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This is the message I see in my account:

> 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

> 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".

My personal address isn't my business address. They are different. Mixing the two, while seemingly innocuous, actually can mean opening myself up to liability issues or a good argument that the biz that I operate isn't actually different from me the person. This isn't going to matter in 99% of things, but if you are ever sued, can be used as a reasoning to actually be able to retrieve damages from you the person versus just from the LLC. It's one of the reasons to try to have a strong separation early on in the biz, if you can. The IRS also doesn't like the mixing funds and such with bank accounts. It's the same reasoning, just different domains.

I get that (and agree separating biz and personal as much as possible is 100% best practice)

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

I am facing this issue where I received an Earth Class Mail PMB XXXXX address when setting up my Stripe Atlas account and registering my business (I am a US non-resident), and now my account is being threatened to be shut down in 14 days if I don't get a new address. Is this a problem with Earth Class Mail addresses all being P.O box / virtual addresses? Or have I just gotten unlucky with the address I was dealt?

> This address is not shared publicly and can be your personal address.

But who will it be sold to privately?

It will be given away to the government for free

> Once again, Thanks Stripe. It's been real, but it's probably time to move on.

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?

The separation of personal and biz addresses is an important concept in owning a business. Not only for privacy, but for proving the biz is a separate entity and such. This is probably one of 2 - 3 recent changes that they have imposed on my biz, all without seemingly any lead time. 15 days isn't really a lot of lead time to change your business address when you are over capacity already and have to (or would much prefer to) focus on things that actually make money. The one previously was a change that turned me previously paying $0 a month to over $60 (maybe $80 or more depending on volume) for the same feature set. Once again, without notice. Having a UPS box has for years been recognized as a legitimate way to have a biz address as well. Just not USPS PO boxes. The CTA and BOI legislation doesn't impose restrictions on that as far as I know, but Stripe does? My bank accepts my business address as a UPS box, but Stripe doesn't? That doesn't seem right. The CTA and BOI are more closely aligned with the banking secrecy act, which is just uncle sam wanting to know that a real person with a residential address owns a given bank account to prevent money laundering etc.

> The CTA and BOI legislation doesn't impose restrictions on that as far as I know,

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)_/¯

There are competitors to stripe. Why people keep submitting themselves to their abuse is beyond my comprehension.

Do these competitors need to follow a different set of KYC/AML regulations than Stripe?

Would be interested in a list of the competition. (too lazy to do my own research)

Square is probably the most similar competitor (in the US at least). Paypal has some similarities. Venmo in some ways. Clover. Ayden. Stax. Wave. There are others. Of course, most banks can also provide credit card terminals and merchant services for business customers too.

This "abuse" and all the half dozen other "look at this abuse this <company I do financial transactions with> is now doing" in the last few days is actually maybe due to some new requirements effective Jan 1 2024 in the US that entities that do business here have beneficiaries registered https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/09/30/2022-21...