Updates to US verification requirements
support.stripe.com
support.stripe.com
But there are huge consequences for small business owners in requiring a physical address. I don't need or want anyone to ever physically appear at an address I provide, because providing _any_ address for my business is a fiction. My business is where ever I am. To date, I've paid for a registered agent service in my state so I can use their address. It costs me several hundred dollars a year for the "convenience" of not listing my home address in public records, which again, would also not be accurate because my business does not exist in my home. Same with a nonprofit I'm involved with - the nonprofit exists on Zoom and in temporary space we rent for meetings and events, and we receive mail to a PO Box.
There are also further downstream implications to this kind of problem. Suddenly if my business exists at my home address, my city wants a local business license and zoning compliance permit, so they can inspect the non-existent physical location and be sure the zero traffic it is generating isn't causing a burden on my neighbors.
Zoning compliance is not required for a home office (assuming white collar type work). Many, but not all jurisdictions require business licenses, even for home offices. This does not trigger inspections, because a business license isn't about the workplace, it's about the business itself.
EDIT/FOLLOWUP: Your "place of business" does not need to be your mailing address, because you can use a PO Box. It also doesn't need to be your address for legal service (i.e., for service of lawsuits), since most companies use a registered agent for that. At the most basic level, for a solo entrepreneur, your place of business is simply the one common location to which you have a legal right from which you do at least some of your business. In the absence of an owned or leased/subleased office or other workplace, it defaults to your residence.
Picture a carpet cleaning van parked on the street, for example.
It's not that complicated.
You want the benefits of a business while not having to worry about angry customers annoying you at your house.
I don't blame you.
We all want to have cake and eat it, too.
Yet another baseless assumption.
You want the benefits of a business while not having to worry about angry customers annoying you at your house
Or one may wish to continue making money to feed themselves even though they cannot afford housing. Have you ever had to apply for apartments on self employment income?
What's the alternative here? Pay a couple hundred a year for a forwarding address that is sufficiently real enough for Stripe to accept?
Asking out of personal interest. I'm working on the solopreneur route and looking at what's available for myself. Would prefer to keep it away from my personal address.
My concern is that if I had an online business that I worked on at home, I still wouldn’t want my home address to be given out by my payment processor.
So I'm not sure about zoning in most places--especially today--but it wouldn't surprise me if there were some restrictions on business-related commercial traffic.
I don't understand this. Whatever requirements (if any) that apply to your home business are going to be set by the city/county (and those can change over the years). Your home purchase agreement doesn't have any jurisdiction over that.
For a solo entrepreneurship business in the U.S., your home is your place of business if you do not have another fixed place of business.
Can you elaborate?
Actually, it is in my jurisdiction. I have to have a Home Occupation Permit for any type of business whatsoever registered at my home. This is why my address on file is my registered agent, in a different city in my state that does not have this absurd requirement.
How is one of those small offices in a building somewhere that have 4700 businesses “located” in that one office any different from a PO Box at a local UPS store?
Effectively it’s not. They’re both lies. But one got cut off so now the other will pick up the slack.
I think this is the crux of it: who could see this information? Where is it flowing to now, and where can it flow to in the future?
Is Stripe revealing this address to customers?
This page only says a business address must be provided, not that it will be revealed to customers.
If you have a business, you already have a business address and you're paying taxes somewhere. Why can't you use that address?
> Suddenly if my business exists at my home address, my city wants a local business license and zoning compliance permit, so they can inspect the non-existent physical location and be sure the zero traffic it is generating isn't causing a burden on my neighbors
What country are you in? Do you have any examples of this happening, or is this just a hypothetical you came up with?
Regardless, if your business is registered and you're paying taxes then, again, there's already an address associated with it. Stripe verifying this address isn't going to send local inspectors to your home.
As I said, I pay for the privilege of having a fictional address with a registered agent. It's a racket, but unfortunately, an unavoidable one until we stop this nonsense.
> What country are you in? Do you have any examples of this happening, or is this just a hypothetical you came up with?
The United States, and yes, I personally know someone who this happened to.
> Regardless, if your business is registered and you're paying taxes then, again, there's already an address associated with it. Stripe verifying this address isn't going to send local inspectors to your home.
