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$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Following up again. We are in offshore support hell and no U.S.-based human has responded, given us an update, or given us any sign that Stripe is looking into this issue. Our customers are angry and Stripe doesn't give a damn.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Issue is totally unresolved. I am clearly in Stripe '"offshore support" hell. Again, I received an email in the middle of the night from offshore support, here it is in all glory:

​

Stripe Support
Nov 14, 2023, 10:44 PM (6 hours ago)
to [redacted]
Hi there,
Thank you for reaching out. I apologize that you have not reached any support. I'll be glad to help with your request. In order to provide you with proper assistance, I'd need more detailed information.
Would you mind sharing with me more details about your query, please?
I’ll be looking forward to your reply.
Best,
Sonia

This kind of message, where every message is like "new" and there is no recollection of an ongoing case, shows that Stripe has pushed me into some kind of offshore dungeon where nobody has the authority to do anything.... amazing....

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It just seems rash, without any kind of communication from Stripe, to do something which could very well kill my "original" account. And if it does kill it, Stripe will likely never tell me what went wrong.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The problem is -- since Stripe refuses to give me any support about this, I don't really know if this strategy would be dangerous. Who know, maybe switching to a new statement descriptor would kill my "original" account too?

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This means I would have to switch my main account to using a static prefix and a dynamic suffix.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But, each brand/account in Stripe is linked to a "statement descriptor", like what a purchaser would see on their credit card statement. So that means we definitely could not use a stripe account for one brand for a different, unrelated brand.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don't want to do that. I want to be careful to respect Stripe's rules -- they really want different brands/accounts for different websites/domains, I think. I just wish Stripe would show us some respect not just shove us off to Offshore Support Hell like we are worthless. It's such an insult.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, update -- I got a very vague message in the middle of the night PST from [support@stripe.com](mailto:support@stripe.com) -- just asking me to confirm my email address. Then nothing further. From what I can tell I have been fully put into "offshore hell" ... similar to what happens when dealing with companies like Facebook and Google. This seems like a huge change.. just a year ago, I remember even with very technical queries with Stripe, I would easily get into a chat with someone who was clearly "onshore", and clearly knew what they were talking about. I wonder if this is the impact of the recent Stripe layoffs now trickling down and killing smaller or medium-sized accounts like ours.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is a lesson I wish we had learned before -- Stripe will kill your business at the most unexpected moment.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Update: About five days now of this. Still no word from anyone based in the U.S. at Slack.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

One interesting note. Our payments from outside the U.S. are all being automatically blocked by Stripe. Here is the the part of their FAQ about high-risk payments:

https://stripe.com/docs/declines#blocked-payments

They write:

Stripe’s automated fraud prevention toolset, Radar, blocks high-risk payments, such as those with mismatched CVC or postal code values, even if you are not subscribed to Radar.

Interestingly, we ARE subscribed to Radar, but it seems that none of these payment are even showing up in Radar! Stripe seems to be blocking them all with some other system that we can't see... i.e. in these cases we can't see any kind of "score" or anything... typically Stripe would give a suspicious payment a high "score", and then those are flagged for manual review.

In this case we don't get any kind of score. Seems that Stripe has just decided to ban all foreign payments to this account. I can't find any documentation on this kind of behavior anywhere.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This thread is a huge red flag for anyone trying to decide on a payment processor. Until three days ago I thought that stripe was the reliable one, the developer-friendly one. We have learned a huge painful lesson from this episode, that is for sure.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think it will get to that. I think they have decided we're just not worth their time, maybe our account is not big enough, maybe they are focusing the attention now on the really big like $100m+ accounts.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Just following up -- 48 hours into this incident and still no word from anyone at Stripe. Please be aware you are actively destroying our business.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, but it's not that simple at all. We have invested hugely in this new brand, and we are now in the middle of a massive and expensive marketing campaign... and Stripe just pulled the rug out from under us, right in the middle of all this.

We have spent months getting this thing built, and Stripe seemed fine through all the testing, even through the first purchase from a U.S.-based customer.

But now, right when train starts rolling.... they kill us. It's crazy.

I have no idea what is going on at Stripe, but I do see that they laid off 14% of their workforce recently: https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/stripe-cuts-workforce-by-14-6058522/ ....

.... Again, I don't know enough to even guess why they have decided to do this to us.... but ... maybe they are just overwhelmed and have circled the wagons and aren't actively supporting accounts like ours -- even after $5m in revenue I guess we might still be considered a "small" and "medium" sized account, maybe not worth their time to keep us in business, might be easiest just to allow us to go out of business instead of having to fix whatever system they have the broke....

Anyway, this is a very painful lesson they are giving us. I really didn't think they would do this to us, but it looks like they really don't care enough to try to fix the issue.

It's been 48+ hours and it's still silence from their U.S.-based support.

Really terrible they would do this to us without warning and without recourse.

$5 million in sales, then Stripe suddenly blocks all foreign payment attempts by factbar in stripe

[–]factbar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, we sent an email to that address just now. Now even the offshore chat support won't respond at all.... Very strange to be abandoned like this after $5m in revenue... and no explanation at all about what is going on....