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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

#421

Post by shitlord »

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.

Part of what makes these situations so frustrating is that there's no due process, and there are significant ramifications to your livelihood. You aren't told what you're being accused of, you have no way to contest the allegation, and you might lose your entire business over a clerical mistake.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#422

Post by naasking »

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…

Making competition easier in this space is another way to solve it. If Stripe had 15 competitors all of whom were API compatible so you could switch in 5 minutes, any bad PR would drive customers away in droves.

Government has made entry to this space hard which is why there aren't enough competitors, so they're really the source of the problem.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#423

Post by user3939382 »

protomyth wrote: post #410

I still want to see Congress pass a law requiring any internet company that accepts money or fees from you that bans you, must give the exact reason, evidence, and where on your contract / ToS you violated. Frankly, at a certain size (millions of customers), these companies are utilities.

Banks are regulated to death but I see that on the whole as a good thing. These payment processors need the same burden. They’ve shown that they won’t play fairly without intervention and market forces aren’t fixing the problem.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#424

Post by justinc8687 »

tough wrote: post #350
hartator wrote: post #298

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/

Spreedly is a very good provider for this.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#425

Post by remus »

mtmail wrote: post #286
mgkimsal wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Next time I build something with Stripe I'm going to test it in production before launching I'm genuinely curious why you wouldn't have done that anyway? I pretty much always do, precisely so I can experience a full end to end user experience.

Stripe advises against that (I'm not saying it makes sense) "Do not use real card details. Testing in live mode using real payment method details is prohibited by the Stripe Services Agreement. Use your test API keys and the card numbers below." https://stripe.com/docs/testing

Frankly that's a ridiculous clause. If you make a change (like switching from testing to live in the stripe dashboard) it needs to be tested, as OP's comment nicely demonstrates.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#426

Post by justinc8687 »

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?

You use a 3rd party payment orchestration platform. Spreedly and Very Good Security both offer this and we use them for our business.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#427

Post by pas »

vlod wrote: post #401
max51 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s a very unethical practice because it ends up hitting businesses at the worst possible time, when the termination or suspension causes a huge financial hit. You forgot the part where Paypal get to keep your money when they close your account. And it's not like they only keep it temporarily in case of lawsuits/chargebacks, they just keep it forever. I still can't believe that crap is legal.

Are you saying you should empty your account constantly (nightly?) in case paypal gets shut down your account, for unknown and un-communicated reasons?

yes. the paypal horror stories were very common and frequent ~10 years ago. that's how Braintree, Stripe, etc. got started.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#428

Post by eropple »

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)…

This isn't "rotating payment providers", though, this is sharding customers across them. Which may be a good idea, insofar as it could reduce your blast radius, but it doesn't allow for portable customers--which seemed to be what the GGP was implying.

'pc86 has an interesting solution in a sibling comment, but I don't think you can do this across the high-touch providers, eg Stripe+Paypal.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#429

Post by [deleted] »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #197
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.)

You use several API, attach one provider per customer to divide the risks. When one provider bails out, you onboard new customers and new payment on the other payment provider. Then you only loose the recurring payments on the lost provider that are on hold, and you are not dying, so you can resolve that problem using a lawyer. This is crisis management, not technical perfection that you need for those situations.

[deleted]

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#430

Post by subhro »

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?

American Express and Chase. I have both and they are awesome... so far.
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