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Comment by matthewarkin | Hacker News Reader

IANAL. You're using Stripe Connect (and assuming you're doing this the old connect way), its your user's Stripe account that is processing the charge and receiving the money. Your Stripe account isn't processing the charge and nor sending them money hence you're not transmitting anything. Stripe would be the MSB.

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Hey - I recognize you from Stripe IRC

This is the interpretation I'm hoping for. I am indeed using "the old connect way" (assuming you mean charging directly instead of through the platform). I wonder if taking a fee has an effect, though.

I pushed a question through to Stripe support. Will update here when I find out.

Even if you get the answer you want, talk to a lawyer anyway. It's not a good idea to just jump into the money transfer services market without a legal gameplan, any more than it is to buy a bunch of chemicals and go into the explosives manufacturing business, or buy a very high quality printer and go into the banknote printing business. IT's not that you're forbidden to run businesses of that sort, but that such businesses involve onerous licensing requirements.

Put another way, your minimum viable product requires some legal infrastructure, otherwise you'll probably discover the hard way that it is not viable after all.

Taking a fee should not have any effect. Stripe (like other providers on Payment Facilitator / Payment Service Provider models) protect you from this risk / compliance

Stripe is not a licensed MSB per their agreement. They seem to structure everything to avoid being called one.

https://stripe.com/us/terms

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