My problem isn't with Stripe, it's with governments creating unnecessary hoops for people to jump through that don't actually solve any compliance issues. I pay for the privilege of avoiding it with a third party service that provides an address. I shouldn't have to. It doesn't help me, and it doesn't actually do anything for regulatory compliance.
One needs to assume that policies can always change. I don't know if they are revealing the addresses today, but once they have them, they may well start revealing them next month.
Or they may have a data breach that just leaks everything.
This does not have to be the place of business but is to ensure that legal documents may be served and other official letters delivered.
There are many services offering virtual office addresses for this.
It is not a problem. In fact, would you go into business with a company that has no address?
Surely you see how this is also a desirable trait for every scammer out there?
> if my business exists at my home address, my city wants a local business license and zoning compliance permit, so they can inspect the non-existent physical location and be sure the zero traffic it is generating isn't causing a burden on my neighbors.
"this change makes it harder to violate the law" is not a compelling argument
That's an opinion, and my point is that I do not hold that opinion. It's only not practical because we make it impractical, not because any benefit is gained by forcing people to jump through hoops to set up and pay for virtual addresses.
There is a vast difference between a disgruntled violent person showing up at the address of SmallGuy LLC (which happens to be their home) and the same type of person showing up at the street address of, say, Apple who has thousands-strong security force.
> A business with no physical location is not practical in society.
This comment on HN of all places is clearly incorrect, since most web businesses don't exist in any physical location.
They have employees, they have servers, they absolutely exist in a physical location.
Many years ago, yes. Today, no.
The servers are in "the cloud". Employees are all remote, there is no location for the company itself.
My previous company was 100% remote from day one. I never met anyone in person.
I'm a US non-resident (from the UK) who registered a business via Stripe Atlas, and used Earth Class Mail (a Stripe Atlas partner) to setup and incorporate my company when I signed up to Stripe Atlas.
Due to the nature of my business, a large majority of payments are micro-transactions, so I spoke with a Stripe employee who kindly enabled micro-transaction pricing on my account.
Fast-forward to a few months ago, and I decide to offer a subscription service for my business at a higher price point. I was advised by a Stripe employee to set up a new Stripe account for these higher priced transactions as micro-transaction pricing wouldn't make sense, so I registered a new US Stripe account using the exact same business details as my Stripe Atlas account (using my Earth Class Mail address, EIN, etc.)
My original US Stripe Atlas account seems to have passed this new US verification fine - whereas my new US Stripe account is threatened to have payouts/payments disabled on March 12th unless I provide a physical US address, as it doesn't like the Earth Class Mail one.
I have contacted Stripe customer support who have not been helpful - if there's anyone at Stripe who can help me with this I would hugely, hugely appreciate some help.
* The slightly hacky one: Find a virtual office in the U.S. whose address isn't flagged by Stripe + get a virtual U.S. phone number
* The proper solution: You need to transition to a UK Stripe account and provide your UK address/phone number. Even though your business is incorporated in the US what seem to matter is where you effectively do business. As long as you can provide a proof you are effectively doing business from the UK, Stripe will not have any issue with getting you a UK based Stripe account for US based corp.
This is all very weird, especially as you said, Stripe Atlas specifically encourages you go the registered agents route, only to then have the rug pulled from under your feet.
- Stripe Atlas accounts are treated separately to regular US Stripe accounts at the moment when it comes to address verification. My Stripe Atlas account has passed this verification fine because of this difference (maybe because Stripe auto-uses the Delaware registered agent I paid for during Stripe Atlas setup as physical address?), but a regular Stripe US account using the same Earth Class Mail address fails verification. Stripe support says this: 'The address given to you on your Stripe Atlas account will be valid as it is provided by our partner, but then for normal Stripe account, one requirement is to have a physical business address.'
- I'm wondering if the Earth Class Mail address for my Regular Stripe US account is failing specifically because it has the words 'PMB XXXX' (private mailbox) in the first line of the address. This address was given to me at random by Earth Class Mail when I created my Stripe Atlas account, and I didn't really think anything of it - but I can see how 'PMB' is an instant red-flag for not being a physical location. The exact error message I get is: 'Invalid address. Your business address must be a valid physical address from which you conduct business and cannot be a private mailbox'.
