Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

I&#x27;m one of Stripe&#x27;s cofounders.<p>There are a few reasons businesses end up on our prohibited list: they&#x27;re full of fraud (get rich quick schemes), legally regulated (guns, drugs), or regulated by card companies (pornography).<p>In many ways, I&#x27;d prefer a world where Stripe&#x27;s prohibited business list was no more specific than that of a web hosting service, and didn&#x27;t prohibit anything beyond what&#x27;s required by law.<p>However, there&#x27;s an essential neutrality in the routing of packets that&#x27;s absent in the routing of dollars: credit card networks are emphatically <i>not</i> neutral about the businesses they support on their rails. As such, no matter what stance we might intrinsically want, the outcome is largely determined by what Visa, MasterCard, etc., seek to enforce.<p>This might seem unfair, and the techno-libertarian in me finds the enumeration distasteful and arbitrary. On the other hand, the card networks have accomplished something very hard: <i>billions</i> of people are willing to give online businesses access to <i>arbitrary amounts of money</i>, sight unseen. This is an impressive achievement, and they pulled it off in part by minimizing the number of bad businesses that exist on their network. So there&#x27;s a trade-off.<p>Tl;dr: though we have some influence, we mostly don&#x27;t get to set the rules.

Compare to Braintree (VERY similar):<p>[1] We are unable to underwrite the following business models: (1) door-to-door sales, (2) offering substantial rebates or special incentives to the Cardholder subsequent to the original purchase, (3) negative response marketing, (4) engaging in deceptive marketing practices, (5) sharing Cardholder’s data with another merchant for payment of up-sell or cross-sell product or service, (6) evading Card Network’s chargeback monitoring programs, (7) engaging in any form of licensed or unlicensed aggregation or factoring, (8) airlines, (9) tour operator, (10) age restricted products or services, (11) bail bonds, (12) bankruptcy lawyers, (13) bidding fee auctions, (14) collection agencies, (15) chain letters, (16) check cashing, wire transfers or money orders, (17) counterfeit goods or any product or service that infringes upon the copyright, trademark or trade secrets of any third party, (18) currency exchanges or dealers, (19) embassies, foreign consulates or other foreign governments, (20) firms selling business opportunities, investment opportunities, mortgage consulting or reduction, credit counseling, repair or protection or real estate purchases with no money down, (21) credit card and identity theft protection, (22) cruise lines, (23) essay mills, (24) flea markets, (25) drug paraphernalia, (26) extended warranties, (27) fortune tellers, (28) “get rich quick” schemes; (28) gambling (including but not limited to lotteries, Internet gaming, contests, sweepstakes, or offering of prizes as an inducement to purchase goods or services), (29) sports forecasting or odds making, (30) illegal products or services, (31) mail-order brides, (32) marijuana dispensaries and related businesses, (33) money transmitters or money service businesses, (34) multi-level marketing or pyramid schemes, (35) online or other non-face-to-face pharmacies or pharmacy referral services, (36) prepaid phone cards, phone services or cell phones, (37) pseudo pharmaceuticals, (38) quasi-cash or stored value, (39) securities brokers, (40) sexually-oriented or pornographic products or services, (41) shipping or forwarding brokers, (42) substances designed to mimic illegal drugs, (43) telemarketing, (44) timeshares, (45) travel agencies or travel clubs, (46) online or other non-face-to-face tobacco or e-cigarette sales, (47) weapons and munitions (48) virtual currency or credits that can be monetized, re-sold or converted to physical or digital goods or services or otherwise exit the virtual world, (49) personal computer technical support, (50) human hair, fake hair or hair-extensions, (51) selling social media activity, such as Twitter followers, Facebook likes or Youtube views, (52) Telecommunications equipment and telephone sales, or (53) any product, service or activity that is deceptive, unfair, predatory or prohibited by one or more Card Networks.<p><a href="https://www.braintreepayments.com/faq" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.braintreepayments.com&#x2F;faq</a>

What is absurd about this? This seems to be a list of things where the law is inconsistent across the various states in the US. Accepting these things would likely place a severe state-by-state oversight and compliance burden on Stripe, for very little actual value. It seems pretty smart to me.

I think most of these are reasonable, and I immediately see why they are on the list.<p>I think I know why this is on there:<p>&quot;(10) age restricted products or services&quot;<p>But wouldn&#x27;t that also apply to every business that has a COPPA disclaimer in its ToS.

The only one on here that strikes me as odd is the prohibition on selling fake hair or hair extensions. I&#x27;m curious why that is? I suppose I could see prohibitions on selling human hair, but fake hair seems odd.

A number of the items on that list are restricted due to legal limitations and&#x2F;or concerns. There are a multitude of regulations and requirements that one would have to follow to collect payments on behalf of a legal entity for any number of things on that list. It&#x27;s much easier to just not deal with it.

(50) virtual currency that can be monetized, re-sold or converted to physical or digital goods or services or otherwise exit the virtual world<p>Too bad, indeed.

Does someone more versed in the space care to comment? The title seems like link bait, and I&#x27;d bet there are some not so absurd reasons for a lot of these.

Maybe by absurd it means the number of prohibited businesses? Otherwise it just looks Stripe does not to be involved with shady&#x2F;spammy businesses.

Would a service like Listia.com be against their terms of service? Specifically these seem contradicting:<p>(50) virtual currency that can be monetized, re-sold or converted to physical or digital goods or services or otherwise exit the virtual world<p>===<p>(52) selling video game or virtual world credits (unless you are the operator of the video game or virtual world),

Funny, maybe, but not absurd, at least not in a way that&#x27;s Stripe&#x27;s fault. I&#x27;m curious about the hair one. I wouldn&#x27;t expect selling hair to be a real problem. Is there a story that motivated that restriction? I notice it&#x27;s also in the list of Braintree&#x27;s restrictions that toomuchtodo posted.

And no doubt, like contracts, behind every one of those there is a story ...

Does #10 mean vineyards are not allowed to use Stripe?

fake hair is only one that stands out.

This is totally in line with everything else that comes out of USA these days. Logical and not surprising at all. But it makes me sad.

Why is it absurd?<p>Do you think it&#x27;s absurdly long? Their agreement in general is much shorter than any single one of the several I had to go through to get a merchant account and CC processing service before.<p>Is it absurd because you think the business types they mention are silly? Well, they are silly. But people do them.<p>Is it absurd because you are angry your business is on the list? Well, that&#x27;s life. I, as a valid business owner who uses Stripe, am very glad Stripe protects their relationships &#x2F; value &#x2F; company &#x2F; customer rep time by refusing to serve illegal or borderline illegal businesses, and those with ridiculously high rates of fraud. Yay!

Why does this matter?

That&#x27;s not absurd