It's also the exact same model that private health insurers used before Obamacare. Do minimal underwriting unless someone gets really sick, then scrutinize the hell out of it, even offer bonuses to employees based on how many claims they find reasons to deny.

Did "Obamacare" do anything to end this phenomenon? That hasn't been the experience of people I know.

Yes. Everything is guaranteed issue unless you go with one of those weird Christian health insurance things. Insurance companies can't deny coverage now because of a pre-existing condition, and they can't go back and deny claims because of something someone put on an application. No one gets their insurance dropped because they get bone cancer and THEN a claims adjuster went and poured over their original application.

https://www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/pre-existing-c...

"Before private insurance market rules in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) took effect in 2014, health insurance sold in the individual market in most states was medically underwritten.1 That means insurers evaluated the health status, health history, and other risk factors of applicants to determine whether and under what terms to issue coverage."

"Prior to the ACA’s coverage expansions, we estimated that 18% of individual market applications were denied. This is an underestimate of the impact of medical underwriting because many people with health conditions did not apply because they knew or were informed by an agent that they would not be accepted. Denial rates ranged from 0% in a handful of states with guaranteed issue to 33% in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Ohio. According to 2008 data from America’s Health Insurance Plans, denial rates ranged from about 5% for children to 29% for adults age 60-64 (again, not accounting for those who did not apply)."

As a rule, there's nothing wrong about a default to accepting making deals with strangers.

And that's the only thing similar in here. The payment processors are not selling anything by fraudulent claiming they evaluated their quality.

What they do have is a very bad customers service that is prone to a different kind of crime (withholding people's money) and create a very unique kind of risk they don't communicate to their customers.

I'm pretty sure this would be considered a deceptive business practice by most courts of law. You can't just straight up lie about the terms of a business agreement - i.e. if you say you've evaluated a customer's creditworthiness but you really haven't I think there is a very good argument that any agreement was not made in good faith, however, Stripe's ToS probably requires mandatory arbitration, etc, so I'm not sure what recourse you have as a customer.

Arbitration doesn't mean no-recourse or bias toward to the provider.

Arbitration does absolutely means a bias to the party that requires it. You can't have a long-term relationship with a company and not acquire some bias.

Even if the arbiter is pure and just the company will learn how to represent its side in the best light before the arbiter; it has many chances to learn.

The other side has one chance to learn.

Right, think about it as a consumer. I don't want a gas station to run a credit check, or ask for proof of employment before I fill my tank. They just accept the card. But that does mean they bear risk for chargebacks if the card was stolen.