- Also stumbled across the virtual office solution. Instead of PMB's they have 'suite numbers' in an actual building. I agree it also feels hacky, and likely to come under the same verification issues, but might a short term fix for my PMB issue. A lot of the services I contacted seem a bit shady though. I even emailed one of Stripe's partners (usestable.com) with a specific question regarding if their virtual addresses still work with Stripe, and have so far got no response.
- Co-working spaces like WeWork and Regus offer a virtual office service, which seem a bit more legitimate than some of the specific virtual office services I've seen, but come with a higher price-point.
I will probably try a cheap virtual office solution first, then move onto the co-working solution if that fails. I want to try and avoid switching Stripe accounts if possible as I think it's going to cause a lot of pain with migrating subscriptions etc.
The meta-issue here is the quality of Stripe support. I have paid so much to Stripe in transaction fees, but when a problem like this threatens to shut down an account I operate, all I get from them is vague answers, pointing to documentation, and 'computer says no' responses from people who have no idea what they're talking about.
FWIW my biz address doesn't have PO box in the address. It is re-used though (which I know because when I tried to register a DUNS number with Apple the first problem I ran into was another business was already registered at the same address)
Invalid address. Your business address must be a valid physical address from which you conduct business and cannot be a private mailbox. Please correct the following...
So now, I have to find a new business address (either rent a place, or do a virtual office), which isn't as simple as just getting a new address. I then have to update every single account online or in person that uses it, and officially ask my state's SoS to update my biz info. There is probably other stuff I am not even thinking of in this moment as well. In addition, Stripe wants me to get a new biz address before March 13th or "payouts" will be impacted. Not processing! They are happy to use my money to make money for themselves and hold it like they have done to others in the past indefinitely.
This is all probably related to CTA and BOI changes that began this year that are seemingly affecting small biz more than the corporate entities that this bill supposedly was about.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1974
Once again, Thanks Stripe. It's been real, but it's probably time to move on.
> Invalid address. Your business address must be a valid physical address from which you conduct business and cannot be a P.O. Box. This address is not shared publicly and can be your personal address. You may use a P.O. Box as your customer support address.
So in other words, a personal home address should work.
Although its odd your error message is seemingly saying a personal address doesn't work, unless "private mailbox" means a privately rented commercial box, like UPS
Yeah, services like Earth Class Mail specifically hand out addresses that say "PMB XXXXXXXX" where PMB is "Private Mail Box".
But there are tons of legitimate businesses operated out of residential addresses (therapists, psychiatrists, chiropractors, etc). It’s not abnormal to use a home address for business purposes.
I’d recommend checking with your lawyer to verify, but I don’t think the address on your stripe (or even bank) account would legally make a difference
But who will it be sold to privately?
I don't follow. The CTA and BOI things you linked to are from the (US) government, so everybody else has to force you to do the same thing. Are you just shooting the messenger here?
ah. The two options here are either the 2024 rule change means it now does, which I'm assuming stripe's (and at least a few other companies, it sounds like) lawyer's read is it does. Or it doesn't and they're being a bag of dicks. which explains your reaction.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Fwiw I used Solana pay last year in a brick and mortar retail, and it was on par with Apple Pay UX. Granted I already had phantom on my phone with funds in it.
But yeah I hear you that asking someone to download a wallet and fund it isn’t a great way to run a business. But if the burden of regulations becomes too high, I could see it being a thing. Fwiw, I see the need for regulation here, but regulation needs to be weighed against the damage it does to small businesses and individuals just trying to do a side hustle.
I’ve been using my home address as the business address of my company ever since I first created it, and before that I did the same for my sole proprietorship.
Not sure of the legal implications of that, I’m just reading their comment how I think they meant it to be read.
Just a thought. Nearly every landlord I've had has been an absentee landlord. Quite interesting.
Are you thinking of Square, perhaps?
Those fully remote businesses still have to have a registered agent where they can receive physical mail or be served legal documents. They can just use that address with stripe.
Fully remote businesses still have a headquarters address.
There's a lot of FUD in this comment section, but any business that is already doing business things is registered for paying taxes, which requires an address.