Stripe issues
I was advised to remove this post
I assume a combination of low margins, high risk (fraud of many types), and regulatory risk, and the nature of 'winner takes all' tech services lead to low willingness/ability to deal with small clients, of which some are trying to abuse your service.
Can you tell us more about the nature of your service? Normally these posts are trying to resolve their issues, but the fact you don't mention the service makes me wonder if you were in an area with a lot of fraud like crypto.
You need to talk to a lawyer. It's very possible that Stripe's customer service is deliberately awful because it's easier for them to communicate with attorneys than end users. Posting on HN might actually undermine your ability to resolve the issue pr preserve your legal interests.
I have a question every time these stories come up. What exactly is your business model and what are you selling? Doesn't surprise me that these business owners either neglect to mention this in their story or if they do are intentionally vague. I'll wait.
Imagine if they didn’t have to fight fraudulent or illegal activity…
As a result, it’s easy to see how a culture of suspicion, self-protection, and user-hostility could develop even if no one at the organization wanted it that way.
Are there any other developers out there that can weigh in on Stripe alternatives?
We can board accounts in a day and provide both ACH and credit card processing on our integrated solution
Places like Stripe have a seamless sign up process and easy integration, so a lot of people like the convenience and the low "touch".
But, as someone who runs with traditional merchant accounts and such, the more "touch" and eyeballs from my merchant account provider on what I am doing makes me feel a lot more confident. Things get mentioned and suggestions get made BEFORE the money comes into the account so everything is kosher...not after the money is made.
Sometimes a little PITA upfront is worth it in the long run...
They used to be the good guys, the ones who you could call and talk to. I wonder if every company is just doomed to end up like this :/
The only other business I know which is similarly "no, you are banished for life" are brokers (I work in the hedge fund industry). Someone at the brokerage has a personal issue with you or your company and thinks you have a liquidity issue, and suddenly you find your account shut.
Well, "do things that don't scale", etc is the mantra around here.
Customer service with high human touch is something that really doesn't scale. I really cannot think of any large company in any industry that has got this figured out...
But at this point, since Stripe has completely screwed you, I'm not sure what anyone here can say other than to get a lawyer. Stripe has already inflicted very real monetary damages to you, and possibly reputational damage. I'm sure once you send a lawyer at them, you'll get a response quick. I would also contact your Attorney General in your state, and file an official complaint. AG may look into it eventually if complaints pile up against Stripe.
Isn't the whole point of Stripe that you don't need to do this? How can I know if a card is valid?
> Chargeback Protection
> Defend your business from the unpredictability of disputes. With Chargeback Protection, Stripe will cover both the disputed amount and any dispute fees—no evidence submission required. Chargeback Protection costs just 0.4% per transaction.
Clustering by request IP is a first order scoring for fraud detection.
Say then instead a bad actor is using a bot-net to run a purchase script to validate cc’s. Unusual purchase activity is also first order for fraud detection.
Happened to me when launching a new site. Quickly refunded all payments, but still had to pay the fees.
Good luck avoiding that one. Doing business, these days, means eating "platform risk." Whether it's your facebook page, payment processing, AWS, app store or whatnot... it's very hard to have resilience.
Frustratingly, the risk is almost random. Whether it's a YouTube channel or a payment processor, they won't necessarily tell you why even retroactively, certainly not proactively.
Googling leads to this apparent snapshot of subtext "This is just a general rant, but I wish it could be more than that. A little over a week ago, my startup saw our first and sudden uptick in user activity. After a few hard months of work building our platform, we were relieved to see customer feedback and turn our first profit. It was through a marketing campaign that…"
Internet archive has a snapshot of it
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/storecycle
And https://storecycle.io/ (which may be down due to the story above)
Although the Linkedin description doesn't quite align?
"Have an e-commerce brand built primarily on Shopify? Get a free, no-obligation cash offer for your business soon as 24 hours. "
Maybe they pivoted?
surprised_pikachu.jpg
I think the change in comment tells you all you need to know...
Does this justify refunding money for services rendered and goods provided? Refusing to process further transactions when someone is found in violation of terms/policies is obvious, but straight up returning money? On top of that, does Stripe not know who they do business with? I would assume you get asked what you're selling and have a chat with someone who determines whether you're legit or not.
In a company I worked for, there was serious KYC from our payment provider before we were allowed to process customer funds.
Underwriting is what happens when a business works in part by putting up some of its own money to smooth things over for its customers. Payments is an underwriting business. For an example of what happens when you do an underwriting business that would never cause anyone on HN to complain, see: FTX.
But, really: who knows? They haven't told us what the business is.
