Stripe has a history of shutting down legit businesses and blocking payouts of their rightfully earned income, whilst also profiting off those frozen funds by investing it.
Stripe has a history of cutting off payments to businesses which are violating the TOS. Stripe's TOS is largely a result of rules in place by banks and credit card companies. If Stripe don't shut them off, they get shut off.
To the extent they've made errors, I'd like to see you do better. The scale is enormous, there are fraudsters coming at you left and right. It's not an easy game to play.
Two identical business models (software) should either both be supported or both be rejected. They are pretty clearly playing favourites with their VC funded friends.
Stripe is not at any risk of having services cut by payment processors. They can leverage an excellent case against them if so. It's time they and the others get together and dunk on Mastercard before they decide to eat the whole pie.
Have worked in payments for over 25 years. Yes it's complex. But with the charge rates and volume they absolutely can do better. And no my business not violate the ToS. It was considered high risk due to high value of transactions despite exceptional contracts, client signoff forms etc.
Then time for them to group up and change the game. Not going to make excuses for corps. It's their responsibility to push, not mine to apologize for them.
The game is working out well for them. Why would they want to change it? What's next? Lebron should push for rule changes that make it easier for short guys?
The difficulty of their situation (ie threading the needle on providing value while toeing the line from a reg and stakeholder standpoint) is good for them. They don't want it to change. This is 101 stuff in business.
Nope, I'm not a fraudster, or a porn guy or drug guy or whatever other things currently banned. I'm quite happy with the status quo here. As are most of society.
Deflecting.
You live in a society of powers. You're not an individual free of them and their consequences just because they didn't target you this time.
If you were truly comfortable you would have good reasons to support their decision other than "it wasn't me this time!".
Most of society is not happy with the status quo, why do you think they're so unhappy?
The number one justification for cryptocurrency in my book, even if it's less safe or convenient or even has small fees. Your business being subject to the whims of payment processors is ludicrous.
Even with this being the justification, they could just say they won't be working with the customer in the future, not literally steal their customer's already earned money.
All you're doing is moving the risk from the business to the consumer with crypto which is why it will never succeed. Consumers like all the things businesses hate about credit cards because they can get their money back if something goes wrong and when it comes to payments the customer decides who wins.
Well said. We've offered for many years to our customers to pay by CC, bank transfer or Bitcoin. Exactly 0 people wanted to pay by Bitcoin, while the other two options are at about 50/50.
I don't want to go into details here, but it is something very traditional and unexciting that all kinds of people buy. We offered Bitcoin payment just as prominent as other forms of payment, but nobody was interested.
How are you taking Bitcoin payments? Every time I'm forced to pay for something using crypto it ends up making me want to self-harm and I've been a dev for 40 years. When I have to try and talk friends and relatives through crypto payments it is insanely painful.
Just the other day I was buying an NFT and I realized I bought the currency on Ethereum instead of Polygon. Coinbase didn't differentiate. Imagine trying to explain all this shit to your grandma.
> All you're doing is moving the risk from the business to the consumer
No, most of the merchant's risk with credit cards is from the design of credit cards. You have to give your payment info to every merchant but if any one of them loses it then anyone who gets it can use it at any other merchant. Then some merchant you've never heard of has bad security, criminals get cards from there and use them to buy things from honest merchants and the honest merchants get chargebacks for having done nothing wrong.
Cryptocurrency does not have this problem because you don't have to give your private keys to everyone you pay and even if you fail to protect them yourself (something you, rather than someone else, is in control of), as long as you're not trying to use cryptocurrency as a store of value instead of a payment system, your losses are limited to the e.g. $20 you had in your wallet. Customers have no problem with systems that work like this, like cash.
Chargebacks are only an issue if the customer expects the merchant to be dishonest and the value of the purchase is large. If you pay $3 for something and get ripped off, the ability to do a chargeback isn't that relevant to your life and you're just not going to patronize them anymore.
The reason most customers don't use cryptocurrency is that the government made it high friction for ordinary people to buy it. "Why is this website I don't know asking for my social security number? I'm just trying to make a small purchase."
Presumably at the behest of the existing payments industry which wants to keep their vig.
Starting like that, writing that whole paragraph and you completely misread what I said. "No, merchants have risk with credit cards". That is literally what I said in the post you are replying too. Sloppy and rude.
>Cryptocurrency does not have this problem because you don't have to give your private keys to everyone you pay and even if you fail to protect them yourself
Credit card fraud isn't a problem for consumers because of chargebacks and insurance. If a criminal steals my card and racks up charges I am almost always getting my money back. All the risk is again on the merchants. Consumers like that balance. Trying to convince them to take on more risk just to benefit the merchants is not going to happen ever.
