Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't Use Stripe

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 144 posts

Re: Don't Use Stripe

#71

Post by 015a »

qqtt wrote: post #7

You can find similar stories about literally all online payment processors, including Paypal, Stripe, & all the "legacy" ones too (like First Data). Is it possible this isn't some nefarious conspiracy to steal money, but rather a reality of dealing with payments online given the regulatory environment it operates in? Also this is the biggest season for sales and tech companies in general are dealing with navigating a…

Oh, here we go again. The hazy macro-economic environment strains the capital efficiency of tech as they learn-anew why traditional businesses aren't quite as efficient as they are. The world is complex, and hard to navigate, and hard to encode into the sterility of a computer program, and jeeze I guess things like customer support and humans and special edge cases may actually matter when it comes to building a sustainable business.

You don't keep legitimate customers by subjecting them to erroneous fraud mitigation. That's the end of the story. Stripe can figure it out, or they can die. "Stripe cuts 14% of its workforce, CEO says they ‘overhired for the world we’re in’" Stripe handled an estimated $350B in payments annually (as of 2020) with around 8,000 employees. JP Morgan Chase handles somewhere around $2T, with around 250,000 employees. They didn't overhire. They never had enough people in the first place. They certainly don't now. It's going to get worse, and it may not get better.

Stripe is a low interest rate environment corporation, with $2.3B in venture funding, which will not exist in 10 years. You give a great piece of advice: diversity your payment processing.

Re: Don't Use Stripe

#72

Post by 15155 »

> Again, Stripe gives no manner to remedy this. There is NO ONE you can call. NO ONE you can talk to.

Sure they do: it's called their general counsel. I would recommend you could have had an attorney reach out in writing by day 15 (30 if you are generous) if you legitimately could not get in contact through any other means - including writing your own written letter. At $50,000 in funds locked up, you likely have enough to afford representation in resolving this matter (less than $500.)

With a quick Google search:

> 6. Contact and complaints. You can contact SPC at https://stripe.com/contact or by mail to Stripe Payments Company, 354 Oyster Point Boulevard, South San Francisco, California, 94080. SPC may provide you with information and notifications in relation to the SPC Services via your Stripe Dashboard.

If resources are an issue, I entered this prompt into ChatGPT: "Write a letter to Stripe Payments Company demanding release of my $50,000 in legitimate sales proceeds from my dress-selling business."

I received any number of useful letters that would be applicable to resolving this situation. This HN post is more lengthly than the demand letter that would have resolved this.

Re: Don't Use Stripe

#73

Post by 35mm »

maxgashkov wrote: post #46
KingOfCoders wrote: post #22

A large company I was working for transfered all money out from Paypal every night. I would never leave money with Paypal or Stripe.

It's a typical setup, PayPal even have the automated daily bank withdrawal for merchants. What you probably fail to mention or notice that the company transferred the money once they clear the mandatory hold window. Exact width of the window may be adjusted case by case and depends on the stuff you sell — e.g. if it's digital goods with immediate delivery it may be shorter, if it's physical goods it may be certain am…

Even if you withdraw it, they can still come after you to get ‘their’ money back. PayPal (in the UK at least) requires a direct debit authorisation to be able to withdraw funds to a bank account. Part of that agreement is that they can also take money from your bank account if they decide to.

My experience with this is that I sold an iMac on eBay, then a week later PayPal informed me that the person who paid in fact has stolen someone else’s login, and so they sent a debt collection agency after me to make me refund the money, even though I no longer had the iMac.

Re: Don't Use Stripe

#74

Post by _xnmw »

Does anyone know of a good abstraction layer that could allow me to use different payment gateways (Stripe, GoCardless, Authorize.net, 2Checkout, etc.)?

Recently heard of Lago Billing, which is great because it is self-hostable, but only supports Stripe and GoCardless. Chargebee sounds good, but expensive and a single point of failure itself. Primer.io looks like it is only for large enterprises.

Re: Don't Use Stripe

#75

Post by noduerme »

I'm not a fan of HN becoming the Oprah show that the clueless internet turns to in hopes of godlike intervention to resolve customer service issues with faceless tech companies. But then again, I'm not above upvoting anything that hurts Stripe.

[edit] my main point here wasn't about Stripe, shitheads though they may be, it was that it's unhealthy to cultivate either (A) an external image that we can intervene (re: "I challenge anyone here to connect me to a human being at Stripe"), or (B) some kinda internal savior complex that would go along with that.

Re: Don't Use Stripe

#76

Post by JensRantil »

yellow_lead wrote: post #42
matrix_overload wrote: post #33

Not defending Stripe here, but DO NOT HAVE A SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE! Have 2-3 payment processors hooked to a common abstraction layer, split transactions between them. If one fails, switch to others while you try to sort it out. Unfortunately, "computer says no" has become the harsh reality when dealing with any kind of corporate entities, so you need to be ready. It sucks, but that's the world we live in.

It's expensive to build 2-3 integrations for every service you rely on though. And losing 1/3 of your money can still be detrimental to your business.

I think https://www.bits.bi also will offer this.

Re: Don't Use Stripe

#78

Post by dotancohen »

Klonoar wrote: post #68
docflabby wrote: post #65

Most small business I've found don't accept credit/debit cards for large transactions and instead want direct (cash) bank transfers because they fear the money going missing or getting a chargeback. This has its only issues as its slow and not very customer friendly. If only there was some kind of virtual cash that could be sent from one party to another almost instantly without an intermediary

>If only there was some kind of virtual cash that could be sent from one party to another almost instantly without an intermediary If only such a system wasn't ripe with fraud, get rich quick schemes, and the same general predatory behaviors found in our systems with intermediaries yet lacking the ability for the common user to have some ability to recover when things go wrong. Alas, such a thing does not exist. ;P

Those problems exist with physical cash.

Why should I care that other people engage in fraud with the same currency that I'm using for a legal transaction? Why should I care that other people engage in get rich quick schemes with the same currency that I'm using for a legal transaction?

Re: Don't Use Stripe

#79

Post by docflabby »

Klonoar wrote: post #68
docflabby wrote: post #65

Most small business I've found don't accept credit/debit cards for large transactions and instead want direct (cash) bank transfers because they fear the money going missing or getting a chargeback. This has its only issues as its slow and not very customer friendly. If only there was some kind of virtual cash that could be sent from one party to another almost instantly without an intermediary

>If only there was some kind of virtual cash that could be sent from one party to another almost instantly without an intermediary If only such a system wasn't ripe with fraud, get rich quick schemes, and the same general predatory behaviors found in our systems with intermediaries yet lacking the ability for the common user to have some ability to recover when things go wrong. Alas, such a thing does not exist. ;P

The problem is the intermediaries often add no value or help facilitate the fraud or refuse to help get the money back.

I lost £150,000 to a fraudulent account the bank knew about https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/dec/14/i-lost-150000-...

Bank transfer scammers steal £700,000 a day from UK victims https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/may/28/bank-transfer-...

Re: Don't Use Stripe

#80

Post by AlchemistCamp »

alephu5 wrote: post #70
docflabby wrote: post #65

Most small business I've found don't accept credit/debit cards for large transactions and instead want direct (cash) bank transfers because they fear the money going missing or getting a chargeback. This has its only issues as its slow and not very customer friendly. If only there was some kind of virtual cash that could be sent from one party to another almost instantly without an intermediary

The EU are working on something like this, it's like USDC but backed and exchanged by the European Central Bank. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...

A surveillance coin that bureaucrats can seize without a trial or due process!

The EU may not be the first to make this.

Post reply on HN