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

Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

stripe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 51 posts

Re: Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

#31

Post by ansible »

twistedpair wrote: post #18
kpapke wrote: post #5

Maybe by absurd it means the number of prohibited businesses? Otherwise it just looks Stripe does not to be involved with shady/spammy businesses.

I'm not sure these are that spammy: * personal computer technical support * travel agencies * hair-extensions What all of them is the ability to be a scam, but any business can scam you. Surprised fortune tellers aren't on there.

* personal computer technical support *

Is this possibly related to the fake Anti-Virus warning popups and the companies that make them?

Re: Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

#32

Post by alan-crowe »

twistedpair wrote: post #18
kpapke wrote: post #5

Maybe by absurd it means the number of prohibited businesses? Otherwise it just looks Stripe does not to be involved with shady/spammy businesses.

I'm not sure these are that spammy: * personal computer technical support * travel agencies * hair-extensions What all of them is the ability to be a scam, but any business can scam you. Surprised fortune tellers aren't on there.

I thought that those bogus phone calls about "We have detected that your computer has a virus ..." end up directing you to a website to pay to down load some kind of anti-virus software. In which case the "personal computer technical support" business does have a big problem with its spammy end.

Re: Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

#33

Post by andrewcross »

EScott11 wrote: post #3

Does someone more versed in the space care to comment? The title seems like link bait, and I'd bet there are some not so absurd reasons for a lot of these.

I don't know about a lot of these, but I run a travel startup so I can comment about the travel agencies restriction.

Travel in general is seen as a high risk industry. Try going to a bank for a merchant account, tell them you run a travel company and watch their reaction. They don't really want you as a customer anymore. The risk profile is too high.

There's a couple main reasons for this.

One, there's a higher than normal chargeback rate in travel. Think about this, you get to your destination and find out that the online pictures of your hotel are nothing like reality. You feel like you've been scammed, but the owner refuses to give you a refund. You aren't left with a lot of options. But if you booked with your credit card, you can request a chargeback and go stay some place nicer.

This same idea can be applied to inclement weather, an inferior tour, etc. Your expectations are different than reality, you can't get a refund, so you request a chargeback.

Two, the average transaction size is travel is quite large. If I'm upset with my dinner at a restaurant, I might be out $20. If I'm upset with my hotel on a vacation, I might be out $500-$1,000. That's a big difference. I might be able to live with losing $20, but definitely not $500+. So I go through the hassle of a chargeback since the dollar amount makes it worth it.

Between the two of these reasons, you end up with a high risk industry.

I'd imagine all the other industries that are prohibited have similar risk profiles.

Re: Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

#34

Post by t0 »

pc wrote: post #25

I'm one of Stripe's cofounders. There are a few reasons businesses end up on our prohibited list: they're full of fraud (get rich quick schemes), legally regulated (guns, drugs), or regulated by card companies (pornography). In many ways, I'd prefer a world where Stripe's prohibited business list was no more specific than that of a web hosting service, and didn't prohibit anything beyond what's required by law. Howev…

Do you enjoy being at the mercy of the credit card companies? How hard would it be to remove them from the equation?

Re: Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

#35

Post by richardkmichael »

j_baker wrote: post #13

The only one on here that strikes me as odd is the prohibition on selling fake hair or hair extensions. I'm curious why that is? I suppose I could see prohibitions on selling human hair, but fake hair seems odd.

Arg.. there goes my new startup idea. Foiled again.

Edit: Scrolling down reveals the answer, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6188918

Re: Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

#36

Post by applecore »

t0 wrote: post #34
pc wrote: post #25

I'm one of Stripe's cofounders. There are a few reasons businesses end up on our prohibited list: they're full of fraud (get rich quick schemes), legally regulated (guns, drugs), or regulated by card companies (pornography). In many ways, I'd prefer a world where Stripe's prohibited business list was no more specific than that of a web hosting service, and didn't prohibit anything beyond what's required by law. Howev…

Do you enjoy being at the mercy of the credit card companies? How hard would it be to remove them from the equation?

They're a company that makes it easy to accept credit cards on the web. How can you remove credit card companies from the equation?

Re: Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

#37

Post by Sanddancer »

andrewflnr wrote: post #17

Funny, maybe, but not absurd, at least not in a way that's Stripe's fault. I'm curious about the hair one. I wouldn't expect selling hair to be a real problem. Is there a story that motivated that restriction? I notice it's also in the list of Braintree's restrictions that toomuchtodo posted.

The hair extension biz is chock full of fraudsters. Lots of people passing off synthetic as real hair, etc.

Re: Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

#38

Post by pc »

michaelt wrote: post #30
pc wrote: post #25

I'm one of Stripe's cofounders. There are a few reasons businesses end up on our prohibited list: they're full of fraud (get rich quick schemes), legally regulated (guns, drugs), or regulated by card companies (pornography). In many ways, I'd prefer a world where Stripe's prohibited business list was no more specific than that of a web hosting service, and didn't prohibit anything beyond what's required by law. Howev…

There are a few reasons businesses end up on our prohibited list: they're full of fraud (get rich quick schemes), legally regulated (guns, drugs), or regulated by card companies (pornography). I'm curious about which category "(51) personal computer technical support" and "(54) human hair, fake hair or hair-extensions" fall into?

Both are, weirdly enough, replete with fraud. I've no idea why -- human hair seems especially baffling. (Though I've heard suggestions that it relates to human trafficking.)

We can waive these when it seems reasonable (and we're not otherwise precluded from working with the business). If we ever do come across a legitimate business selling human hair, we might try to figure out a way to make it work.

Re: Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

#39

Post by guan »

notatoad wrote: post #28
twistedpair wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure these are that spammy: * personal computer technical support * travel agencies * hair-extensions What all of them is the ability to be a scam, but any business can scam you. Surprised fortune tellers aren't on there.

Personal tech support would be a high-chargeback environment with very little way to defend against fraud allegations. Travel agencies sell a product that is to be delivered in a foreign country, which is a scammer's favourite promise. And hair extensions... I guess that must be a high scam market, but I don't know why. Being at the end of the list, I assume it was added after experiencing a lot of issues with that t…

Travel agencies also sell a product that’s often delivered much later, when the agency or a supplier (hotel, airline, etc.) may no longer exist. This increases the risk of chargebacks.

Re: Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

#40

Post by pc »

t0 wrote: post #34
pc wrote: post #25

I'm one of Stripe's cofounders. There are a few reasons businesses end up on our prohibited list: they're full of fraud (get rich quick schemes), legally regulated (guns, drugs), or regulated by card companies (pornography). In many ways, I'd prefer a world where Stripe's prohibited business list was no more specific than that of a web hosting service, and didn't prohibit anything beyond what's required by law. Howev…

Do you enjoy being at the mercy of the credit card companies? How hard would it be to remove them from the equation?

It's a bit like asking how you feel about being at the mercy of Linux, or web browsers, or SSL. We work with the technology that exists.

That's a little bit facetious, but though there are lots of aspects of the card networks that I dislike (and suspect will change), they work pretty damn well for most transactions. We could devote ourselves to usurping them, but it feels more interesting to see how rapidly we can advance the state of the art instead.

Post reply on HN