>Chargebacks are only an issue if the customer expects the merchant to be dishonest and the value of the purchase is large. If you pay $3 for something and get ripped off, the ability to do a chargeback isn't that relevant to your life and you're just not going to patronize them anymore.
This is also completely wrong. People do chargebacks all the time because of a poor outcome that has nothing to do with being dishonest. There are also cases like bankruptcy where a chargeback will get you your money back but if you paid in crypto you'd just be another creditor.
The reason most customers don't use cryptocurrencies is because they are stupid and pointless for payments. They make the process worse for consumers unless you're needing to hide your identity. Crypto is like mailing companies envelopes of cash. There is a reason no sane consumer does that anymore.
> "No, merchants have risk with credit cards". That is literally what I said in the post you are replying too. Sloppy and rude.
What you said was that it was moving the risk from the merchant to the consumer, but it isn't moving that risk, it's removing it because the consumer doesn't have to give every merchant something that enables that (very common) form of fraud to occur to begin with.
> Credit card fraud isn't a problem for consumers because of chargebacks and insurance.
It is though, because it raises costs, and therefore prices. This is indirect, but the merchant can make it direct by offering a better price for using a payment method that lowers their costs.
This is one of the reasons the credit card companies try to prohibit that price lowering to the extent that they can -- because they know that otherwise it would happen and be effective in reducing usage of their archaic fraud-prone system with high processing overhead.
> People do chargebacks all the time because of a poor outcome that has nothing to do with being dishonest.
This is called "chargeback fraud" and is dishonesty on the part of the customer. If you buy something which is accurately described and then don't like it, issuing a chargeback should be prevented.
> There are also cases like bankruptcy where a chargeback will get you your money back but if you paid in crypto you'd just be another creditor.
Which is another form of fraud by the customer, because in that circumstance you are a creditor. It's like going back to the store and taking the money you paid out of the till. You're not taking it back from the store, you're stealing it from their other creditors who are entitled to their proportionate share.
"Credit cards are good because they enable customers to commit fraud" seems more like an argument to make them go away.
> The reason most customers don't use cryptocurrencies is because they are stupid and pointless for payments.
They're a payment system you can't practically be denied the use of and isn't operated by an industry dedicated to capturing the government in order to keep you under surveillance and covertly extract a vig from everything you buy.
> They make the process worse for consumers unless you're needing to hide your identity.
What if you do want to hide your identity? It's certainly not a feature to the customer that credit card companies create a list of everything you buy and who you buy it from in the hands of a third party. Why should the customer want there be a third party keeping track of who buys politically sensitive literature or contraceptives or anything that reveals their realtime location?
> Crypto is like mailing companies envelopes of cash.
It's like paying for things in cash generally, which lots of people still do in various circumstances.
People don't typically mail cash because stamps are too expensive to use that for small purchases, there is a cap on claims if you use it for large purchases and the Post Office loses it, and mail is slow.
And even then, people will use it to pay for e.g. Mullvad.
>it's removing it because the consumer doesn't have to give every merchant something that enables that (very common) form of fraud to occur to begin with.
It doesn't remove anything. The consumer is accepting the risk that they pay for something and don't receive it. You are just shifting the risk it is still there.
>This is called "chargeback fraud" and is dishonesty on the part of the customer.
No it isn't. Chargebacks aren't only for fraud or dishonesty on the part of the retailer they are for any situation when you don't believe you received what you paid for.
>Which is another form of fraud by the customer, because in that circumstance you are a creditor.
No because again the bankrupt company hasn't provided the service they took money for. Taking back the money isn't fraud.
>They're a payment system you can't be denied the use of and isn't operated by an industry dedicated to capturing the government in order to covertly extract a vig from everything you buy.
So you can be denied the use of most crypto in practical terms by having you address blacklisted in which case no mainstream exchange will accept your coins.
>What if you do want to hide your identity?
Then use crypto, but that isn't a concern for very many legitimate transactions.
>it's like paying for things in cash generally
It's like paying in cash remotely, hence mailing money. Paying in cash in person is fine because you are right there to collect your goods or confront the thief standing in front of you.
You believe the reason people don't pay for things by mailing cash is because of the cost of postage? Besides being ridiculous maybe check the cost of a bitcoin transaction during modest volume events.
> It doesn't remove anything. The consumer is accepting the risk that they pay for something and don't receive it. You are just shifting the risk it is still there.
