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Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

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Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#391

Post by ilaksh »

gfodor wrote: post #55
politelemon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sentence caught me off guard, maybe I am reading it wrong. Do you mean email as a payment system, or do you mean email as an example of a decentralized system?

The latter - a system that is like e-mail (decentralized) but allows people to send money to each other. We have many such systems being developed, but you get downvoted on HN for promoting them, since people assume you are a scammer, a criminal, etc.

Lol yeah so you are talking about a cryptocurrency but actually afraid to use that word. I know, I just did in my other comment and I know I will be attacked here.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#392

Post by smsm42 »

brk wrote: post #158
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.

IMO it is not the "you must be a fraudster" logic as much as "we have enough other customers that we can burn you without much worry of repercussions". As much as I hate government intervention in business, it really seems like there needs to be a way to force companies to actually be direct, accessible, and reactive in cases like this. I went through something similar with Venmo randomly locking my account after I r…

> we have enough other customers that we can burn you without much worry of repercussions

This. This is a common tune to about 100% of "BigSomething killed my business" stories that appear on HN almost weekly. If you go to BigSomething, you get a polished, automated, convenient, cheap service that would not hesitate to kill you account the moment something looks wrong to any of the robots watching it, and the customer support (the non-robotic kind, I don't count "we are working on it" auto-replies) is not part of the package because it doesn't scale. You have to either accept this as the risk for doing business, or not use BigSomething as you primary or critical vendor.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#393

Post by apeace »

krisoft wrote: post #388
apeace wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny part is, I thought that if I did a bunch of real transactions and then reversed them all, that our account might get flagged! That's in addition to explaining to our investors that we ended our launch day at -$1,000 due to all the chargeback fees because some dumb developer doesn't know what a testing environment is. And in addition to the fact that Stripe recommends against you testing in that way. I did g…

> charging a real card, and if it works, reversing it Why would you reverse it? If you can’t afford to consume one unit of whatever you are selling are you really in a good place to be in that business? I guess there can be rare exceptions where the business sell only a handfull of high ticket items. But then again probably Fincantieri does not let you put your bespoke mega yacht on a card through a web transaction.

We are an internet service provider and we charge a monthly fee for our service. So the real thing I would've been doing was reversing the first month's charge and then cancelling the recurring subscription. Which is exactly what I'd recommend you do if you are launching a new subscription service on Stripe!

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#394

Post by suzzer99 »

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.

It's also the exact same model that private health insurers used before Obamacare. Do minimal underwriting unless someone gets really sick, then scrutinize the hell out of it, even offer bonuses to employees based on how many claims they find reasons to deny.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#395

Post by mindcrime »

PeterisP wrote: post #337
mindcrime wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 corr…

Fair enough.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#396

Post by ceejayoz »

mminer237 wrote: post #389
ceejayoz wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 priva…

While I agree with your point, I think banning redheads would violate Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

No; hair color is not what that legislation covers.

It is entirely legal in the United States to discriminate against redheads, or people whose names start with B, or Hacker News users, or people who enjoy skiing.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#397

Post by jacobr1 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #304
rchaud wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Right, think about it as a consumer. I don't want a gas station to run a credit check, or ask for proof of employment before I fill my tank. They just accept the card. But that does mean they bear risk for chargebacks if the card was stolen.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#398

Post by smsm42 »

elliekelly wrote: post #302
vertis wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 governm…

Interesting to notice the censorship of speech on social media is implemented the same way. The government does not remove undesirable information directly, instead it calls up all major platforms "for a chat" and tells them to voluntarily remove it, or face Congressional hearings and likely further unpleasantries down the road. An offer they can not refuse. Looks like they think they found a loophole in the Constitution and they are going to mine it for all the power they can get from it.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#399

Post by encryptluks2 »

jtbayly wrote: post #346
sudden_dystopia wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn't be surprised to find it is most insurance companies. The insurance industry as a whole is seriously messed up and congress seems unwilling to do anything about it.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#400

Post by JPL7 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #396
mminer237 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with your point, I think banning redheads would violate Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

No; hair color is not what that legislation covers. It is entirely legal in the United States to discriminate against redheads, or people whose names start with B, or Hacker News users, or people who enjoy skiing.

https://www.fwlaw.com/insights/is-hair-a-protected-class#:~:....
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