Tell HN: Stripe killed my music locker service, so I'm open sourcing it

Post by salawat » Tue, Jun 20, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #83

londons_explore wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. It's a simple calculation of risk vs profit. Payment gateways are happy to put up with more risk, and put more effort into de-risking you as a client, if they are getting lots of profits from you. Whereas if you have a turnover of $10k/year, and they're earning only 0.5% of that in fees, then it isn't worth them taking much risk or putting much effort in to earn $50. It would be nice if people like stripe were…

> It would be nice if people like stripe were more upfront about this. They could easily say "We have determined that your business might be high risk for us. If you pay us $1000 (which will be credited towards transaction fees), then we will work with you to mitigate these risks". Nowadays people are tip-toe-ing around egg shells constantly to avoid being the latest outrage that goes viral, but that would be wildly…

Post by carlosjobim » Tue, Jun 20, 2023, 5:18 PM UTC

colesantiago wrote: post #56

evandale wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual questions you should ask in this situation are: How many people who use bitcoin would use this product? How many want to use this product and don't know how to use bitcoin? How many people CAN use bitcoin for THIS purchases? We're never going to switch to bitcoin for daily purchases but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option for people.

Because the answer is that nobody uses Bitcoin for anything legitimate other than speculation, paying off ransomware debts to criminals and just down right scams and fraud. I am yet to see any viable usecase of this bitcoin mania that is legitimate and doesn’t need tons of energy waste to accomplish its goal. For almost 15 years of bitcoin it has completely failed and we have no use for it. So yes, we should never sw…

Post by minimaul » Tue, Jun 20, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #85

I'm very confused by the pricing here. $20/month ($240/year) gives you only 2TB of storage. But Backblaze's consumer product provides unlimited storage for $7/month (or $70/year). The offering closest in price is the $5/month one here, which only gives 250 GB - a very big difference for people with large music collections. I get that this provides additional value on top of the Backblaze consumer offering, but at the…

Post by ipaddr » Tue, Jun 20, 2023, 5:23 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #86

tsuujin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was starting up a small business, Stripe decided that it needed to “verify my activity” or some such nonsense and withheld all of my payments for several weeks. Meaning that I could not pay my team. As far as I can tell, a client paid in a funky way that set off some automated system, and no real person was willing to work with me to get it resolved. I will never trust Stripe with my business again.

You have a choice when you partner with a payment gateway. You can work with a laissez-faire gateway. It will not exist for long, because your company will be people who figured out they're not complying with various laws, so they will either disappear without a trace, or in the worst case scenario, take you down with them. You may end up having to explain to various authorities what you were doing. Or, you can work…

Post by raincom » Tue, Jun 20, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #117

salawat wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every bank/money transmitter has a list of transaction patterns/behaviors that are basically red flags for criminal activity. A lot are heuristics based, few are right out documented anywhere, but one example is # of credit card/account numbers bound to an account, another is structuring, i.e. a paytern of transaction activity specifically intended to avoid bank reporting controls. Or stupidly, putting words that are…

There are also explicit laws forbidding telling your customers of your suspicions ("tipping off" in the context of money laundering). Of course, this doesn't mean your customer service agents should never be helpful and forthcoming, but it's easier and less risky to tell them to say nothing and burn the odd legit customer, rather than risk being on the wrong side of AML legislation.