The risk the merchant is trying to avoid is actually removed, not shifted to anyone. The risk that the customer pays for something and doesn't receive it is irrelevant for many transactions, because the seller is trustworthy and allows easy returns, so the risk from them isn't any higher than the risk of the credit card company not crediting your payment or sticking you with a surprise fee.
It also isn't inherent to cryptocurrency. There is no reason you can't use escrow if you feel the need to. But you could avoid the cost of that escrow, implicitly built into credit card networks and non-optional there, when you don't feel you need it.
> Chargebacks aren't only for fraud or dishonesty on the part of the retailer they are for any situation when you don't believe you received what you paid for.
> No because again the bankrupt company hasn't provided the service they took money for. Taking back the money isn't fraud.
Taking back money from a company in bankruptcy is typically illegal (and unethical) because their other creditors also have a claim to the money, so you're really taking it from them rather than the company who owes it to you. This is why bankruptcy courts exist; to fairly allocate the bankrupt entity's assets. You're not allowed to skip the line.
> So you can be denied the use of most crypto in practical terms by having you address blacklisted in which case no mainstream exchange will accept your coins.
Anybody can trivially get a new address and transfer their coins to it without the use of an exchange. Blacklisting every address that has received coins from a blacklisted address doesn't work because you don't need someone's permission to send them coins, so it would grant anyone with a blacklisted address the power to blacklist anyone else. Also, a blockchain is global and countries that don't respect the blacklist would cause the number of affected addresses to constitute the entire network within a short period of time.
> Then use crypto, but that isn't a concern for very many legitimate transactions.
Isn't it? Why would I want the credit card companies to even know if I'm buying a toothbrush? Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack:
> It's like paying in cash remotely, hence mailing money.
That's assuming you're using it remotely. If it wasn't made purposely inconvenient then you could use it to buy coffee or gas.
> Paying in cash in person is fine because you are right there to collect your goods or confront the thief standing in front of you.
People are perfectly willing to pay cash to someone who is bigger than them, or armed, so that can't really be it. Also, confronting them like a vigilante is hardly necessary when you know who they are and they're subject to legal process, which is the same over the internet.
And again this only seems to apply to someone you expect to rob you. Microsoft accepts cryptocurrency. You may not trust them at all, but if you pay them with it for a Windows license, what are you afraid will happen? Anything that couldn't also happen three months later after the chargeback window is closed?
> You believe the reason people don't pay for things by mailing cash is because of the cost of postage? Besides being ridiculous maybe check the cost of a bitcoin transaction during modest volume events.
If you're making a $2 transaction, spending $0.73 on postage and then waiting several days to be credited is ridiculous, not to mention most merchants don't accept it because it requires manual processing and presents an insider theft risk.
Bitcoin has high transaction costs because it's the oldest (and some of the ingroup likes it that way). There are several other cryptocurrencies where the transaction costs are trivial, it's not inherent to the technology.
> If you pay $3 for something and get ripped off, the ability to do a chargeback isn't that relevant to your life and you're just not going to patronize them anymore.
That's true. How about if you're paying $3000? Would you like to pay with Bitcoin or a credit card?
If I'm getting a percentage discount for using Bitcoin so the merchant can avoid the credit card fees and I trust the merchant (or the applicable legal system)? The first one.
Notice also that the argument I'm making isn't "you should never use a credit card", it's that cryptocurrency is sometimes better, and it wouldn't hurt if more places accepted it.
What people? Most ordinary people don't even contemplate cryptocurrency as something they'd use for ordinary transactions because the law inhibits anyone from making a seamless experience to use it that way and then people have no experience with that usage.
LOL. Being able to reverse transactions and freeze funds is a feature not a bug. With crypto you have no recourse when a criminal does criminal things or you make a mistake. Ransomware only started being a thing thanks to crypto, but governments could easily ban it (serious governments like US, China, Germany, that is)
Crypto is useless for anyone but criminals. If you can't use the real, state controlled financial system, then you also can't use the real, state controlled property rights system. Who cares about being able to prove you own some bits if you are not protected by the law when you buy any actual tangible goods with those bits, like a house or a car or a business?
Crypto is only useful when it's not needed (ie, you can use the state to enforce your physical property rights) and becomes useless once it's needed (you live in a corrupt or anarchist state that won't enforce your property rights over anything you can actually buy with the crypto)
Crypto is becoming a form of government blind-eye-turned corruption, for carrying out corrupt financial practices with less immediate oversight and more ways to overcomplicate the logistics. It will probably cause a financial crisis one day, like in 2008, for the exact same reason complex derivatives did.
I never take crypto jobs so my resume will stay clean when the house of cards falls down.
