I agree for some of them atleast.. although some of them probably dont necessarily need an explicit explanation because they are kind of self-explanatory. For example, their prohibiting of processing for SEO related things (likely because much of this is spam) could use an explanation, but the cases for things that are inherently illegal or could get stripe sued might not
"Search engine optimization" is prohibited in Mexico.
A close cousin "Marketing lead generation services" is prohibited in Hong Kong and Singapore as well as blanket prohibited as a "no value added service" where you sell or resell something with no value add.
Definitely a lot of this is scammy but not all of it
Like if you create a website and a fake business for the sole purpose of getting leads for "landscapers in Austin" then yeah I'd be fine banning that
But if you have a site with high quality information about landscaping and you have a widget on a page that answers somebody's question about landscaping that lets people find a landscaper near them then that's fine with me
Ah I think my sleep deprived brain read 'Sales of online traffic or engagement' as something related to SEO and it isn't inherently associated. My bad :)
At the end of the day; because government regulators say so. The banking industry is famously immoral and if pushed would compromise almost any value in exchange for making a buck; particularly if allowed to operate as a free market.
So everything on this list is either reliably unprofitable for them, or banned somewhere by a government regulator. Otherwise there'd be a Stripe-plus company who was taking over the market by being Stripe but more permissive.
Really? I thought only investment banking was famously immoral? It always seemed like traditional banking and card networks were not so much moral or immoral, but more conservative with risk. Though their definition of risk also seemed to be rooted in historical religious values of what is normal and abnormal (the latter being perceived as more risky).
Recently my spouse and I both obtained new passports for partly this exact reason. As two married men, we don’t think it’s as laughable an idea as it used to be to be prepared to leave the US.
The prohibited activities that Stripe lists seem reasonable, but none of the companies like Google (YouTube), Twitter and others follow them, such as promoting discrimination. I suppose Block also declared similar things. Therefore, there is no guarantee that Stripe will follow the prohibited activities.
I suspect there's an interesting story why the online sale of "Industrial waste disposal and garbage disposal devices" is forbidden specifically in Japan.
> I suspect there's an interesting story why the online sale of "Industrial waste disposal and garbage disposal devices" is forbidden specifically in Japan.
Japan is known for its strict environmental regulations and policies.
Ask any Japanese national about their garbage/recycling procedures and you’ll understand.
I assume the online sale of industrial waste disposal and garbage disposal devices is prohibited in Japan because the government want to closely monitor the disposal of industrial waste and garbage to ensure that it is being handled properly and safely. By restricting the sale of these devices to only authorized dealers or distributors, the government can have more control over who has access to these devices and can ensure that they are being used correctly.
In my profession, we keep an eye on "study document" sites where cheating students pay to plagiarize prewritten solutions for homework. This homework is often low-quality; it may score a "C" or lower when plagiarism is not caught.
These are sites such as CourseHero, StuDocu, and StudyPool. Are these under the umbrella of "essay mills"? AIUI, essay mills are a different business (about to become obsolete by ChatGPT's intervention) where you pay a professional to write you an essay or thesis, including research and citations.
Might want to update that: “Use of Stripe principally as a virtual terminal (e.g., submitting card transactions by manually inputting card information)”
What's being prohibited there is using Stripe as a virtual substitute for a credit card terminal, e.g. a merchant processing credit cards in person or over the phone by typing them into a web page with a Stripe form.
It’s certainly because of scam call centres. The ones that call people and say that they are calling from Microsoft and that they are going to help you with a problem on your computer, and they convince you to install remote management software but then proceed to install malware or steal money from you.
Understandably Stripe does not want anything to do with such “businesses”.
Notice that it is listed under “Products and services that are unfair, predatory, or deceptive”.
Perhaps as long as you run a legitimate remote support business, and not a scam operation, Stripe will allow it?
It probably depends on how much money Stripe can make from you for dealing with the risk. For HN readers, you probably get instantly banned for life if any user uploads porn. For Twitter, they can probably take the right person out for dinner and make the issue go away.
Don't think it's solely about the money. Reputation, history, everything else is in the mix. Of course Twitter would have an excellent argument that porn is only a tiny subset of its content and it has much larger, legitimate uses.
As a founder, you don't have that reputation and track record to point to, so you'll need to be more careful, especially in the early days.
But I doubt it's about the pure dollars and cents. There's plenty of money in porn, even now. It's about having a plausible story to tell the card companies and PR. Twitter and Reddit are safe, and it's about that story, not steak dinners.
Is it that hard for a company like Twitter to setup their own payment gateway or even a personal "Bank"? I know it's just kicking the can down the road, because ultimately Visa and MasterCard will block them for hosting porn.
It's very likely because Visa and MasterCard forced them to. Porn is an industry with high chargeback rate and thus problematic for credit card companies. Instead of fixing their system to verify transactions (like forcing 3d secure like system on all cards instead of dragging their feet until EU regulators forced them to) or at least give merchants any kind of way to do it themselves (today they tell you to call/email the scammer if you're not sure using the phone/email they provided - no access to message the real card owner) they just prefer to ban the whole industry.
There's no clearly defined line. This is by intent. The idea is to send a message - you can be a bit risque, but don't cause us problems or we'll suddenly decide whatever your percentage is is too much.
So many rules, especially in compliance, are like this. They all boil down to "we'll look the other way for minor violations but as soon as you piss us off, you have our full attention and not in a good way". Keeps everyone on their toes and is probably better than trying to define some kind of exact threshold (which everyone would then brazenly ride exactly on the edge of).
