
Ask HN: Is getting banned on Stripe many years ago a death sentence? - theturtletalks
So 4 years ago, me and a couple of partners decided to start an online website selling vaporizers. Our supplier told us he was using Stripe and so we applied for a seller account. I stupidly put my personal information to get up and running quickly.<p>In the next few days, I get an email from Stripe that vaporizers are prohibited and they can&#x27;t accept the payments. We were surprised but moved on since we couldn&#x27;t do anything.<p>So we eventually scrape the project and I move on to a new website selling electronics. I signed up for a new Stripe account, but immediately got an email from stripe saying:<p>&quot;our banking partners prohibit us from helping with payments associated with a business we&#x27;ve had to reject previously.&quot;<p>Has anyone faced this or had any recourse? This was 4 years ago and now I am pursuing building a SaaS using Stripe Connect and using Stripe Atlas. Whenever I reached out to Stripe back then, only response I got was decisions are final.<p>Are all those doors closed for me since I made a stupid mistake years ago?
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edwinwee
Edwin from Stripe here. If your new business isn't related to your old
vaporizer business (or selling any product on the restricted list at
[https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses](https://stripe.com/restricted-
businesses)), then this shouldn't be an issue. If you email me at
edwin@stripe.com, I'd be happy to help you get set up with Connect and Atlas.

~~~
rurban
Interesting list there. This cites "computer technical support" as "high risc
business", and is thus forbidden. But e.g. Github and most other YC startups
do exactly that and are very happy using Stripe as its payment service.

Maybe the wording needs to be improved. Over-generalization never helps. All
startups are high risk.

~~~
dave84
Computer technical support is fairly specific. GitHub provide support for
their products yes but last I checked they don’t help you install device
drivers.

I’d imagine it’s to stop the phone support scammers.

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anigbrowl
Hire an attorney to write them a nice letter; the money you spend on that is
like an assurance of sincerity. A good rule of thumb is to allocate 10% of
your operating budget to legal resources over the long term.

~~~
theturtletalks
I will look into this. What should the letter entail? Something like, this
user made a mistake and needs a Stripe account for a new business? Thanks for
your help.

~~~
anigbrowl
Basically. Look at it from Stripe's point of view, they don't want to be
associated with scammers. A lawyer will look at the facts of your situation,
and at their ToS, and then explain to Stripe's legal department that you're
anxious to be a good partner for them because you spent some time and money to
clean up that old mistake and see things from their side. That gives someone
with decision power something in writing that (I hope) they can put their
stamp of approval on.

Best of luck!

~~~
theturtletalks
Ok I’m going to reach out to a few lawyers I know and see if they can help.
Thanks again!

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codingdave
Did you reply and say, "This is not the same business that was rejected?"

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theturtletalks
Yep as soon as I got that email, I replied saying this business is selling
completely different and linked them to the domain and where the payments were
coming from. They replied that banking partners won’t allow them. No way to
appeal or anything.

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rootVIII
I used to run a website called roboshout.com... at one point was making almost
$1000 a week... I used Stripe to accept payments. The user could send/receive
anonymous texts, send 1000 texts, custom robocalls etc... 2 years into a happy
partnership with Stripe and decent income... I got a letter pretty much saying
the same thing except it was in regards to "telemarketing". Lost the API and
my website functionality overnight with no warning!

~~~
quickthrower2
Anonymous? You should be accepting crypto...

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rootVIII
I had troubles implementing that... due to the fact that it is not a direct
transaction which didn't fit into things:
[https://gendal.me/2013/10/21/lessons-from-bitcoin-push-
versu...](https://gendal.me/2013/10/21/lessons-from-bitcoin-push-versus-pull/)
... and crypto isn't really all that anonymous either. The most anonymous is
stolen credit card numbers. Not that we condoned that or anything:)

~~~
quickthrower2
Correct crypto is not anonymous, but it’s more anonymous and there are mixers.

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steve_taylor
Do you have considered Braintree?

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theturtletalks
Yep Braintree and Mollie are some other options I’m going to consider.

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yhoneycomb
I'll sign up for you if you give me a cut of the profits :)

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theturtletalks
Haha one option was to add a partner just to use Stripe, but I'm afraid doing
this might make it worse for me and him if we ever want to use Stripe.