You are probably unaware of this, but most foreign countries also have governments that enforce laws. It's not just an American thing, believe it or not.
Instead you should advocate for payment network neutrality. Visa and MasterCard should be required by US law not to discriminate against transactions, and enforcement should move from the private sector to, well, law enforcement. Like with ACH/FedNow. That might actually get us somewhere productive.
Terrible idea on what basis? Why would it be bad to require all lawful transactions to be processed by an infrastructure provider?
Private toll roads don't get to discriminate against traffic. Internet providers don't get to discriminate against traffic. Why should payment network providers? Once you're big enough and important enough, you're quasi-state.
On the basis of allowing the people who built the companies to deal with customers they want to deal with, rather than be forced to deal with every type of scumbag on earth.
Toll roads change price based on type of vehicle and don't allow all types of vehicles. Discrimination.
In most jurisdictions internet providers absolutely discriminate on traffic to help resolve congestion, they are allowed to discriminate for VOIP under various circumstances. Discrimination.
Visa and Mastercard don't want a bunch of charge backs, some services are more prone to fraud than others, and they flat out don't want their brand associated with various things. Discrimination.
With few exceptions (race, gender etc etc), discrimination is a net good for the world. People should be allowed to decide who they want to do business with, socialize with etc.
Current-generation blockchain networks also don’t seek to do what “traditional finance” does. The usual list of things that crypto enthusiasts point to tends to be mostly comprised of things that consumers actually want. The entire premise is different. Apples and oranges.
For exactly what? Show the lowest cost provider in "traditional finance" and the cost using some blockchain for an end to end transaction that someone actually wants to do. What you are going to find is that the underlying cost structure for a few updates to a few relational dbs is about zero. The fees paid for some transactions having are a result of using the most convenient method possible. With a little bit of elbow grease you will find very cheap providers of everything in traditional finance, they'll just be a little more annoying to use.
ACH costs zero and some retailers accept it and more and more now with FedNow.
International remittance - atlantic money does $3 or something flat. By the time you get your cash into a crypto exchange and out, you are hosed for more than $3. If you can be bothered to open an account with someone like Interactive Brokers (yes, a traditional online stock brokerage) you can do it for about zero - you get wholesale FX prices and you can deposit/withdraw money from various accounts as long as you have all the paper work in place - annoying, but doable.
Again, a couple entries into relational databases, which is the true underlying cost structure of "traditional finance" is really hard to beat.
Then, go ahead and explain, in some detail end to end, with costs, how to do the things you brought up. You aren't going to beat the underlying cost structure.
> Stripe has a history of shutting down legit businesses and blocking payouts of their rightfully earned income, whilst also profiting off those frozen funds by investing it.
Almost every case I've seen, it's almost always because they were dabbling with NSFW, Cannabis, or another card-network-restricted category. And when you confront them about their story, they almost always respond with weasel wording: "It wasn't really NSFW, or it was only a little NSFW, or it's not my responsibility if my users use it for NSFW..."
It's also not like this is buried in the Terms of Service with ambiguous legalese. Stripe has a pretty beautifully-formatted page clearly saying what they are not OK with.
As someone that isn’t working in payment processing, it’s no surprise that you don’t get all of it.
Every single thing about these lists always reeks of ‘this has been put together reactively, over time, based on experience’. But it’s so cool and trendy and complain about this stuff on HN and similar, everyone just elects to forego critical thinking for a little bit.
I mean, OK, but by the time it's called VAT in their universe they're already treating you as 'overseas' and your total payment processor fee is pushing 10% because "not in the US" apparently carries a 100% surcharge
Also wondering this. I was planning on making the jump to LS soon but if Stripe will be offering MoR services then I'd rather stay within Stripe's stack.
I suspect (hope) Stripe Tax will soon offer a MoR service. I imagine this acquisition is mostly for their tax expertise & perhaps internal tools that do all the hard work behind the scenes.
Stripe is a payment processor which basically means they process the payments for you, so you do have to figure out the tax part yourself (or use their tax product, but you're still the one responsible for it.)
Lemon Squeezy is a merchant of record which means _they_ act as the merchant and sell the product to your customer. So they'll collect VAT and make sure it lands in the pockets of the right country etc. and will pay you only the remainder (minus their cut).
Since Lemon Squeezy uses Stripe under the hood as their payment processor you had to basically pay a cut to two companies if you used Lemon Squeezy but in exchange you literally have to worry about nothing. You just get a nice B2B reverse invoice and don't have to break your head around world wide (and especially EU) tax laws.
I really hope Stripe will double down on the whole MoR thing, it makes processing payments online so much nicer and less annoying.
