Looking for someone who can escalate a query through Stripe (I know a lof of of Stripe are reading here including pc).<p>We process about 5-10M a month through Stripe since 2018 without issues. On the 27th of December they have given us 48 hours notice, whilst the entire company is being ran on a skeleton support crew to completely get off stripe and switch to another processor.<p>We've been in touch with them recently and this was never brought up. We've already started the process to switch do an actual acquiring bank rather than a PSP like Stripe but there's no way this can be completed now in 48 hours, IN BETWEEN CHRISTMAS AND NY.<p>This seems to be in line with the race to the bottom support from Stripe but pulling something like this is a new low.<p>So hoping that someone here can escalate.
Just thought I'd point out that, unless the OP has moved companies, the OP runs a payment provider: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27674236" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27674236</a><p>That does not tie in with the OPs comments in this thread. I am happy for the OP to correct me, but thought I'd mention this.
Thinking aloud here, it does seem like (as we've always known), anyone doing eCommerce online is effectively beholden to their payment provider.<p>Given Stripe is pretty popular, it feels like for many it is becoming the "S3" of payments in terms of an API. Would it be viable for others to implement the same API on the basis of compatibility, portability and interoperability?<p>In the past, I recall dealing with systems where you'd have multiple backend processors for major external functions, and you'd load balance which provider was used. Some might have more favourable pricing, and be a preferred partner, while others might be potential future preferred partners being tried out (see how many failures you get from them, compared with the current preferred partner).<p>It seems that, if this was possible to implement (card tokenization obviously being an issue here), you could have multiple independent backend providers implementing the Stripe API as a provider, and you load balance across them.<p>Just like how you could use another S3 API provider for storage if one is giving you hassle, or not offering satisfactory performance or support. Sure, you have migration work to do, but having the same API and underlying properties should speed things up and let you get new transactions onto the new storage ASAP.<p>ACME is like this for SSL - there's now multiple CAs implementing the one API. Could we get there for payments too?
> So hoping that someone here can escalate.<p>Ahh the modern P/I/SAAS method of working.<p>What’s your resilience plan? Surely you have a plan if a supplier stops working with you? With 10M revenue it seems irresponsible to have all your eggs in one basket.
This feels like more like a Reddit post than an HN one to me - light on the details with plenty Russell Conjugation [1]. I know Stripe has had it's support lapses but I highly doubt they'd just suddenly suspend an account doing $10 million per month without any prior engagement.<p>In fact, lower down the thread we can in fact see the OP mentions that rather than processing since 2018 "without issues" as they claim in their post they had their reserve requirements increased a few months ago by Stripe to 50% of revenue held for 90 days!<p>This is a very substantial reserve requirement and presumably there was a conversation between Stripe and the OP's company at the time about the fraud or risk profile that lead Stripe to impose these increased reserve requirements. Presumably whatever prompted the increase in reserve has got worse and caused Stripe to decide the business relationship is no longer worth it.<p>On the other hand - just 48 hours to leave doesn't seem like fair play. So either 1. the OP is misrepresenting the communications they've had with Stripe over the past few months (including how abrupt the shut down notice from Stripe actually is), or 2. Stripe really will make snap algorithmic decisions over the future of businesses without remorse...<p>Maybe there's a way for Stripe to show which it is without breaking any of their privacy considerations.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27181" rel="nofollow">https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27181</a>
That sucks. What reason did they give you? Something vague like "you broke the terms of service" or something more specific? What could customer support tell you?<p>I read you're in the hospitality business, did a whole bunch of people cancel/chargeback because of the omicron covid wave, maybe? Just trying to see if there's any reason Stripe may have picked this moment to kill your contract with them rather than any other.<p>From a business perspective I can see why the timing sucks but this week is just another week, especially with Christmas and NY falling in the weekend. Companies generally try not to pull these stunts around (American) holidays, but there's nothing more special about this week than there is about next week or the week before. You can't expect Stripe to turn off their fraud department for two weeks because it makes the flagged companies sad.
don't switch to Paddle. they shut you down immediately, without 48 hours notice, and without reason at all. and if their GitHub issue system is full of angry customers, they just delete all GitHub issues and comments, instead of improving their service/product.<p>thats why we switched to Stripe, believing they wouldn't shut you down without reason.