Isn't this the world we live in? A bank will ask you these questions when you open an account with them, why can't Stripe? Because growth?
Edit: Also, much harder? Filling out a questionnaire a human looks at, then takes a cursory glance of where you're registered, what you're registered for and what your website looks like? That doesn't sound like much work for the upsides.
This smells like the classic "There's nothing we could do, dude!", when a company can't be bothered to do due diligence, then dumps all the externalities of that on someone else. Stripe could do this, they just don't, as it makes more money, ruining (possibly legitimate/legal) businesses in the process.
There's a good comment upthread about alternatives to Stripe, of which there are many. The good ones distinguish themselves by being the kinds of places where businesses like StoreCycle can't get an account in the first place.
In summary: the words "possibly legitimate" in your comment are doing most of the work of this entire thread.
Sad that stripe can cancel your business over it, but I also don't blame them.
Reversing all of your charges is pretty extreme, I suspect there is some detail being omitted.
A polite - and brief - letter to the CEO can work wonders. I had a problem with my Goldman Sachs once where they locked my account, their security people blew me off for three weeks, I sent an email to David Solomon and an hour later the issue was resolved. David Solomon probably never saw my email but it got routed to someone who could help.
If you e-mail the CEO of US Bank it gets routed to a review committee, they investigate and respond in ten days.
Again the key is to be polite and brief. If your in full Karen mode or sending three pages of text then you will get passed over. Include enough information so the issue can be routed to the right person, please help, thank you.
This is just a general rant, but I wish it could be more than that.
A little over a week ago, my startup saw our first and sudden uptick in user activity. After a few hard months of work building our platform, we were relieved to see customer feedback and turn our first profit. It was through a marketing campaign that had finally reached its target market after endless tuning and optimization. Prior to this point, we're majorly negative net on product R&D. It was a major win.
All payments were processed on our website through Stripe. I know. Major mistake to rely on one business to keep ours afloat. But our product neither violated Stripe policy nor did our account have any prior issues, so I just kept my fingers crossed and hoped for the best. Which all in all is not a great customer experience.
We fulfilled nearly all of our freshly incoming orders within 3 days of the transactions.
One day before our biggest payout hits, I'm awoken at 2:15 in the morning to an email from Stripe that sends me into sheer panic. Due to our company making 'unauthorized' charges on our user's cards, our account is both closed and Stripe is forcing a charge reversal for all transactions on our account.
We do not do this. Customers finalize checkout on a Stripe payment page, where they are shown amount, enter card details, and click a big fat button that says "Pay now". I cannot envision any alternate universe where this kind of act is unauthorized.
Anyways, I'm laying in bed at 2AM utterly crushed by the email, sure, but I then made the grave mistake of looking at my Stripe dashboard. We're in the red. We have a negative Stripe balance just one day before the biggest payout our startup has ever seen. Not only do we owe Stripe money, we're on the hook for COGS for every single transaction on our account.
Support wise, we're at a dead end. There is no phone number. If you email the company, you'll reach only robots pretending to be humans. Stripe has not replied to an email in 4 days. I get the exact same line from each contact attempt. "This decision is final and in order to protect our processes, we are unable to provide further details regarding the reason for your account's closure."
We're utterly fucked. I'm behind on bills solely from Stripe's negligence in account review. I never expect to hear from them again despite my consistent attempts, and I highly doubt a human being at Stripe has ever as much as looked at my account or read my emails in their entirety.
One question I have for the community: why is payment processing the most uptight industry on this planet? I cannot imagine one other business model that would require a company to treat their customers with such disrespect. There is zero compassion. There is zero regard for humanity. Why? All we're doing here is processing an online payment.
Given the number of these types of situations I see popping up on HN, I would consider doing something like this if it was my business. But I don't know how hard it would be, or other downsides. Maybe it wouldn't work. Thoughts?
Commerce law is no joke.
Payments that stay paid, under all circumstances, with nobody intermediating.
It isn't going to be your payment provider that does so.
Here in small country in EU, Czechia, we have several payment processing companies, which process debit cards payments online.(nobody use credit cards here, spending money you don't have, no thank you, rofl)
These are companies based in our country, you can call them, you have a written contract with them, so if something go sideways on their part, you have options to bring them to court or something.
And there're several of these companies, like 3 or more. All with proper audits and everything.
Nobody use paypal or stripe or some similar BS here, also we can send money directly from personal bank account to company bank-account, with no fee, so this is just another option. Or even all banks integrate with eshop in a way, you can make a direct payment through bank API with callback, so order is instantly payed. Also no fee, of course.
I can't comprehend, why is American online market so backwards.
I would argue your country is the backwards one...