Comment by smca | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smca | Hacker News Reader

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(I work at Stripe) I'd like Stripe to be available for as broad a set of users as possible. Just think about our high-level business model: we charge a fee per transaction for our services.

Closing an account without cause does not make financial sense, so we don't do it. If we were solely optimized for profit then we'd ideally want to accept as many businesses' transactions as we could, right?

So that leaves three reasons why we might not: regulatory compliance (money laundering or fraud), risk management (high rate of chargebacks or credit risk), or a violation of our restricted businesses agreement (get rich quick schemes, counterfeit goods, etc).

I have no idea what OP's business is or what they're selling, these things are typically left out of HN posts about Stripe for good reason. They're generally looking to overturn decisions we've made. We do of course make mistakes (and fix those rapidly) but you should consider why we would take action contrary to our business model—the answer is normally one of the three above.

My guess is that they're skimping on support, like every other tech company. Having good customer support with human support workers costs money, so some companies have taken the calculation that losing some small accounts might be worth it if they don't have to pay to provide proper support.

If you had to choose where to put resources between high volume enterprise and low volume SMBs, you’d choose the former.

Why would we not want "low volume" SMBs? Many of the SMBs on our platform grow to be much larger businesses. Ignoring a massive sector of businesses who might one day be the next "big thing" would be foolish for one thing and an unwise financial decision for another.

That's why you can sign up as a small business on stripe.com today whereas on other platforms you need to talk to their sales team (and be generating serious revenue) before getting close.

> Why would we not want "low volume" SMBs?

Because your costs are inversely proportional to business size.

> Ignoring a massive sector of businesses who might one day be the next "big thing" would be foolish for one thing and an unwise financial decision for another.

So Stripe would sacrifice enterprise high volume customers because they hope/speculate that low volume SMBs will one day be big, if they'd need to choose where to direct resources? I highly doubt it.

This all sounds like a false dilemma. Why do they need to choose between either one?

From the OP: https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/stripe.com. I don't think big orgs post comments.

It's not about speculating whether a given company would one day be big, it's accomodating for both for different reasons. Many of our "high volume customers" were one day not high volume, so saying we can't do both would be very short-sighted.

And we see that in our data too: 1,000 new businesses joined Stripe every day last year. We also had 100+ companies process 1B+ in yearly volume. That captures everything from mom and pop shops to startups, and large enterprises like Amazon or Salesforce. We listen to them all to make sure we're still solving their problems. (Stripe itself was born out of listening to startups grumble about payments: http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html#:~:text=The%20most%20s....)

It also helps reduce our dependency on any one sector of customers, similar to an index fund vs. stock picking. You don't get the same set of diverse businesses processing with e.g. Adyen—they just don't serve the long tail of the market in the way we do.

There’s some level of gaslighting going on here. It’s is possible for stripe to want to serve SMBs and also not have the resources to provide the necessary support an SMB needs when their account is in trouble in a timely manner. I’ve worked with larger startups that process on stripe, and stripe makes account execs available for most issues, and provides very good troubleshooting and advice that would be invaluable to SMBs like OP. Not claiming OPs business is in good standing, but to say that the issues mostly lie with the businesses is being a bit dishonest? I have seen many cases here on HN where after a post hits the front page, some C level or another well known stripe employee shows up and resolves the issue, proving that the customer was right in complaining. Do you believe they’d be able to get their issue resolved without hitting the front page, whether stripe wants their transaction fees or not? The issue most likely Stripe’s kyc/kyb requirements that only kick in once your account reaches a certain volume. You can view them via API (future requirements, due requirements, etc), and if the business does not provide or provide incorrect information, it may trigger deeper reviews that may or may not be documented. That’s likely when stripe takes a more careful look at the business model and numbers such as chargeback rates. The problem may lie in Stripe not providing enough info for why accounts are acted on. Corporate speak such as “violates our policies” will cause merchants to come to HN.

> It’s is possible for stripe to want to serve SMBs and also not have the resources to provide the necessary support an SMB needs when their account is in trouble in a timely manner.

Exactly this, seen here: https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/stripe.com

> It's not about speculating whether a given company would one day be big

Indeed, I think a lot of people miss the fact that the point of most small businesses is not in fact to become a billion (or even multi-million) dollar company. gasp

Any company targeting small businesses needs to shed this delusion that small businesses across the board want to become huge or even larger. In fact I know of a few that already think they are too big and would downsize at the first opportunity.

I appreciate and relate to this comment. One of my favorite aspects of owning a small business is that I can realistically understand every part of the business that I’m responsible for, and I like that. I’m not wading into a conversation about hiring trustworthy employees here. I don’t want hyper-growth. I don’t want 1,000 employees. I like being incorporated in my actual state, and I don’t want external actors to have control of my business. I don’t want to go public.

There’s this sort of toxic assumption that every small business just isn’t a big business yet. I’ve seen it at work in relationships with vendors where a conversation goes something like:

Business: “Okay, the Business plan fits us nicely but we need one feature from the Enterprise Pro Plus Max plan. Could we negotiate a slight increase in the Business plan and get that one feature flag enabled for our account?”

Vendor: “We’d love to help! We’ll give you a discount on the Enterprise Pro Plus Max tier that makes it the cost of the Business tier for a three year commitment, so you don’t have to grow into it overnight.”

Which of course no one has to do for any (prospective) customer. But it’s exhausting to have to explain that you’re not trying to grow into a business that can spend $80,000/mo with every vendor just to get features you need. And it’s really frustrating when you’re servicing a customer in a regulated industry who wants to expand with you, but vendors think things like audit trails are only useful or appropriate (or “not confusing”) for capital-E-Enterprises.

In my business the result has been a reliance on self-hosted FOSS applications but that’s not practical for things like payment processing, at least for a small business. If I were large enough for it to make sense to do my own payment processing I wouldn’t need Stripe in the first place.

Why? My guess would be that like most companies you’re optimizing for short-term revenue, not long-term! Neglecting/firing low-volume customers who aren’t making you money this quarter so you can allocate those resources to your whales and not hire additional support staff improves this quarter’s numbers. Idk exactly what Stripe’s IPO plans are but as long as your exit is perceived to be a couple quarters in the future, there’s no incentive to worry about what companies might become the “next big thing.” That’s the next shareholder’s problem.

Then Stripe would just pull an Adyen and only allow such businesses. They don't and support millions of happy and legitimate SMBs. Yes, they won't get white glove treatment but don't write off the fact that Stripe is and wants to be supporting SMBs.

Speaking from personal experience your company shut down my account because I didn't have a website. I was using it to bill friends and family for small hosting accounts and they shut me down for it. While it suited them during their build up phase they deemed that I who actually pay for accounting software and am now using their payment processing are too much of a risk for them. Your bias is a fallacy.

A working business website (or social media site) is required by Stripe’s terms of service, as well as the card networks (Visa and Mastercard). It ensures we know who is selling and what they're selling. If you don't have a working website you can get in touch with our support team to provide additional info/verification. https://support.stripe.com/questions/information-required-on...

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