[BANNED] Stripe Account | TOS Changes Here

I'm afraid you can't do anything other than switch over to another processor.

There's a political conspiracy with payment processors and marketing laden businesses.

I belong to a marketing program and they change processors every couple of years.

Stripe is a little 'Draconian', I previously had a software company that was using them to process payments, then because I created a software script that helped affiliates to build their MLM and affiliate businesses, they suddenly labelled my company as a MLM company and refused to do business with me.


I then at a later date wanted to use them for processing payments for another company providing hosting, no go... they said that because I was turned down for MLM previously that I can't even process with them at all, talk about stupid... I'm not a MLM company nor affiliated with MLM... but still banned from doing business with them due to previous company also being falsely labelled as MLM.


Loved stripe while I used them... too bad they just have odd underwriting policies for processing with them.

There's a new economy and new tools being built that don't rely on these centralized payment processors. Your experience with Stripe is the very reason it's important that they're built.

https://payments.request.network/#/

I've been using Paypal for awhile and decided to switch to Stripe due to the lower fees and good reviews I read about them..

I've been using them for the past 5-6 days, processed over 90 transactions and over $39000... and suddenly I received an email from Stripe:

"Unfortunately, we will only be able to accept payments for lovelyl**thers.com for a bit longer. Stripe can only support users with a low risk of customer disputes. After reviewing your website and account information, we've found that your business presents a higher level of risk than we're able to work with.

As noted above, your service will not end immediately--we understand that moving away from Stripe can take time. To help with the transition, we are able to provide you five additional days (beginning today) to switch to a new provider. Because of the elevated dispute risk here, your account balance will be placed on reserve for the next 90 days, the industry-standard period during which most payments are disputed. During this time, the reserved funds will help cover any disputes or refunds on your account. The remaining balance will transfer to your bank account at the end of this period[1]."

1) I've checked through Stripe's restricted business list, and can confirm that our business is not listed as restricted. Almost ALL of our competitors are using STRIPE as well, so how can we actually be high-risk?

2) I've NOT received any disputes.

3) In fact, we're so stringent on every transaction that we manually check each payment to match their billing address with shipping address, and anything that doesn't match will be subjected to us verifying with the buyer. In fact, we REFUNDED one payment as that customer wasn't able to explain/verify regarding the difference in credit card details and shipping address and receiver's name.

4) We pride ourselves with our customer service, when we were contacted by one of our customer to ask for a refund as he needed the money for other things, we immediately agreed and issued him a refund.

5) Stripe said: "Because of the elevated dispute risk here, your account balance will be placed on reserve for the next 90 days, the industry-standard period during which most payments are disputed. During this time, the reserved funds will help cover any disputes or refunds on your account." ---- We actually HAVE NEVER received any disputes as of now, and Stripe wants to hold on to all our funds? This is RIDICULOUS. They are HOLDING ON TO $36,108 of our funds. HOW CAN YOU HOLD MY FUNDS FOR 90DAYS BASED ON THE POSSIBILITIES OF DISPUTES WHEN WE'VE NEVER HAD ONE?

6) I'm running a REAL BUSINESS. I've worked really HARD to build this business. I've spent over $5000 for promotion on Instagram, I've paid over $18,000 to get my products manufactured, I have staffs to pay their salary, I've sent all the ordered products to my customers. And STRIPE IS HOLDING ON TO MY FUNDS for no legitimate reason? THANKS STRIPE FOR MAKING MY LIFE A LIVING HELL NOW. You've successfully made me poor right now and in BIG DIFFICULTY.

To those who are planning to use STRIPE for their online shop, AVOID THEM AT ALL COST. They will cost you your business, and they will affect your cashflow BADLY.

I will be going back to PAYPAL even though their fees are higher, but they never treated me like this.

Stripe have really put me in hell right now, and they will do that to you too!

I guess I did not do enough research before, as after this incident happened, I made more research and found out that they did this to MANY OTHER BUSINESSES as well. Google and you can see many HORROR STORIES about how Stripe operates!

Have you tried Authorize.net?

Stripe has resolved the issue! Good as new.

I don't understand why Stripe is asking me to confirm if I have employees in US. Now I can only accept payments but I can't transfer money to a bank account. I have LLC registered and my account was approved at first but after like 2 weeks of using it, they decided that they need more information.

It's been 2 days and it seems like they are ignoring my emails right now. Has anyone had this issue before?


This is the email:

Hi Gvidas,

Thanks for signing up with Stripe! We're excited to have you on board, and just need to collect a little more information.

Specifically, in order to get your Stripe account fully up and running, we need confirmation that you have employees located in the United States.

Could you can you please confirm that you have employees located in the United States?

If you aren't able to provide us with the necessary information within 30 days, we unfortunately will not be able to support your business.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you run into any problems with this process.

Best,

Whether or not your business has ever had issues is not the point. They have their guidelines and your rates and risk are set by the industry you are in - not your track record.

I remember in the early days of e-cigarettes, payment processing companies suddenly moved all accounts into "high risk" because of all of the recurring payment e-cig scams that were going on. If you were in that industry, you were immediately labeled "high-risk" whether you were involved in the recurring payment auto-ship model or not. Even if you were selling face to face in a brick and mortar store you were "high-risk". There were very few online processors that would process payments for e-cigs and the rates doubled or tripled, skyrocketing to anywhere from 7.9-9.9% if you could get approved for a merchant account.

If anyone gets into this position with Stripe, I would suggest moving to Durango Merchant Services. We've worked with them for close to a decade. They set up high risk accounts, low risk accounts and everything in between. Unfortunately, they prefer U.S. businesses and do not work with a whole lot of other countries (they do have relationships with some worldwide banks, so it's kind of hit and miss for other countries).

The part that truly sucks is when they arbitrarily decide that they can hold onto your money for 3 months, just in case. Sure seems like something that I would have an attorney looking into. Just because it's in an agreement doesn't necessarily mean that it is legal. PayPal lost a pretty massive class action lawsuit over very similar issues.

To be clear, stripe and paypal don't make these decisions. The big banks they deal with make these decisions. If it were up to stripe and paypay, they would take payment for just about anything legal. That's how they may their money. It's the big banks that dictate what they can and cannot process payments for and many times it's strictly a political decision.


Your best bet is to get your own merchant account. If your industry is high risk (as categorized by the Bolsheviks who run the banks), it does not necessarily mean your processing rates will be high. So you have to check with reputable merchant processing companies. Back when the Bolsheviks put a smackdown on e-cigarette payment processing, I was selling e-cigs and paypal put the smackdown on me. At that time, I found Payline Data and they got me a merchant account suitable for vape/e-cig sales and the rate was about the same as paypal. But all industries will be different. I had other companies quoting me 5%, 8%, 11%. LOL Uuuummm....no.



TIP: NEVER approach a merchant processing company telling them you need a high risk account or anything like that. Just ask them to give you a quote and make them ask you the questions you need to answer.

I wasn't banned by Stripe but I got some really bad feedback from my customers - apparently they were rejecting way too many orders.


It seems they're another company boasting about how cool their machine learning tech is, yet it doesn't work as well as they think it does.



I've switched to ClickBank instead. They're also better at supporting PayPal apparently. They charge more though. Well 85% of $17 is better than 95% of $0.



This is just what I've heard - I'm a vendor not a buyer.