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

Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 145 posts

Re: Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor

#121

Post by Trixter »

smca wrote: post #115
Brian_K_White wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the problem gets fixed, then by definition the decision was not correctly made. The more you say in this thread the more you prove the critics points.

Not sure what you mean? OP's business isn't supported on Stripe. We communicated that to them two weeks ago, and reiterated that today. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36969195

OP has also told you in these threads that their business pivoted 2 months ago and no longer has adult content, so it is a valid business, yet was still banned.

Re: Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor

#122

Post by sam0x17 »

smca wrote: post #88
sturza wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ignoring a massive sector of businesses who might one day be the next "big thing" would be foolish for one thing and an unwise financial decision for another. So Stripe would sacrifice enterprise high volume customers because they hope/speculate that low volume SMBs will one day be big, if they'd need to choose where to direct resources? I highly doubt it.

It's not about speculating whether a given company would one day be big, it's accomodating for both for different reasons. Many of our "high volume customers" were one day not high volume, so saying we can't do both would be very short-sighted. And we see that in our data too: 1,000 new businesses joined Stripe every day last year. We also had 100+ companies process 1B+ in yearly volume. That captures everything from…

> It's not about speculating whether a given company would one day be big

Indeed, I think a lot of people miss the fact that the point of most small businesses is not in fact to become a billion (or even multi-million) dollar company. gasp

Any company targeting small businesses needs to shed this delusion that small businesses across the board want to become huge or even larger. In fact I know of a few that already think they are too big and would downsize at the first opportunity.

Re: Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor

#123

Post by incog88 »

smca wrote: post #65
sturza wrote: post #8

> This is enshittification: Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit

(I work at Stripe) I'd like Stripe to be available for as broad a set of users as possible. Just think about our high-level business model: we charge a fee per transaction for our services. Closing an account without cause does not make financial sense, so we don't do it. If we were solely optimized for profit then we'd ideally want to accept as many businesses' transactions as we could, right? So that leaves three r…

Speaking from personal experience your company shut down my account because I didn't have a website. I was using it to bill friends and family for small hosting accounts and they shut me down for it. While it suited them during their build up phase they deemed that I who actually pay for accounting software and am now using their payment processing are too much of a risk for them. Your bias is a fallacy.

Re: Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor

#124

Post by smca »

incog88 wrote: post #123
smca wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work at Stripe) I'd like Stripe to be available for as broad a set of users as possible. Just think about our high-level business model: we charge a fee per transaction for our services. Closing an account without cause does not make financial sense, so we don't do it. If we were solely optimized for profit then we'd ideally want to accept as many businesses' transactions as we could, right? So that leaves three r…

Speaking from personal experience your company shut down my account because I didn't have a website. I was using it to bill friends and family for small hosting accounts and they shut me down for it. While it suited them during their build up phase they deemed that I who actually pay for accounting software and am now using their payment processing are too much of a risk for them. Your bias is a fallacy.

A working business website (or social media site) is required by Stripe’s terms of service, as well as the card networks (Visa and Mastercard). It ensures we know who is selling and what they're selling. If you don't have a working website you can get in touch with our support team to provide additional info/verification. https://support.stripe.com/questions/information-required-on...

Re: Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor

#125

Post by tzs »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #90
michaelt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean they do give you some explanation, right? What makes you think that? Financial institutions are pretty notorious for refusing to explain or justify their 'fraud' detection and suchlike.

Because what would they say? The weight #9534 in neural cell #12956 in layer #34 exceeded value of 0.62f?

A company could come up with a more understandable (and more actionable) explanation by running some what-if scenarios. Make small tweaks to the input to the neural net until the net stops rejecting the account, then tell the customer how those inputs differ from their actual data.

For example, if tweaking the input to remove 5% of the chargebacks and the account passes you tell the customer their account was suspended for having too high a chargeback rate.

Re: Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor

#126

Post by EGreg »

Moldoteck wrote: post #81
tommek4077 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents, which represent an average person nowadays, do know how to ride a horse to get somewhere. What they don't know is how to drive a automobile, even more- for them gasoline=danger. Cars can be a nieche solution for some nieche ppl, but I don't see how it can become mainstream now, as a business you anyway need a classic horse barn bc too few ppl know what is a automobile and how to use it

lmao, cars now are ubiquitous, maybe care to provide a better example, or just ignore me, since you have your own beliefs

That was the point He was implying someone could ahve said this in the past

Re: Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor

#127

Post by tzs »

smca wrote: post #73
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's pretty much what they do. The problem is that you're a small business that doesn't make a ton of money, and they only make that , which is almost nothing, so if they even vaguely suspect you of anything they burn down your house just to be sure. The solution to this would be something like account number portability, similar to phone number portability. You have an account with a payment processor, you hav…

Someone asked this recently. You can move your Stripe data to/from any PCI DSS level 1-compliant provider, so what you're saying isn't accurate. To Stripe: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/account/data-migrations/pan... From Stripe: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/account/data-migrations/pan...

How are recurring payments handled?

My recollection of the changes that Visa and MC made a few years ago when they tightened the rules on using stored cards was that for cards stored after those changes went into effect you had to include in the data when submitting a card not present transaction a copy of the transaction ID of the card present transaction that you did when you stored the card.

