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

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#661

Post by remram » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 1:10 PM UTC

deng wrote: post #72

politelemon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is besides the point.

It is not. A company like Stripe is free to decide it does not want to be associated with certain services. You may disagree with that, and I would certainly agree they should at least be upfront about it, but it is not beside the point.

It is free to do that, but if it decides it wants to kick customers out immediately without explanation, we are free to tell one another and use a different provider. That is the point we're discussing, whether the dev community can still consider Stripe reliable and professional.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#662

Post by remram » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 1:14 PM UTC

jesterson wrote: post #621

themoonisachees wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cannabis is federally illegal, sex toys and porn have incredibly high chargeback rates and crypto has this handy thing where since you can't reverse anything, as soon as the crypto you bought is out of the custody wallet you cant get the thing back so the chargeback rates are also very high. Don't believe me? Ask anyone at the front desk of a hotel the rate of attempted chargebacks for ppv porn. You can get vetted by…

If it's the case, perhaps it makes more sense to block based on chargeback rate (that's actually what payment processors are doing) instead of blocking on nature of business?

This seems incredibly obvious, and would probably be fairly easy once your business picks up volume. That or make you absorb the charge backs yourself, or via an independently-contracted insurance.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#663

Post by gfodor » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 1:26 PM UTC

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…

The most compelling reason to argue against these kinds of laws is to think of their full consequences if suddenly illegal transactions were virtuous, as they have been in the past when totalitarian regimes have gained power. The present day doesn’t put a high value on freedom to transact in the west, because most illegal transactions in the west are for things many would consider criminal or immoral. But if times change (as they do in history) then not securing the freedom to transact and a vibrant economy rooted in this freedom will be come to seen as a grave error imo.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#664

Post by catapart » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

notch656a wrote: post #516

catapart wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inc…

No hate here, brother. Only love. And perception. Your sarcasm is a fine enough shield, and you hold it well! I hope that it protects you until you can be honest with yourself. In the mean time, I'm happy to take your admission as a win, even if you'd like it to be insincere. Thanks for admitting your a privileged paranoid; that's the first step!

I'm sorry you felt insulted by my assumptions about you. I honestly assumed that a sober recitation of the obvious flaws in your framing would be enough to deflect what was a small amount of candid anger that you decided to parlay into self-aggrandizing "advice". Instead, I can see that I touched a nerve and only invoked more hatred from you. For that, I am truly sorry! I hope you get less hateful in the future as I will try to be more cautious of similar types of lashing out.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#665

Post by KaoruAoiShiho » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #159

brightball wrote: post #131

Stuff like this is why I think a business should have a system that abstracts away the payment processor. I use Stripe for invoices, but I can easily send an invoice through another platform if needed. For processing transactions on the web, I would always lean toward using a service like ChargeBee that allows me to setup multiple payment gateways. Getting off the ground quickly is one thing, but the moment that you…

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.

That's why you need a self hosted solution.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#666

Post by ilyazub » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

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/

Thank you for bringing the "payments orchestration solution" term here! Have something to learn about.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#667

Post by bslorence » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

joecot wrote: post #522

bslorence wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Your stripe transaction cost is probably around the advertised fee, 2.9% + 30¢ With an actual merchant account you can probably get closer to 2% or at least 2.5% + 25-30¢ At 5 million in transaction revenue, a .5% decrease would be 25k a year. You can probably get a larger decrease depending on how much risk your company's business has. Stripe's sales rep might be contacting your company because you've hit the thresh…

thanks much for the tips!

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#668

Post by intrasight » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #163

intrasight wrote: post #157

So drop the Stripe intermediation and just send your customers invoices as people have doing for dozens of years.

This person is using Stripe Connect, which means their customers are people who are paying them to charge other people through Stripe. So they can't just send invoices, they have to convince their customers to send invoices when (presumably) part of the service they were supposed to be providing was avoiding that.

So if someone else is handling billing for me, I should make sure they are not using Stripe Connect.

Honest question: what would be an example where I, as a business owner, would have some 3rd party billing my customers?

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#669

Post by i_am_jl » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #231

i_am_jl wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's unreasonable to think that a blog post has an easier time gaining traction than a HN comment outside of HN users.

How, other than SEO? If you want to share a link to it, you already can.

Rich-embeds in social media/communications platforms, mostly. Simply taking up more space in a Discord/Slack/Teams/$SOCIAL channel with a bold title, an excerpt, and an image adds visibility, context and is more interesting to the viewer.

A link to an HN thread is opaque, uninteresting, and context-less.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#670

Post by garrickvanburen » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

edwinwee wrote: post #223

garrickvanburen wrote: post #217

Something similar happened to me last month.

Did you get this resolved? If not, could you forward to me at edwin@stripe.com?

yes, it was resolved, thanks for asking and for offering an email address.