Ask HN: Stripe is saying my business is high risk. It's not. What to do?

Posted by stripehighrisk on Sunday September 23, 2018 @05:20PM
from the ask-hn dept.

I received an email 3 days ago from Stripe saying they won't be able to process my transactions because "your business presents a higher level of risk than we're able to work with"

Which is strange, because I merely offer to transcribe voicemails for my customers. They pay me $5/month.

I've built my entire subscription model within Stripe's API and undoing it would really put me back. But the engineering isn't why I'm upset. I guess my problem is Stripe isn't transparent about their reason specifically why.

I'm a little insulted.

I've spoken poorly about Stripe's antifraud products in the past. Without sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I'm thinking it has something to do with that.

Something similar happened previously with an Atlas application: They weren't able to register my LLC because my business presented high risk (hint: it didn't) but they were fine with accepting payments for my customers for that... which was rather odd.

I realize I don't have a right to use their platform, and that they don't owe me anything. But for all the sketchy sites that use Stripe, mine's anything but, and I have an established history of credibility behind me. It's really disappointing when you just get a "no" and then can point to 100 sites that they should really say "no" to but they don't.

( 4 comments | 24 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Stripe is saying my business is high risk. It's n... by qengho on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @11:49AM (#18067392)

You're screwed. Same thing happened to me. And it was because Stripe wasn't able to fraud-check orders at the time (don't know if they fraud-check orders now) and so some scammers were able to push my chargeback rate higher than Stripe liked by placing fraudulent orders and then issuing chargebacks on them.

I reached out to Stripe, explained the situation, they said they understand and they re-instated my account. Two weeks later they suspended it again for the same reason and this time didn't respond to messages.

Given that they suspended my account for something that was caused by Stripe's own shortcomings, and the terribly unprofessional manner in which it was handled, I decided to give up on Stripe and not risk my business to such an unreliable payment provider.

Stripe sucks, stay away!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Stripe is saying my business is high risk. It's n... by edwinwee on Sunday September 23, 2018 @06:47PM (#18053743)

I work at Stripe. Could you email me at [email protected] and I can look into this?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Stripe is saying my business is high risk. It's n... by csa on Monday September 24, 2018 @02:40PM (#18060180)

Some ideas:

1. There may be a history of chargebacks on voicemail transcription services and/or some subset or superset thereof.

2. Your pricing may constitute a risk in terms of business viability. $5 seems awfully cheap to me, even if it’s automated.

3. Your pricing may constitute a risk based on your price point for this space as being attractive to pathological customers.

These are just ideas. I have no idea what factors they use. That said, I feel confident that a real flag was raised, so the question is whether that flag is legitimate in your context or not.

Stripe folks seem to be very accessible, so I hope you get in contact with one.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Stripe is saying my business is high risk. It's n... by danieka on Monday September 24, 2018 @10:51AM (#18058164)

I haven't work with it but you might want to take a look at Spreedly, they work as a buffer between you and payment processors. So if you are shutdown by a payment processor it should be really easy to change, without you having to make any changes to your code.

The drawback is that it's kind of expensive.

[ Parent | on HN ]