Stripe Holding Payouts

[wittj]

Does anyone have any guidance with how to handle Stripe withholding payouts? Our business has been a stripe customer since late 2021, in early 2022 they paused collecting our payments and their risk department requested we complete a waiver to continue service which we did. We have had no issues until last week when without notice our payments have been withheld and I am not receiving any responses from their risk team and their support teams have been useless. We are a small business and they are now holding well over 100k in payouts. Any guidance would be much appreciated.

[tobinfekkes]

It's been awhile since my last comment warning people not to use Stripe for this very reason. I'd almost forgot it was an issue still!

Sorry there's nothing we can do to help. Other than use this opportunity to repeat: rarely do you need to go from not accepting payments to accepting payments in a matter of minutes. It's almost always worth using a "traditional" payment provider that spends 3 days doing proper underwriting. Then you never deal with them again.

With Stripe, there is no underwriting, so you get cut off if anything doesn't match their model of what you "should" be doing. And no one will help you when you do hit a snag. Stripe is one, long, drawn out, snag.

[mtmail]

Reading through https://directpaynet.com/how-long-stripe-holds-funds-and-wha... that matches what people have reported on HN before. At least 90 days wait period and then best to work with/through a lawyer. It sucks of course. As you said nobody gets straights answers from the customer support. I'm not sure other payment providers are much better.

If you were hoping Stripe employees read messages here then I'm pessimistic. There's been cases where a story hits the frontpage and an employee comments but that has been a long time ago. Most Stripe complains go unnoticed.

[lobito14]

They're Scammers. Consider yourself lucky if they don't refund all your charges without any justification. Get really faraway from stripe.