Stripe – Prohibited and Restricted Businesses

Human labor is prohibited, but technology is sacrosanct

still might not be the right descriptor - the USA seems to be in the process of backsliding on social issues right now.

> I suspect there's an interesting story why the online sale of "Industrial waste disposal and garbage disposal devices" is forbidden specifically in Japan.

Japan is known for its strict environmental regulations and policies.

Ask any Japanese national about their garbage/recycling procedures and you’ll understand.

I assume the online sale of industrial waste disposal and garbage disposal devices is prohibited in Japan because the government want to closely monitor the disposal of industrial waste and garbage to ensure that it is being handled properly and safely. By restricting the sale of these devices to only authorized dealers or distributors, the government can have more control over who has access to these devices and can ensure that they are being used correctly.

I don't know them, of course, but take a moment to reflect that every single exec at Stripe probably agrees with you. There is always a mahout [1]

[1] “Because the elephant has a master, a mahout. And his master is an unforgiving son of a bitch with a nasty barbed-iron stick and an elephant gun. He is otherwise known as an institutional investor. All start-up entrepreneurs should say their prayers for institutional investors, those fabulous beasts, every night. “Dear Lord, thank you, thank you for institutional investors in big companies.”

Literature of such extremes as Stephen King books... This is such an arbitrary line to draw, because detailed sex can happen in both mainstream novels and in erotica, and people can be surprised by just how detailed the novels are. And the mainstream may breach quite a lot of rules that erotica publishers might keep (such as age restrictions).

Yet, I doubt Stripe has a problem selling 'It' [0], despite it having a sex train run on an underage girl with excessive description.

[0] It, 1986, novel.

I agree for some of them atleast.. although some of them probably dont necessarily need an explicit explanation because they are kind of self-explanatory. For example, their prohibiting of processing for SEO related things (likely because much of this is spam) could use an explanation, but the cases for things that are inherently illegal or could get stripe sued might not

There's a link buried in the page to a blog post with some details:

https://stripe.com/blog/why-some-businesses-arent-allowed

"Mastercard and VISA says so."

At the end of the day; because government regulators say so. The banking industry is famously immoral and if pushed would compromise almost any value in exchange for making a buck; particularly if allowed to operate as a free market.

So everything on this list is either reliably unprofitable for them, or banned somewhere by a government regulator. Otherwise there'd be a Stripe-plus company who was taking over the market by being Stripe but more permissive.

> (about to become obsolete by ChatGPT's intervention)

I don't think so. Writing a full length essay still need lots of guardiace and proof reading.

People will pay someone to use ChatGPT for them.

It’s certainly because of scam call centres. The ones that call people and say that they are calling from Microsoft and that they are going to help you with a problem on your computer, and they convince you to install remote management software but then proceed to install malware or steal money from you.

Understandably Stripe does not want anything to do with such “businesses”.

Notice that it is listed under “Products and services that are unfair, predatory, or deceptive”.

Perhaps as long as you run a legitimate remote support business, and not a scam operation, Stripe will allow it?

Wasn't onlyfans also using stripe?

It probably depends on how much money Stripe can make from you for dealing with the risk. For HN readers, you probably get instantly banned for life if any user uploads porn. For Twitter, they can probably take the right person out for dinner and make the issue go away.

Is it that hard for a company like Twitter to setup their own payment gateway or even a personal "Bank"? I know it's just kicking the can down the road, because ultimately Visa and MasterCard will block them for hosting porn.

It's very likely because Visa and MasterCard forced them to. Porn is an industry with high chargeback rate and thus problematic for credit card companies. Instead of fixing their system to verify transactions (like forcing 3d secure like system on all cards instead of dragging their feet until EU regulators forced them to) or at least give merchants any kind of way to do it themselves (today they tell you to call/email the scammer if you're not sure using the phone/email they provided - no access to message the real card owner) they just prefer to ban the whole industry.

There's no clearly defined line. This is by intent. The idea is to send a message - you can be a bit risque, but don't cause us problems or we'll suddenly decide whatever your percentage is is too much.

So many rules, especially in compliance, are like this. They all boil down to "we'll look the other way for minor violations but as soon as you piss us off, you have our full attention and not in a good way". Keeps everyone on their toes and is probably better than trying to define some kind of exact threshold (which everyone would then brazenly ride exactly on the edge of).

Note I'm not agreeing with it in the slightest.

Wanting a well-defined open deterministic rule is in large part an engineering instinct. The reality is that a degree of “it depends” makes a whole lot of sense. The entire legal system is built on the word “reasonable”.

What about that do you think needs updating?

What's being prohibited there is using Stripe as a virtual substitute for a credit card terminal, e.g. a merchant processing credit cards in person or over the phone by typing them into a web page with a Stripe form.

Most of them are either legal requirements or rules imposed by visa/master. They are listed for compliance reason.