I've not used Stripe so have no idea how you handle it. The other payment processors I've used all return their own transaction ID when you charge a card, not the actual Visa or MC transaction ID from the card network. Internally they maintain a mapping from their IDs to the underlying Visa/MC IDs and when you later do a not present transaction and give the reference transaction ID they look up the underlying Visa/MC ID and use that.

My understanding then is that to move from processor X to processor Y I'd need not only all the stored card numbers at X (assuming I'm using their storage service and not handling card storage myself) and need a way to get for all those cards the underlying Visa/MC transaction ID for the transaction where the customer gave me the card.

Then at processor Y they would have to support importing that data, including a way to import the underlying Visa/MC transaction IDs and assign them Y transaction IDs to be used when using those cards for not present transactions.

Re: Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor

#128

Post by kbenson »

michaelcao wrote: post #83
kbenson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of horror stories of Paypal holding funds. They've been doing it for far longer than most these other companies, since they've been around longer than most of them.

I have been using Paypal for 5 years for my startup and I don't have any major problems with Paypal. Sometimes, customers filed a case agaist us and Paypal decided that the case was closed in customer's favor although we did nothing wrong. However, it's very rare.

All it takes is a few quick searches from the search bar at the bottom of the page to see what I'm referring to. You can search just "paypal" or "paypal stole" or "paypal froze" for some of the more egregious examples submitted to HN, or "paypal banned" for some of the more common ones of paypal reclassifying businesses after years of working just fine.

Much of them are older, because honestly Paypal had quite a few years of being the vendor of choice before a lot of alternatives came around. I'm not sure if that means Paypal had enough competition that they had to deal with their behavior or they're just used less so you hear about the problems less, but for anyone that's been around for a while, hearing about Paypal screwing someone over is not going to sound like something extraordinary.

Re: Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor

#129

Post by me_again »

tommek4077 wrote: post #42
Moldoteck wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents, which represent an average person nowadays, do know how to put card data into a site to pay something. What they don't know is how to pay with crypto, even more- for them cryptocoins= automatic scam. Web3 can be a nieche solution for some nieche ppl, but I don't see how it can become mainstream now, as a business you anyway need a classic payment processor bc too few ppl know what is crypto and how to use…

My parents, which represent an average person nowadays, do know how to ride a horse to get somewhere. What they don't know is how to drive a automobile, even more- for them gasoline=danger. Cars can be a nieche solution for some nieche ppl, but I don't see how it can become mainstream now, as a business you anyway need a classic horse barn bc too few ppl know what is a automobile and how to use it

Feel free to provide examples of companies which a) are not 'in the crypto business' (ie they sell widgets, or software, not NFTs) b) obtain the majority of their revenue via crypto.

Crypto is closer to autogyro than automobile in adoption, and there is no guarantee that will ever change.

Re: Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor

#130

Post by quelltext »

wilhil wrote: post #75

Stripe is a nightmare and I found support to be awful and not know their own product. We are a UK company but now have clients worldwide and worldwide bank accounts (thanks to Wise). So many people in the US can't pay via ACH Transfer (we can't do debit without a US entity... looking in to options and setting up a LLC now), so, we need to be able to accept credit card. I thought I had a nice workaround by having USD…

> I thought I had a nice workaround by having USD to my USD account and only paying standard (high) fees, but, they now charge me a surcharge for this despite no Forex fees needed, and worse, the fees always link to the wrong transactions so I can't even reconcile properly.

I assume you are talking about this, perhaps: https://stripe.com/docs/payouts/alternative-currencies

It's a bit confusing as it seems to say there are fees if the bank account isn't domiciled in the country of the merchant but it's left vague whether the fee also applies to any alternative currency payout. The pricing page seems to support the latter theory: https://stripe.com/en-gb-de/pricing

> they now charge me a surcharge for this despite no Forex fees needed, and worse, the fees always link to the wrong transactions so I can't even reconcile properly.

The forex fees may not cost anything but the underlying cost is surely not free. Foreign currency transfers even (or in fact in particularly) domestically usually need to go through different rails, which often have fees associated. For US domiciled bank accounts they could potentially pay out from funds Stripe holds in the US already, but the need for balancing accounts internally later this isn't going to be free.

All that ignores the system and banking interconnectivity operating cost and their desire to recoup the engineering effort investment.

Bottom line is that there's a fee for this (which is service that I don't believe existed a few years back and is clearly a value added service) and if you're not happy with a fee it's your right to try and find another provider that is cheaper.

I understand that fees aren't something making customers happy but come on, your admitted workaround not working out as you planned doesn't make Stripe a nightmare. Seriously try to look into other PSPs and whether they support what you want to do better. If they don't or if another workaround there would be more cumbersome, perhaps Stripe isn't such a "nightmare" anymore in comparison.

Stuff just doesn't always end up working the way you might want to, and that means a market or product is perhaps ripe for disruption but Stripe charging for a service seems to be what bugs you the most. And I feel like you are underestimating the value/convenience they provide.

> the fees always link to the wrong transactions so I can't even reconcile properly.

That one does seem like a bug or a shortcoming in how they present fees, yes.

> On top of this, they force convert my CAD to GBP despite having a CAD bank account, and charge me so many fees on top.

Why would this happen if you used alternative currency payouts for that?

Post reply on HN