Ask HN: Is Stripe the new PayPal, cancelling user accounts without explanation?

98 points by oropolo 2 years ago | 45 comments

I have a side-hustle doing podcast production and hosting. Rather than charging a fixed fee I operate on the "value for value" model: if you got some value from the work I'm doing then please visit my website and return some value by sending in a donation, either a check in the mail or online using Stripe. This has worked very well for the past few years and I've been able to cover all of my expenses, upgrade my gear, and make people happy.

Now I've now been told by Stripe that my business is in violation of their rule; for more than two days I've been trying to get someone -- ANYONE -- at Stripe to tell me how I'm in violation and what I can do to remedy the situation but the only reply I've gotten is "Unfortunately, following an additional review of your account, we’re still unable to support your business as it falls under one of our restricted businesses categories" but no details are given beyond that. The only thing that seems to make sense as prohibited is "Transactions that provide compensation to creators without an underlying piece of digital content associated. Examples include subscriptions to free, public content or a tip button on a profile page." Okay, if that's the problem then I'll take down the donation button and sell actual swag (t-shirts, mugs, whatever) but give me a chance to comply instead of just saying you don't want to do business with me without ever giving me an unambiguous reason!

UPDATE: I finally got a reply from someone at Stripe who pointed me at this page -- https://stripe.com/legal/restricted-businesses -- but now I have to start this question cycle again because nothing on this page applies to what I am doing.

VoodooJuJu 2 years ago |

It's unlikely you were cancelled arbitrarily and it's almost certainly the case that you're engaged in a high-risk or restricted activity.

>https://stripe.com/legal/restricted-businesses ... nothing on this page applies to what I am doing.

I doubt it. Post the URL to your business website so we can see why it was cancelled by Stripe.

EDIT: I see you posted the link below, and as eli pointed out, it's probably due to soliciting donations. Per Stripe's restricted businesses link:

Crowdfunding, fundraising, and other donation-soliciting activities

spondylosaurus 2 years ago | |

For a dedicated tip jar service, something like Ko-Fi could be a good alternative!

nulbyte 2 years ago | |

> Crowdfunding, fundraising, and other donation-soliciting activities

Can anyone clarify what this actually means? Stripe offers a discount to nonprofits specifically for taking donations:

https://support.stripe.com/questions/fee-discount-for-nonpro...

How is that not "donation-soliciting activities?"

soist 2 years ago |

Rarely will you be in compliance after they flag your account. There are various agencies that oversee them so they'd rather get rid of any kind of liability like your business before the auditing agencies catch on and fine them.

Every other payment processor will do the same thing. If some kind of internal audit catches your business then they will proactively get rid of you to reduce their liability with external auditors.

legitster 2 years ago |

https://stripe.com/legal/restricted-businesses

https://support.stripe.com/questions/requirements-for-accept....

> Content creation - Transactions that provide compensation to creators without an underlying piece of digital content associated. Examples include subscriptions to free, public content or a tip button on a profile page

It seems like an arbitrary restriction, but Stripe also works a lot more closely with banks and payment processors so they tend to inherit a lot of banking sector restrictions.

oropolo 2 years ago | |

So if I sell digital certificates -- a PDF that says someone donated to my little media side-hustle -- it would be all good? See that's the problem: nobody will tell me what I can do to come into compliance. And as for the banks: I have been paying my taxes for years and the bank connected to this account has zero issues with what I do and are happy to deposit checks made out to my DBA (and then charge me a fee for having a business checking account).

Teknomancer 2 years ago | | |

My recommendation to you would be to use a different platform that is designed for this exact purpose. Buy me a coffee comes to mind right off the top of my head but I know that there are sure to be others. Stripe is good for straight up e-commerce but it does not work well for your use case. I think the characterization of likening stripe to PayPal is way off base. When it comes down to using a platform like stripe for monetization of services and goods it really is important to rtfm. Good luck to you out there!

ok_dad 2 years ago | | |

Make a few podcasts a month that are “members only“. You can make the links unlisted publicly, then just don’t get annoyed when they are shared for everyone by some nice member :)

Anyone who gives you money gets a membership, it’ll be minimum of $1, but it’ll be a “pick your own price” deal.

