TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business • Hacker News Board

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#151

Post by TheRealDunkirk » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:06 PM UTC

This started with Google, but we had years and years of stories just like this about PayPal too. We need regulation to prevent companies from throwing all user-account-related decisions to a neural network, and then not providing a way to dispute its output. YouTube and the copyright cartel is another good example. It's ridiculous to have to say this, but this is what you get when you no longer have a democracy (or representative republic) and, instead, have a full-fledged corporatocracy/oligarchy enabled by the Citizens United decision. Companies must be forced to staff up to handle the issues that their technology causes. Twitter and its moderation/banning/cancelation-of-accounts comes to mind as well. You can tell me that they have 10's of thousands of people working in this area, but it's clearly not enough. I'm sorry, but FAANG companies all LOVE to brag about how much money they make for their owners. They should be forced to spend some more of it on making sure they address flagrant mistakes in their automation systems.

Aaaaalllllllll of that aside, MOST of the time, with these kinds of stories, there's usually more to it than is being said.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#152

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:07 PM UTC

DebtDeflation wrote: post #106

vemv wrote: post #11

If it was, say, a $30000 charge I could give Stripe the benefit of doubt, but $3300 is a pretty ordinary amount for any retailer. Could be e.g. a laptop sale, or three phones? When I see Stripe's apology here it will not be enough for me - not at least without a detailed blog post / postmortem. Until/if that moment happens, I'll regard Stripe as an untrustworthy entity and will recommend doing the same to do anyone I…

Flagging a larger than normal transaction is fine. Placing a 120 day hold is very much NOT fine. This should be resolvable within 24-48 hours after the business provides the requisite documentation showing the transaction to be legitimate. The root cause is a completely automated process devoid of any capability for human review like we see with so many online platforms these days.

Documentation can be faked, and 120 days wasn't picked randomly; customers have that long to dispute charges.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#153

Post by rshm » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:07 PM UTC

metacritic12 wrote: post #111

vemv wrote: post #11

If it was, say, a $30000 charge I could give Stripe the benefit of doubt, but $3300 is a pretty ordinary amount for any retailer. Could be e.g. a laptop sale, or three phones? When I see Stripe's apology here it will not be enough for me - not at least without a detailed blog post / postmortem. Until/if that moment happens, I'll regard Stripe as an untrustworthy entity and will recommend doing the same to do anyone I…

What's the OP/your alternative? Oh Paypal? Look up the horror stories there. Or directly work with a legacy provider like FirstData? They will also freeze your account and won't even accept you if you just have just $3k of sales. Isn't it interesting that credit card processors really like to give crappy customer support and enjoy freezing accounts? Is it because they just attract misanthropic people? If only a carin…

> What's the OP/your alternative?

Reach out to local credit unions or even smallish bank. They usually are middleman to firstdata, chase paymentech etc. But you get a dedicated account rep at cost of nominal monthly fee. Rates usually are competitive often lower than what stripe and paypal offers.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#154

Post by vxxzy » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:07 PM UTC

mtlynch wrote: post #147

vxxzy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out PastePay. Great service and a human touch! https://www.pastepay.com

Based on your other comment,[0] it sounds like you work for PastePay, which you should disclose if you're publicly endorsing them. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32263465

Oh no! I am sooo sorry. I don’t “directly” work for PastPay but I do work for their sister company. Thank you for letting me know for the future!

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#155

Post by throwaway2016a » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:08 PM UTC

orangepanda wrote: post #5

> You can only email. If you email, you get robots. Their dev support on discord is S-tier, but every now and then some issue has to be moved to email support; where it dies. It always takes months for something to be resolved, if at all. My only consolation is that every other provider is just as terrible.

I have always been able to get a service rep on live chat within 5 minutes... which is literally a "Live Chat" button on their contact page not even hidden.

Note this is different than the Discord dev chat which is for technical questions.

Once I get live chat it may take a day or two to resolve but if it takes longer I just hop on live chat again and pester them until it's escalated.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#156

Post by Nitramp » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:08 PM UTC

I think an interesting meta take is the question why payment processors employ these draconic fraud protection mechanisms in the first place.

I think it boils down to the prevalence of using simple magnetic stripe credit card payments. While chip-and-PIN or Google/Apple pay are of course also subject to fraud, not having even a first factor (pin/password/fingerprint) makes card copying and theft viable in the first place.

I have no data, but I'd bet that you get substantially less fraud if you only process transactions with a first security factor, and you can probably still improve on that with a second factor (e.g. text message to authorize).

As a consumer, I have to deal with declined transaction frequently (I moved which creates a mess for ZIP based "auth", another cause is using cards outside my home country); I find the whole situation hugely frustrating.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#157

Post by chrisseaton » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:08 PM UTC

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #115

moralestapia wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this, really? Is this meant to defend Stripe? What a weird way of looking at things.

A single instance of holding 3k doesn't seem like (or shouldn't be) a significant amount for a small business.

If you have no issue losing 3k without any reason, can I have 3k from your business as well?

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#158

Post by bennyp101 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:09 PM UTC

vxxzy wrote: post #50

leoff wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I see Stripe's apology here it will not be enough for me I'm actually just starting a business using Stripe for handling payments, and this makes me very concerned. Is there an alternative service one could use? Is there a way not to give these shady companies power to steal all my money?

Check out PastePay. Great service and a human touch! https://www.pastepay.com

Bit of a bug in your page redirects

curl https://www.pastepay.com

https://www.pastepay.com/industry/international-merchants">

curl https://www.pastepay.com/industry/international-merchants

302 Found Found

The document has moved here.

" rel="nofollow">https://www.pastepay.com/">here.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#159

Post by kitd » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:10 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #22

orangepanda wrote: post #5

> You can only email. If you email, you get robots. Their dev support on discord is S-tier, but every now and then some issue has to be moved to email support; where it dies. It always takes months for something to be resolved, if at all. My only consolation is that every other provider is just as terrible.

> My only consolation is that every other provider is just as terrible. My experience with Authorize.net support was really good. Their tech stack/api was absolutely archaic, but you could talk to real humans.

This looks really good. Apart from anything else, they have a fraud detection tool that you can configure to match your own requirements, and can control yourself what happens to payments when filters are triggered:

https://www.authorize.net/en-us/resources/our-features/advan...

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#160

Post by PeterisP » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

leoff wrote: post #20

vemv wrote: post #11

If it was, say, a $30000 charge I could give Stripe the benefit of doubt, but $3300 is a pretty ordinary amount for any retailer. Could be e.g. a laptop sale, or three phones? When I see Stripe's apology here it will not be enough for me - not at least without a detailed blog post / postmortem. Until/if that moment happens, I'll regard Stripe as an untrustworthy entity and will recommend doing the same to do anyone I…

> When I see Stripe's apology here it will not be enough for me I'm actually just starting a business using Stripe for handling payments, and this makes me very concerned. Is there an alternative service one could use? Is there a way not to give these shady companies power to steal all my money?

> Is there an alternative service one could use? Is there a way not to give these shady companies power to steal all my money?

There are many alternative services listed in other comments, but to be clear, every single one of them has the power to do exactly what Stripe did.

There is no way to accept credit card payments without accepting that power to freeze suspicious incoming payments, simply because fundamentally credit card payments are not final and can (and often will) be reversed afterward, and if someone promised to never freeze merchants' funds, every fraudster in the world would come to try out their services, bankrupting them in the process.