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Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#511

Post by tootie »

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…

My company uses Stripe among others. We do on the order of 8 figures of transactions over all our payment channels. Not a whale by Stripe's standards, but not nothing either. We also have enterprise agreements in writing and signed contracts with all of them. It wasn't necessarily an underwriting process as far as I know, more of an enterprise software licensing agreement. But either way, they are obligated to provide services under the terms of the contract. The terms include some commitment to future use and get us at least a smidge of discount off their fees. As much as startups love buying services with transparent pricing where you just pick a service level and plunk down a credit card, when it's business critical, just call their biz dev team and ask for a contract.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#512

Post by bslorence »

joecot wrote: post #238
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…

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…

What is a "large company" in this context? My employer is on track to run about $5m through Stripe this year, which will be our fourth full year using Stripe. Our first year we did about $2.75m. This year I've been getting occasional emails from a Stripe sales rep for the first time, which suggests that we've crossed some sort of threshold...

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#513

Post by batch12 »

> currently, my product doesn't work for 35% of my customers. Cue torrent of pissed off customer emails.

Maybe fail open until you fix the payment processor issues? Seems it would be better to take the short term hit monetarily for long term gains and retain your customers than lose 1/3 of your user base.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#515

Post by donedealomg »

max51 wrote: post #328
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…

>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.

they still have $4k from me, I just gave up on it.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#516

Post by notch656a »

catapart wrote: post #443
notch656a wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes when fucking happens, both parties did the fucking. Betting the farm on Stripe should never be the modus operando of a 'standard enterprise' and thank god I have never worked with anyone in any position of power over money that shared your beliefs. That is just insanity.

Running a successful business that is intrinsically tied to a well-known or well-trusted institution is not only common, it's the case for the majority of businesses. Which is WHY we have consumer protection (it's not to protect your typical "consumer", it's to protect the money interests of business people). How many businesses do you think could survive a disruption to their banking access? Or maybe their internet…

Yes, I'm paranoid and privileged, that's why a single point of failure doesn't result in me going bankrupt. Can I cry into some $100 bills? You can dish out the hate and I can keep on keepin on enjoying my lavish privilege of having backup plans. The only thing better than boosting my ego is boosting my bank account as I draw pictures of Scrooge McDuck while my soul nourishes on the insults of HN'ers (hopefully I incorporated them all here, I lost count).

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#517

Post by edwinwee »

iio7 wrote: post #496

So, this is another "drive by" on Hacker News about Stripe, which @edwinwee (from Stripe) reacts to and "saves the day". All the while the rest of us know absolutely nothing about what just happened! What exactly is going on? What is the business model? And why does it require that these cases reach Hacker News before they are solved by @edwinwee!?

I can't proactively share specifics about a business, but in this case, they operate in a regulated space. The banks and card networks we work with require some extra checks due to the prevalance of scams in this space. A reviewer on our team flagged the business, and admittedly, we weren't very clear about what was required in order to continue working with us. After talking with OP today, we re-enabled the business.

1. Tomorrow we're regrouping with the team to see how we can improve our processes to prevent a similar case from happening again.

2. We're working on a new version of the Stripe Connect dashboard right now. There will be much more detail on which connected accounts are restricted and how to resolve the issues. We want to release it soon and I think it’ll provide platforms better visibility into the state of their accounts.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#518

Post by connordoner »

brightball wrote: post #167
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if ChargeBee bans you, you are still dead because that's a single point of failure. No, you should have several payment processors, and rotate them regularly to check they work.

Under ChargeBee's terms, they must provide you with your data for up to 120 days following any termination. So there's that at least. > 7.2.3. Data Export Following termination or expiration of a Subscription, We will retain that Account’s Service Data for one hundred twenty (120) days from such date of termination or expiration (“Data Retention Period”). I mean, ideally we need an open source PCI compliant equivalen…

The problem with that idea is that PCI compliance doesn't just include the software you're running, but the infrastructure you run it on, various elements of organisational security and, of course, certification costs.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#519

Post by derbOac »

yaythefuture wrote: post #366
derbOac wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd be curious to listen to this if you have a link?

I was trying to find it but can't... I thought it was on Planet Money but might not have been. I'm pretty sure it was a program on NPR because that and college radio are about all I listen to on the radio, and it wasn't a podcast.

I wish I could remember the details better. They were focused on small business owners, retail mostly. I think they started out with an interview of someone with an interior design-related business.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#520

Post by iio7 »

edwinwee wrote: post #517
iio7 wrote: post #496

So, this is another "drive by" on Hacker News about Stripe, which @edwinwee (from Stripe) reacts to and "saves the day". All the while the rest of us know absolutely nothing about what just happened! What exactly is going on? What is the business model? And why does it require that these cases reach Hacker News before they are solved by @edwinwee!?

I can't proactively share specifics about a business, but in this case, they operate in a regulated space. The banks and card networks we work with require some extra checks due to the prevalance of scams in this space. A reviewer on our team flagged the business, and admittedly, we weren't very clear about what was required in order to continue working with us. After talking with OP today, we re-enabled the business…

Thank you for clarifying.
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