Wanting a well-defined open deterministic rule is in large part an engineering instinct. The reality is that a degree of “it depends” makes a whole lot of sense. The entire legal system is built on the word “reasonable”.
I don't know them, of course, but take a moment to reflect that every single exec at Stripe probably agrees with you. There is always a mahout [1]
[1] “Because the elephant has a master, a mahout. And his master is an unforgiving son of a bitch with a nasty barbed-iron stick and an elephant gun. He is otherwise known as an institutional investor. All start-up entrepreneurs should say their prayers for institutional investors, those fabulous beasts, every night. “Dear Lord, thank you, thank you for institutional investors in big companies.”
Literature of such extremes as Stephen King books... This is such an arbitrary line to draw, because detailed sex can happen in both mainstream novels and in erotica, and people can be surprised by just how detailed the novels are. And the mainstream may breach quite a lot of rules that erotica publishers might keep (such as age restrictions).
Yet, I doubt Stripe has a problem selling 'It' [0], despite it having a sex train run on an underage girl with excessive description.
> Any other products or services that directly infringe or facilitate infringement upon the trademark, patent, copyright, trade secrets, proprietary or privacy rights of any third party
Going after those seedbox providers. :)
Can also use this same rule to shut down processing of any type of site that provides hosting of user content.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 98.6 ms ] threadA close cousin "Marketing lead generation services" is prohibited in Hong Kong and Singapore as well as blanket prohibited as a "no value added service" where you sell or resell something with no value add.
Like if you create a website and a fake business for the sole purpose of getting leads for "landscapers in Austin" then yeah I'd be fine banning that
But if you have a site with high quality information about landscaping and you have a widget on a page that answers somebody's question about landscaping that lets people find a landscaper near them then that's fine with me
https://stripe.com/blog/why-some-businesses-arent-allowed
So everything on this list is either reliably unprofitable for them, or banned somewhere by a government regulator. Otherwise there'd be a Stripe-plus company who was taking over the market by being Stripe but more permissive.
There are many places where they are not safe. The US isn’t some capitalist utopia. We are barely hanging on as a society.
A significant portion of the world have thought it's crazy to live in the US and have viewed it as a reality show for many decades.
Some could argue OpenAI could be an "essay mill", but they're fine to use Stripe!
Japan is known for its strict environmental regulations and policies.
Ask any Japanese national about their garbage/recycling procedures and you’ll understand.
I assume the online sale of industrial waste disposal and garbage disposal devices is prohibited in Japan because the government want to closely monitor the disposal of industrial waste and garbage to ensure that it is being handled properly and safely. By restricting the sale of these devices to only authorized dealers or distributors, the government can have more control over who has access to these devices and can ensure that they are being used correctly.
These are sites such as CourseHero, StuDocu, and StudyPool. Are these under the umbrella of "essay mills"? AIUI, essay mills are a different business (about to become obsolete by ChatGPT's intervention) where you pay a professional to write you an essay or thesis, including research and citations.
I don't think so. Writing a full length essay still need lots of guardiace and proof reading.
People will pay someone to use ChatGPT for them.
What's being prohibited there is using Stripe as a virtual substitute for a credit card terminal, e.g. a merchant processing credit cards in person or over the phone by typing them into a web page with a Stripe form.
Are MSP’s now non-compliant, I wonder…
Understandably Stripe does not want anything to do with such “businesses”.
Notice that it is listed under “Products and services that are unfair, predatory, or deceptive”.
Perhaps as long as you run a legitimate remote support business, and not a scam operation, Stripe will allow it?
Maybe if you can show them a contract with Microsoft for remote tech support. If you're more independent, good luck.
Would you get kicked off Stripe if your users use your platform to post porn? Or, if you're a generative AI product, to generate it?
Do you have to ban porn outright, or can you be porn-inclusive but not predominantly porn? What if that area of your product / site is cordoned off?
Twitter uses Stripe and is filled with porn. Reddit and Patreon are filled with it too and they take credit card payments.
If only 10% of your users use your service for making/sharing/viewing/whatever porn, does that mean you're okay? What about 49% or 51%?
As a founder, you don't have that reputation and track record to point to, so you'll need to be more careful, especially in the early days.
But I doubt it's about the pure dollars and cents. There's plenty of money in porn, even now. It's about having a plausible story to tell the card companies and PR. Twitter and Reddit are safe, and it's about that story, not steak dinners.
So many rules, especially in compliance, are like this. They all boil down to "we'll look the other way for minor violations but as soon as you piss us off, you have our full attention and not in a good way". Keeps everyone on their toes and is probably better than trying to define some kind of exact threshold (which everyone would then brazenly ride exactly on the edge of).
Note I'm not agreeing with it in the slightest.
god forbid
[1] “Because the elephant has a master, a mahout. And his master is an unforgiving son of a bitch with a nasty barbed-iron stick and an elephant gun. He is otherwise known as an institutional investor. All start-up entrepreneurs should say their prayers for institutional investors, those fabulous beasts, every night. “Dear Lord, thank you, thank you for institutional investors in big companies.”
Yet, I doubt Stripe has a problem selling 'It' [0], despite it having a sex train run on an underage girl with excessive description.
[0] It, 1986, novel.
This is a subtle way of saying they can ban any SaaS business.
Going after those seedbox providers. :) Can also use this same rule to shut down processing of any type of site that provides hosting of user content.