Honestly though, you could just use a better processor that isn’t such a behemoth that they hate their customers.

mtmail 2 years ago | | |

If the PDF only confirmation of payment it might be too similar to a receipt. I'd instead send the user a digital assets "In exchange for the $X I'm sending you a hand-drawn limited edition picture of my cat".

That said I know several companies that for years have used Paypal's donate button to run their whole company. It's seems arbitrary.

carlosjobim 2 years ago | | |

That would probably not work. There are humans working at Stripe who has a job of catching people who try to circumvent their rules.

From what I understand, they allow you to use Stripe for donations for charitable groups or projects.

legitster 2 years ago | | |

Sure, they pay $2 for a "digital sticker" or something.

> bank connected to this account has zero issues with what I do

Stripe is an intermediary and I would guess this has to do with anti-laundering rules. Your bank doesn't need to engage in this because they have access to everything you do with your money and has more ways to catch/stop you.

e63f67dd-065b 2 years ago | | |

It’s not your bank, it’s payment networks and stripe’s partner banks. Visa and MC are notorious for being the de-facto arbiter of allowed businesses, they have extensive yet vague guidelines on what is allowed due to porn stuff a long time ago and their partners try their best to read the tea leaves to see if what they do is fine.

fortran77 2 years ago | | |

Have a little eBook that you sell in exchange. Or find another vendor that supports the "tip" model explictly

FounderBurr 2 years ago |

I’m sure we could spot what the high risk behavior in question is with your business if you provide us with the url.

But truth is, stripe decides who they want to be in business with. They have decided they don’t want to be in business with you. Tough, but they also aren’t placing you on the MATCH list or other common nightmare senerios many non-compliant businesses find themselves in when dealing with violations of payment processing guidelines.

My advice is to cut your losses with stripe and get a real merchant account.

The pre-vetting process will likely be quite clear with you about what and why your business is considered too high a risk, or you’ll end up with a less frangible business relationship you can depend on to not rug pull you in the future.

rspeele 2 years ago |

I empathize with you. I had a (very small) side business where I was making custom wood grip panels for handguns. On the one hand, these are firearm parts but on the other hand, they are also inert, harmless pieces of wood that aren't needed for the firearms to function. I used Stripe to accept payments. When I originally signed up for the Stripe account I specifically asked customer support whether this would be OK. The response I got (in 2019) was:

> Stripe does have some strict rules over the types of businesses we can and cannot support. Firearms accessories is an area that we split into two. Businesses selling firearms and parts required for the functioning of the firearm are restricted from using Stripe. Businesses selling firearms accessories and parts not required for the functioning of the firearm can be fully supported.

> As your business falls into the second category, I'm pleased to say that you would be able to use Stripe.

In 2022 my Stripe account was closed. I entered an "appeal" quoting that original response and asking whether their policy had changed, or their assessment of the products I was selling. The response I got did not answer that and simply said "we are unable to accept payments for weapons, ammunition, and related products, as mentioned on our restricted businesses list."

To be honest I was kind of done with it anyway, it had gotten to that "not fun" point where a hobby becomes a chore. And it wasn't an income stream big enough to make any difference in my quality of life. So I didn't bother appealing further or even seeking an alternate payment provider. But I was still annoyed that they didn't tell me what changed between when I got approval and when I got shut down.

danielmarkbruce 2 years ago |

You are doing something they don't allow. Calling them paypal and saying they are canceling without explanation is disingenuous.

Doing payments is hard. They can't give everyone white glove service at the prices they charge. The ways folks using these services against the posted rules while convincing themselves they are something else is hilarious.

lobito14 2 years ago |

Stripe held 150k of my sales for more than 1 year without a valid reason until they finally paid. I sent them dozens of emails just to receive the same canned answers. There are many stories of small businesses that went into bankruptcy because Stripe decided to refund all transactions after the merchandise was already delivered to customers. A shit show.

