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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

> This is after I've made drastic changes that help reduce chargebacks

You may not have reduced them enough to be eligible for service by Stripe. Chargebacks are a really nasty problem and no business is large enough for Stripe to risk their own: they are obliged to kick you off if you can't stay under a certain chargeback rate. The same goes for any other PSP.

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> You may not have reduced them enough to be eligible for service by Stripe

Not really. I made the changes while my account had payouts and payments paused by Stripe. I haven't been given the chance to show Stripe we take this seriously.

Well, if you did take it seriously then you would have reacted well before Stripe paused your account. I've had a business relationship like yours with another PSP (like Stripe) for many years and I was watching the CB rate like a hawk to make sure we never even got close to being labeled 'high risk'. This can be very hard, especially when customers engage in soft fraud, where all of the burden is placed on the merchant. There are a ton of things you can do to ensure that your rates are as low as they can be but even then it might simply not be enough. In your case I hope that you will be able to push things down to the point where you can continue your business and I also hope that Stripe will be able to work with you to determine if and if so under what conditions you will be able to work with them. But if Stripe can't then you have a much larger problem because every other PSP will have the same basic criteria and you'll end up with really low repute PSPs if you can't satisfy those. Typically those are the property of other parties that are unable to get normal processing in line so they make their own throwaway PSPs that get blown up in due course.

The account has been paused for an obvious reason. I made it clear from the get-go: it's due to chargebacks. And yes it falls on me.

But if any of my long term clients were to genuinely mend their ways about whatever issue that affects the relationship, I'd definitely give them a second chance.

Here's to hoping then. Regardless of the outcome: consider setting up an entirely different payment route, one that does not have the the chargeback possibility and verify your customers identity by first having them pay a small amount (or even their first invoices) until the relationship is established.

If you're B2C then that may be a lot harder.

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