Stripe- When do they take a closer look at what you're selling/how tough are they?

[UKGiftWarranty]

Just signed up with Stripe- about to integrate to a website. I've filled out the basic details of what I'm selling - design,seo,ppc, related products. It seems everything is live and ready to start accepting payments but there's been no human approval as yet.

When do they take a closer look at new accounts, and how thorough is their approval process? Am I safe to put a fair whack through the account from the word go providing I keep the account clear of chargebacks?

Any user experiences welcomed...

[unkown5454]

you can start selling immediately. but if you sell a lot, a manual review will be triggered quickly and they will start a rolling reserve that totally depends on how much you are selling. it is different for everyone. if they decide they do not like the products you are selling, they will freeze your money for 90-180 days.

i have a lot of experience with them and although transactions run smoothly and customers love it, it is not the friendliest place for sellers and they will drag you around if they feel like it.

[cool customer]

It sounds like Stripe may have changed for the worse as they have grown.

I was a very early user - they even sent me a t-shirt!

To answer some of your queries, I started using it on a website selling stuff that may be classed as 'grey area'. Stripe helped my web guy to integrate into my Lemonstand store (before Lemonstand got too big for their boots!) so they knew fully what the payments would be coming in for.

Payments came in thick and fast from day 1, never any issue. But it sounds like their customer service has gone downhill as anytime I or my web guy had any dealing with them it was always spot-on and they couldn't do enough to help if there was an issue.

I only stopped using Stripe directly since I moved my store over to a different platform.

[unkown5454]

yea that was not my experience at all. it was quite awful. and i have stores on EB, AZ and I am using PP and AZ Payments on my own sites. yet Stripe had a problem with me and my products and tried to evade every question i asked of them. like on a very sketchy level to where i had to make threats to get my money early because i caught them in multiple lies in their emails to me.

i know what i am getting into with PP and AZ, but Stripe ran around in circles, lying and backtracking and constantly changing their excuses. felt like i was dealing with children and sca.mmers

[UKGiftWarranty]

Thanks for the feedback. Will dip our toe in the water and see what happens.

[BaggaDonuts]

As long as you aren't doing anything on this list: https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses

You'll probably be ok. I haven't ran any 'new' accounts. I thought they did an ID or SSN question verify before sending the account live. Troubles for me came around 15-20k processed with their 'know your customer' evaluation. But my stuff was on their list, so obviously my experience will differ a lot from yours. I never heard of them withholding the balance. My first couple of accounts, they gave me until X date to stop processing. The next time they basically said since they told me before that they were shutting it down immediately and refunding any transactions that weren't already part of the deposit they were sending to my bank.

A lot more people are chargeback happy with Stripe though vs PP- so be prepared for that and have good lingo in your card authorization/client paperwork to combat that kind of thing. You don't want to be doing $15,000 worth of website/seo work and get it charged back 5 months later.

[UKGiftWarranty]

Thought I would update this thread, 5 weeks in to using Stripe.

Everything seems OK so far- a soft search showed up on my credit report so there has clearly been some kind of manual check initially - although this was documented as an ML regs check so whether they took as closer at anything else, who knows.

I've been putting good daily volume through the account and so far no issues with chargebacks. Stripe have pretty much left me too it, as well. The radar seems pretty useless with its default settings, but I've gone ahead and spent time creating custom rules for review and blocking payments so I feel more secure on that front.

Question! I now have 3 'accounts' under my Stripe email, all for very different business types. If Stripe did in future decide they didn't like one of them (for whatever reason), would they simply close that particular account and leave the other two running, or would I as an individual receive a blanket suspension across all 3 businesses because they're all associated with my Stripe email? I'm not doing anything particularly sketchy, I'm just a little concerned that future processing for all of the businesses may be at risk if one of them gets canned.

[sarathf]

Any updates from stripe ? Everything going smooth in your SEO store ?

[ebaystealth1974]

Originally Posted by BaggaDonuts

As long as you aren't doing anything on this list: https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses

Holy sh1t! They should have just made a list of what you CAN sell. It would have saved a lot of space lol

[sarathf]

Originally Posted by UKGiftWarranty

Thought I would update this thread, 5 weeks in to using Stripe.

Everything seems OK so far- a soft search showed up on my credit report so there has clearly been some kind of manual check initially - although this was documented as an ML regs check so whether they took as closer at anything else, who knows.

I've been putting good daily volume through the account and so far no issues with chargebacks. Stripe have pretty much left me too it, as well. The radar seems pretty useless with its default settings, but I've gone ahead and spent time creating custom rules for review and blocking payments so I feel more secure on that front.

Question! I now have 3 'accounts' under my Stripe email, all for very different business types. If Stripe did in future decide they didn't like one of them (for whatever reason), would they simply close that particular account and leave the other two running, or would I as an individual receive a blanket suspension across all 3 businesses because they're all associated with my Stripe email? I'm not doing anything particularly sketchy, I'm just a little concerned that future processing for all of the businesses may be at risk if one of them gets canned.

This is somthing i am worrying too...I guess they will remove other rest of accounts. So avoild account linking...

[mxtspain]

STRIPE are awful They get you setup in 5 minutes, but don't try to get your money out. I have had 3 different accounts in the last 4 weeks, different business models, different peoples names, different websites and different companies. All shut down before a single payout, "apparently" high risk every single one of them. They have held on to £1000's from me, I wouldn't go near em....No different to Paypal.

[natghei]

STRIPE WAS THE WORST EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE!

They stole my money. As payments coming through early on in my business, i made near $900. They shut the account and refunded all the money back to the customers. I was devastated. Apparently was business was consider high risk which wasnt even close. Atleast they could have shut it down within 1-2 payments but they waited until i made a good chuck of money. And decided to reverse all the payments. It was a nightmare. PAYPal is 10 times better. Stripe is SCAM!!! i had other accounts and same think happended. i lost near $2000. LEGIT GONE AND NEVER COMING BACK.

[kingpot12]

Some generic things they look for in evaluating your account>
1) Obvious one- Do you own the website- They have asked us to add a personal email to the website header to verify we had genuine access to the website.
2) Business model- This is a bit trickier as you know what sells, they just might have different opinions on it!
2) One time payment preferred over subscription based products. (people can dispute charges if they think its a recurring payment)
3) A fair & concise refund policy is critical, you may even need to stipulate a time frame refunds are permitted.
4) Make sure you descriptors make sense to the buyers, (when they check their bank statement) e.g they all track back to the website, or give information to the buyer about what they bought.
5) Large payments early on, or that are out of the ordinary are BAD, Irrelevant of how many chargebacks you get.
6) Set your account to weekly deposits- if your account is reviewed, you dont want them to hold x amount of funds for an indefinite period.
7) Stripe customer service>Bit sketchy, I tend to fix things by myself now, rather than getting a support ticket.
With Stripe> No news is always good news.

[aspkin]

Eh Stripe is only tough if you have too many chargebacks. They will warn you and than shut you down quickly if you pass I think it is 3% chargeback threshold.

You'll want to use a risk verification app on top of Stripe like riskified or maxmind.

Otherwise they're not that bad. Much better than Authorize.Net which is a dinosaur now.