Stripe is a shitty company with zero respect for customers. Stay away.

anigbrowl 2 years ago |

So many big tech companies are like this - suspending users for violating some term of a contract, but without saying what. Ostensibly this is hurt scammers but for more of the burden seems to fall on legitimate to users to the point that the companies themselves appear to be scamming their own userbase. It's long past time that regulators forced public-facing businesses to provide candor and allow for remedy when alleging contract violations. My whole adult life I've been hearing of or occasionally encountering companies using 'computer says no' as a way of ducking personal and professional responsibility toward customers.

Edit: A lot of people responding are missing OP's point. It's not that Stripe has made a decision about what kind of business they want to deal with (wholly legitimate), it's that they won't tell OP what part of their agreement Stripe considers to have been violated.

Mindlessly repeating that 'Stripe has the choice of with whom they do business' (which OP has never disputed) is just reflex behavior at best and shilling at worst. Either address the actual question raised by OP or don't comment.

menacingly 2 years ago |

I think you’re safe assuming a disruptive player will eventually discover why what they disrupted was such a pain in the ass in the first place

pants2 2 years ago |

You should just throw up your Ethereum address on your blog and let people freely and easily send you USDC. It's not a total replacement for Stripe but it's a lot easier than snail mail and there is no risk of getting your account shut down.

cherryteastain 2 years ago | |

Unfortunately gas fees are very high. Solana is probably a better alternative, it has USDC too.

pants2 2 years ago | | |

True - though with an Ethereum address he can also receive USDC on Polygon, Base, Arbitrum etc. Either way it's a simple transfer using Coinbase or Robinhood.

bartkappenburg 2 years ago |

I’m following /r/stripe and there are more horror stories over there. If you read carefully and between the lines it is often pretty logical that a ban/freeze is given (shady business, 35k per day within a week, etc)

The good thing is that Stripe is also monitoring that subreddit. And they often reply and mention heretohelp@stripe.com as a quick and easy way to get someone to speak to you. Maybe you can try that next time?

Happy 10+ years customer of theirs btw!

lorinab 2 years ago |

This happened to me twice in the last week — for a Kickstarter project I was collecting shipping fees via Backer Kit. I had 2 backers that “decided” they do not want to pay for the shipping, and they started disputes after the product was already shipped. I sent screenshots and proof of service to Stripe, but I still lost the dispute with no appeal option.

ankit77 2 years ago |

I'm a founder who run into this issue as well in the past. Stripe kicked me off for no reason and with no warning, and my startup almost died.

I started OpenPay to help make it easier to move from Stripe to another payment processor if they kick you off. Feel free to email me at ankit@getopenpay.com and I'll get you set up for free.

Amicius 2 years ago |

So if tips or donations are prohibited, why is there a page on Stripe support detailing rules for donations, one of which is "for a good or service that has been provided?"

https://support.stripe.com/questions/requirements-for-accept...

renewiltord 2 years ago | |

What part are you confused about? You can’t just have a tip on a profile page but you can accept tips in connection with goods or services provided. Everything makes sense to me.

oropolo 2 years ago | | |

Is podcast production somehow not a good or service? Is the problem that I'm using the wrong word -- donation instead of tip -- on the button?

southernplaces7 2 years ago |

The amount of justification for these kinds of disgusting practices by Stripe (and other similar companies) on this thread (and other threads in the same vein I've read before) is ridiculous.

People who depend on these payments for their livelihood make a good faith attempt to use Stripe for processing them only to be treated like scum with no explanation of why and they're the ones who should be justifying themselves or looking for what went wrong?

Novel idea: the company that provides you with something for a comfortable fee actually fucking explains to you why it suddenly doesn't want your business, and gives you means for arbitration and fair hearing. It's the least they could do while screwing you over.

Opaque, algorithmic, bureaucratic account closures and penalizations are an absolute nightmare of the modern world that should under no circumstances be allowed to proliferate further. They take the old kafkaesque notions of bureaucratic opacity to an automated extreme that nobody should defend or tolerate.

Google, Stripe, Payshit and so many others regularly practice this, and here we see some people who themselves could one day be victims of the same actually bothering to find excuses for it.

NewJazz 2 years ago |

I mean they are not as bad as PayPal until they start seizing tens to hundreds of thousands of funds, but yeah any payment provider or financial institution is going to be finnicky if you aren't fitting into norms.