I think we're going to see an increase in due diligence into who is running companies, who their investors are, what other companies they've invested in, etc. Brands like YC will end up gettin…

At which point YC will come up with an algorithm to evaluate companies and blackhol certain companies without warning or process and we'll see HN posts "YC just blackholes my business!" but on Reddit, since they won't be able to post here.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 paym…

You mean the belief system of wanting to not get sued by someone who get's hurt or killed?

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#360
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

If someone uses WooCommerce for their store, they have 79 different payment integrations, including Stripe, Paypal, Amazon Payments, along with merchant account gateways like Authorize.net. Some of them are paid extensions but rather cheap considering the use.

https://woocommerce.com/product-category/woocommerce-extensi...

Post reply on HN