You’ve come to the right place!<p>This is where the Stripe CEO will reply to you when all their support processes have failed, and you have no other course to save your business. That’s the way all $122billion companies operate.<p>If he hasn’t been here yet, stay on hold he’ll be here soon.<p>Patrick? Catastrophic customer support fail call for you….<p>(Call waiting music….) Oh dear he’s on Christmas holidays. I’m pretty sure their automated processes suspended your account for good reason. If you feel this is not correct, email your case for why you should be allowed by us to have a working business to noreply@stripe.com
Do you not get to negotiate different terms after X revenue and Y years of customership? The fact that they can end the contract on their side with only a 48h notification period is honestly baffling. I'd expect better terms.
Not very helpful right now, but when your short term issue is resolved you should look into integrating with a payment orchestration layer so that you could easily switch payment processors without having to reintegrate.
I feel for you. I had issues with Stripe, and it's one of the reasons I started building dapps on ETH. People read these stories and still think there's no usecase for a decentralized financial system.
As somebody doing web development for a small business (run by my wife) selling courses online and using Stripe for payment processing, I am a bit concerned by this and other similar posts. So far Stripe has always run smoothly for us (FWIW, we never had a single dispute), but I'd like to have an exit strategy. What other other payment processors similar to Stripe you would suggest? So far I basically only care about credit cards (not other payment methods).
Honest question - I am not familiar with the business realities of taking payments, but here goes:<p>At most companies I’ve worked at, we’ve at least done an exercise in keeping our core business process running or available on a competing cloud / connectivity provider or OS, or on prem and offsite. Is it impractical to try and do this with your payment processor? I.e route every 3rd customer to PayPal instead of stripe? Legislative / contractual reasons prohibit this perhaps?<p>Absolutely not blaming the OP here for their situation, a business has made promises of an easy life for payment processing, they’ve (presumably) been paid by the client but are now causing trouble - this is clearly crappy. But it is not exactly uncommon sadly.<p>Edit: Further reading of the comments here do seem to make out that this case in particular might not be as clear cut as first seen. But my general question still stands.
General question: when switching payment processors, is there some way of taking all those pre-authorized card details with you? Or is the only way to re-prompt all customers for their card details again?
I feel for you. But why run skeleton crew for one of the highest revenue periods in hospitality? Makes you vulnerable at the worst time and sorta kinda a little arrogant.
Did they give you a reason that they are pulling the plug? Was it because your fraud numbers are too high or something?
This same thing happened to a startup I confounded on a Friday afternoon with Chase Payment Services (Paymentech). It was because our fraud numbers had breached 1% which was their line in the sand fraud limit.
We switched to Braintree in a few hours, we already had that code built as a backup.
I don't know the reasons for this, Stripe is also not so used in Italy, btw I think you should never, ever, rely on a single PSP, they have too much power. More than two years ago we had to add electronic payment to the proprietary B2B ecommerce I was working on, first thing was to design an architecture as indipendent as possibile from a specific PSP.
I’ll get to straight to the point: You’re screwed. Also this kind of post style where you air out dirty laundry (if the story is even true) is unlikely to inspire anyone at Stripe to help you. I know some people that work there through my LinkedIn.
Everything about this sounds Phishy to me. Unless You are We-Travel there is something wrong with your supposed numbers and I doubt a company that is listed as a premier flagship customer of stripe would be getting the boot before they took down their promotional material regarding We=Travel.<p>Are You sure your not just dreaming/sleep walking right now?<p>Just to put things in a bit more perspective You claim that You gross between 60 and 100 million per year in sales. Anyone can do a google search of the top global travel companies based on sales and unless You are in the top 100 those numbers don't jive. Any top 100 in the world company would have their lawyers all over this, even over the Christmas to New years dearth.
Will this type of thing still happen when/if we all are using crypto payments?<p>I know that bringing up crypto creates a strong positive/negative "with us or against us" reaction. But it would be great if we could discuss this question on a technical level this time! It is a real question: Will using Bitcoin and the lightning network (or similar technologies) free us from the constant fear that a human or algorithmic error kills our business?
all big tech companies get away with shit customer service because we take it in the ass<p>Why not leave them indefinitely? They get to slack on this and send everyone on to a switchboard because we keep using them