Stripe's customer service is pretty much nill, borderline negligence. One possible explanation could be a bad actor using your site as a testing ground for stolen cards. If enough has happened, then Stripe will just cut you off from everything. Do you have safeguards on your site to validate those cards?
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.
Stripe doesn't know you or what kind of customers you will bring. So you're still on the hook to monitor fraud among your customer base, and they give you a few options to do that, like the zip code check. If your fraud/dispute/chargeback rates are low, you remove those checks to have less friction at the checkout.
> 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.
Stripe has to be far more sophisticated than that.
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.
Like most technology nightmare stories on HN, there's so much subjectivity in this and so few specifics. It's not possible to respond rationally because you are telling an emotional story about a legal issue and there just isn't enough context. This is the equivalent of me grumbling that my wifi router is lying to me when it won't recognize a device on my network.
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.
Gotcha. What can you tell us about your business? For every story where someone has had a real problem with Stripe, there's another where, had you posted "can I reasonably build this business on Stripe" on HN, the whole thread would be people telling you "of course not". You say you ran a major marketing campaign, but I can't find evidence of any startup other than StoreCycle associated with you, so you'll need to cue us a bit here.
> had you posted "can I reasonably build this business on Stripe" on HN, the whole thread would be people telling you "of course not"
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.
Yes, it does. There are kinds of businesses that can be run in good faith, but not on Stripe, because it's impossible to distinguish in those kinds of businesses the good actors from the bad ones. Positively, not normatively, the fact is: that is the retailer's problem, not Stripe's.
How so? Why does Stripe process payments when you're small, then fuck you over when you get more traffic? Why can't they detect this upfront, assuming there's no misrepresentation on the retailers part?
Presumably because underwriting happens in stages; further, the universe you're stating a preference for is one in which it's much more difficult to get a payment processor at all, because the fact of some businesses being "shadier" than others doesn't change.
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.
> the universe you're stating a preference for is one in which it's much more difficult to get a payment processor at all
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.
A bank isn't going to do anything with your business that you just set up that wants to accept credit cards over the Internet for things. I'm not sure what we're even talking about at this point.
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.
I keep seeing more and more of these stories about Stripe and I can't stay quiet anymore. I know this doesn't help you now, but other payment processors are just as easy to integrate, the support is better and the fees can be much lower that Stripe. Plus you get a dedicated account manager and telephone support! I use Chase for my online payment processing - and never had a problem!
Are there any other developers out there that can weigh in on Stripe alternatives?
Is there anything viable in that list for a SaaS startup? I can’t imagine any of those having the features or ease of use of Stripe, but I’d love to be proven wrong.
Based on my experience, the harder and more in depth the approval process the merchant account has, the less likely these types of problems are to occur.
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...
What's funny is that 8 or so years ago, stripe was the knight in shining armour that came to free.us from the clutches of PayPal and company.
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.
"They used to be the good guys, the ones who you could call and talk to."
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...
On the broader note (why not use Stripe alternatives), it feels similar to taking backups - many people know it's a good idea, but yet many people don't do it till they lose data. (I unfortunately also don't backup, though I do not have a lot of important material digitally to lose.)
I've been lurking thru their Reddit and Discords for a while to identify complaining businesses. Most are dropshippers, unauthorized resellers of brand names like Nike ($100,000 fine somewhere) and malware markets. All restricted businesses.
Not a developer, but we work with many saas software applications and ISV partners. We have a payment gateway with ACH and credit card processing capabilities. We do full underwriting with super stream lined boarding process in about 24 hours.360fivepayments.com
> One question I have for the community: why is payment processing the most uptight industry on this planet?
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.
+1 for wanting more details. You spend enough time on the internet, you notice that everyone has a sad story when they get banned or booted from a service. Sometimes the mods mess up, but often there’s more to the story.
It's not their negligence, you didn't read the fine print. Stripe is in the business of accepting as many 'merchants' as possible without doing the 'due diligence' to underwrite the risk on their transactions... Stripe waits until you've started to process transactions before they begin underwriting.. You're seeing the effects of that.
What were your anti-fraud measures, and were their any reports of it from users or stripe? It's extremely common in this universe for people to enter card details that they are not authorized to use into web forms.
>>Major mistake to rely on one business to keep ours afloat.
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.
> 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.
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.
I mean…the answer is that their business model is risk management with a small side of payment processing.
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.
Exactly my thought as well. Strongly considered to flag this. These vague complaints should stop. Either take your whining somewhere else (reddit?) or be very specific on ALL aspects.
Does anybody round-robin among payment processors?
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?
If someone writes this much about an issue where they don't describe the product they are selling it is generally enough to know why they were cut-off.
I don't get it, why are Americans so brain-dead with paying with their credit card online directly?
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.
In America, there are laws greatly limiting your financial liability if your credit card is stolen. Maximum one can lose is capped at a pretty low limit. In contrast, debit cards - if that money is gone, it is gone. Essentially no recourse. Given that legal framework, there is no way I would ever advise someone to use a debit card.
Does anyone remember vaguely what the post was about? (Edit - in case it changes again the body of the post is now just "I was advised to remove this post") It looks like tis been removed and there's a comment thread below where OP seems to be potentially denying and then admitting a link to a business that some other commenter are suggesting might be shady- very confusing to see a highly updated post on the front page that seems to have been nuked in this significant a way
The title when I clicked on it was "Stripe crushed my startup at the first whiff of success".
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…"
Original post: Stripe crushed my startup at the first whiff of success
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.
Like anything else you need to diversify your risk. Have multiple payment processors running so that an outage at one, regardless of reason, doesn’t take you down entirely. These days there is really no barrier to doing this.
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.
86 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] threadBut 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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Sad that stripe can cancel your business over it, but I also don't blame them.
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.
Payments that stay paid, under all circumstances, with nobody intermediating.
It isn't going to be your payment provider that does so.
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.
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34384317
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...
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
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.
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.