Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute

I don't doubt that from your perspective as the founder of Stripe, that's the workflow you'd like to have for when things "go wrong", but from the perspective of someone currently interacting with Stripe support, I strongly doubt that simply raising a support ticket or reaching out on Twitter would result in any meaningful movement on a rejection like this.

Regarding Stripe's support: I emailed last night to confirm how to delete a user's card when it's represented as PaymentMethod, and in reply I received a link[0] to the cards/delete API documentation (which, in case you're not as steeped in PaymentMethod's as I am, won't work because the two objects are fundamentally different).

Given this rather lacklustre handling & having also been on the receiving end of someone trying to fraud the company I'm working for, I highly doubt someone who is asking for reconsideration after receiving a fraud ban would actually receive an escalation via the front-line agents manning support@stripe.com, and if they could, the actual legitimate bans that Stripe no doubt needs to put in place would simply abuse that channel and waste everyone's time.

I appreciate it's a really challenging balance of trying to provide an escalation/appeals process that won't be abused itself, and by comparison Stripe's approach of direct-founder-contact seems easier than Apple, as if your developer account application is rejected[1] you have absolutely zero recourse apart from going H.A.M. on Hacker News & hoping the community helps you out, whereas in this case there is a magic button that starts an invisible and unaccountable appeals process, that ultimately resulted in another rejection.

The only "solution" (if any) I can see to counter the negative experience (& associated PR) would be involvement in the appeals process, where you are allowed to effectively "state your case" via video call or submission of evidence, but this draws a thorny parallel to the judicial system, and I doubt Legal would sign off on such a process.

This is a problem that impacts basically any kind of appeals process, and Stripe's not alone in suffering from it, but that perspective doesn't help the dozens of founders that don't have the connections to sort this issues out in private, and are burning the attention span of Hacker News in the process of unblocking their businesses. Front-line support also isn't the answer, unless specific processes can be put in place to handle rejection escalations and get them into the eyes of the right people.

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[0] https://stripe.com/docs/api/cards/delete

[1] Long story short: to use Apple's Mobile Device Management APIs, you need an Enterprise developer account, which thanks to The Verge & gambling apps skirting the App Store, isn't possible unless you went to Stanford with a future Apple PM. Admittedly, the chances of an Apple executive personally addressing this if I were to email is statistically quite low compared to emailing you.

If someone from Apple is reading this & would like to pre-empt the classic "Apple screwed me" Hacker News post, do feel free to email me on luke@ghostworks.io and I'll happily brief you on The Great Saga of Enrollment 4HZY7VX69S.

yes, except it is generated and maintained by a faceless, nameless holding company in the US.

I'm a businessman trying to hide my wealth, I get one of these cards and top it up with 100k from my CAyman islands bank account, and use it for all my daily spending. That's a very common method of tax evasion.

Strip could now be on the hook for facilitating this, which means they need to trust justuseapp to do proper KYC that complies with global anti money laundering policies, etc. That is a HUGE task, and if they get it wrong, the consequences are serious. So, when stripe says they're worried; they're right to be.

The intented use of this companies service might be altruistic, but it's really easily absued for nefarious purposes.

> Stripe can easily lose very large amounts of money on individual accounts, and thousands of people try to do so every day.

Not sure what case you refer to, but in our case someone was able to place multiple clearly (in my own hindsight) fraudulent orders on our woocommerce store. And it wasn't Stripe who lost on these chargebacks - it was us. The only way for Stripe to lose money in such scenario if seller (us) would be an active part of the fraudulent transaction. I.e. work together with someone placing fraudulent orders and immediately funnel money away and throw away stripe account. That is clearly not an option for an established business...

And no, it wasn't a niche attracting fraudsters - we sell pyrography tools, not electronics or some other similarly attractive products for fraudsters.

Because the algorithm only flags like less than 1% of users?