Ask HN: Is getting banned on Stripe many years ago a death sentence? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is getting banned on Stripe many years ago a death sentence?

10 pointstheturtletalks18 comments

So 4 years ago, me and a couple of partners decided to start an online website selling vaporizers. Our supplier told us he was using Stripe and so we applied for a seller account. I stupidly put my personal information to get up and running quickly.

In the next few days, I get an email from Stripe that vaporizers are prohibited and they can't accept the payments. We were surprised but moved on since we couldn't do anything.

So we eventually scrape the project and I move on to a new website selling electronics. I signed up for a new Stripe account, but immediately got an email from stripe saying:

"our banking partners prohibit us from helping with payments associated with a business we've had to reject previously."

Has anyone faced this or had any recourse? This was 4 years ago and now I am pursuing building a SaaS using Stripe Connect and using Stripe Atlas. Whenever I reached out to Stripe back then, only response I got was decisions are final.

Are all those doors closed for me since I made a stupid mistake years ago?

Edwin from Stripe here. If your new business isn't related to your old vaporizer business (or selling any product on the restricted list at https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses), then this shouldn't be an issue. If you email me at edwin@stripe.com, I'd be happy to help you get set up with Connect and Atlas.

Interesting list there. This cites "computer technical support" as "high risc business", and is thus forbidden. But e.g. Github and most other YC startups do exactly that and are very happy using Stripe as its payment service.

Maybe the wording needs to be improved. Over-generalization never helps. All startups are high risk.

Computer technical support is fairly specific. GitHub provide support for their products yes but last I checked they don’t help you install device drivers.

I’d imagine it’s to stop the phone support scammers.

I will! Thank you so much!

Hire an attorney to write them a nice letter; the money you spend on that is like an assurance of sincerity. A good rule of thumb is to allocate 10% of your operating budget to legal resources over the long term.

I will look into this. What should the letter entail? Something like, this user made a mistake and needs a Stripe account for a new business? Thanks for your help.

Basically. Look at it from Stripe's point of view, they don't want to be associated with scammers. A lawyer will look at the facts of your situation, and at their ToS, and then explain to Stripe's legal department that you're anxious to be a good partner for them because you spent some time and money to clean up that old mistake and see things from their side. That gives someone with decision power something in writing that (I hope) they can put their stamp of approval on.

Best of luck!

Ok I’m going to reach out to a few lawyers I know and see if they can help. Thanks again!

Did you reply and say, "This is not the same business that was rejected?"

Yep as soon as I got that email, I replied saying this business is selling completely different and linked them to the domain and where the payments were coming from. They replied that banking partners won’t allow them. No way to appeal or anything.

I used to run a website called roboshout.com... at one point was making almost $1000 a week... I used Stripe to accept payments. The user could send/receive anonymous texts, send 1000 texts, custom robocalls etc... 2 years into a happy partnership with Stripe and decent income... I got a letter pretty much saying the same thing except it was in regards to "telemarketing". Lost the API and my website functionality overnight with no warning!

Anonymous? You should be accepting crypto...

I had troubles implementing that... due to the fact that it is not a direct transaction which didn't fit into things: https://gendal.me/2013/10/21/lessons-from-bitcoin-push-versu... ... and crypto isn't really all that anonymous either. The most anonymous is stolen credit card numbers. Not that we condoned that or anything:)

Correct crypto is not anonymous, but it’s more anonymous and there are mixers.

Do you have considered Braintree?

Yep Braintree and Mollie are some other options I’m going to consider.

I'll sign up for you if you give me a cut of the profits :)

Haha one option was to add a partner just to use Stripe, but I'm afraid doing this might make it worse for me and him if we ever want to use Stripe.

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