Stripe, Inc.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/12/09) */
Stripe operates within a variety of constraints imposed by our banking partners, credit card networks and applicable law. As a result, Stripe must fully understand its users to ensure their businesses are consistent with Stripe's Terms of...

Service. All users agree to these terms when activating Stripe accounts, and the terms are posted here: https://stripe.com/terms
Since Stripe bears financial responsibility for all accounts using Stripe to accept payments, Stripe needs to have a high degree of confidence about their legitimacy, and their likelihood of delivering promised goods and services. Stripe periodically reviews accounts to verify that they meet these standards, and reaches out to merchants should any issues arise.
During a routine review, Stripe identified strong signals that the complainant's account was in violation of the Stripe Terms of Service. Stripe cannot process payments that appear to be unauthorized by the owner of the charged card. On August 24th 2015, Stripe reached out to the complainant to advise them of our decision and the closing of the account.
The closing of this account is in accordance with the following section of the Stripe Terms of Service. Our terms very clearly state that Stripe "may suspend your Stripe Account and your access to the Service and any funds in your Stripe Account, or terminate this Agreement, if we determine in our sole discretion that you are ineligible for the Service because of the risk associated with your Stripe Account, including without limitation significant credit or fraud risk, or for any other reason".
https://stripe.com/us/terms#termination
While we will not be able to continue processing transactions on the account, this does not preclude the complainant from signing into Stripe and accessing any of the account's existing data.

Stripe seemed like a good company and growing company so I decided to give it a try. It is even used by shopify so I thought it was probably safe to go with them. I created a website revolving around Stripe for payment and spent money on that, and before I even got started, stripe terminated my account saying I violated their TOS. They said I have a prohibited business, but the initial website registered wasn't even using stripe at all. I registered it for the second website and was testing it as it wasn't official yet. Without due diligence to see if stripe was used as payment, they just indiscriminately say it's a violation and terminate the account. Even after explanation, they said it's case closed. I'm glad I was just in the testing phase, since there's not complaint process. Had I actually started using stripe to earn revenue from my site, I may lose a lot more than the little I paid to get stripe working on my website. Others have lost lots due to stripe's backward rules and regulations and the lack of customer service and care. They are online in it for your money and your customers money it seems. I guess I won't be using their service at all ever. I suggest that anyone should think twice before using them. I wished other companies didn't use them like shopify, as it would falsely give stripe some validity that they don't deserve. They're a joke of a company. Don't use them. I'm glad they terminated my account as it has saved me more in the long run.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2014/08/05) */
The complainant signed up for a Stripe account on 8/14/2014. On June 27th, Stripe identified strong signals that the account was closely related to other Stripe accounts that were rejected for multiple Terms of Service violations. At that...

point, we contacted the complainant to let them know that Stripe would not be able to process payments on his behalf going forward, and that Stripe was temporarily holding the remaining funds in the account to prevent future disputes.
Stripe has scheduled a transfer of the remaining balance in this account to the complainant, but will not be able to process funds on their behalf in the future. The complainant can refer to the relevant part of our terms of service here:
https://stripe.com/us/terms#termination
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (3000, 7, 2014/08/13) */
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
I don't know what the information means - even the dates mentioned are wrong - when asked several times to resolve this solution over the phone, I was denied, and thus this process took weeks. The "Strong Signals" they mention is a completely ambiguous term. The company kept the money for weeks and would not release it until I complained to this organization. What they did was illegal, and there can be no resolution to that.
Final Business Response /* (4000, 9, 2014/08/15) */
Stripe would like to amend one of the dates mentioned above. The complainant submitted their application for a Stripe account on 8/14/2013 (not 8/14/2014). As mentioned above, the account was then closed on 6/27/2014.
"Strong signals" is indeed an ambiguous term, as the complainant has pointed out. However, it is important that Stripe does not share publicly its procedures for detecting fraudulent accounts. Keeping this information private helps us protect our users and their customers from fraud. In this case, Stripe does have significant evidence that the account in question was conducting dishonest activity.
Closing this account and holding the remaining balance were both within Stripe's Terms of Service. Our terms clearly indicate that Stripe "may suspend your Stripe Account and your access to the Service and any funds in your Stripe Account, or terminate this Agreement, if we determine in our sole discretion that you are ineligible for the Service because of the risk associated with your Stripe Account, including without limitation significant credit or fraud risk, or for any other reason" (found here: https://stripe.com/us/terms#termination).
All funds that were previously held have been refunded to the complainant's customers or transferred to the complainant.

There a good comapany , they respond to your emails asap .. just follow the directions !! all my funds came in $5,000.. 3 diffrent trans.. just follow directions .. I almost didnt use them beacuse of all this reviews this is why I am written this .. Good luck !

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/11/10) */
Stripe processes card payments online for thousands of merchants. The complainant signed up for a service with a merchant who processes payments on Stripe. Sometimes, "Stripe" will appear on customers' credit card statements briefly, and...

then be replaced by the name of the merchant the customer made the purchase from. Stripe has been working with card networks to resolve this issue, so that the appropriate merchant's information appears at the time of the charge. The complainant does not have a Stripe account and has not used Stripe's services directly.
On November 9th, the complainant wrote to Stripe's support team to provide information about charges on an American Express card. We were able to find the name of the merchant who was charging the complainant's card. We responded later that day informing the complainant that the charges were from a service called RankTracker. We also included RankTracker's contact email so the complainant could contact them directly. Stripe sent two response emails to the complainant, both of which are included here, and neither of which include profanity:
"Hi [redacted],
Thanks for writing in!
I'm sorry to hear that you're seeing an unrecognized charge showing up on your card. It seems you recently made a purchase on a website that uses Stripe to process their payments. Stripe processes payments for thousands of websites and businesses.
Sometimes "Stripe" (or a variation thereof) will appear on credit card statements instead of the name of the website or business that you made the purchase on. This is especially a problem with American Express and is something we're working on fixing.
The actual business's name should appear on your statement within a few days.
If you'd rather not wait, and you don't recognize the amount, I could research who the business was and let you know. At very least, this will help stop these charges at their source, since it sounds like it's a recurring problem.
To do that, I'd need a bit more information:
- The exact amount and date of the charge
- Last four digits of the credit card number (not the whole number)
- Card's expiration month and year
I hope to hear back from you."
"Hey there,
Thanks for reaching out regarding these charges. I've done a bit of digging, and it appears that all of these charges have come from a service called RankTracker.
You can find their website here:
www.ranktracker.com
As well as email them at [redacted]@ranktracker.com for billing reasons.
I hope that helps! Let me know if you need any more info! "
Our users are responsible for customer service for their business, so we direct customers who contact Stripe to them for inquiries about refunds. Outside of certain cases where there was fraudulent activity on a card, we do not issue refunds on behalf of our users.
We apologize for the confusion caused by Stripe's information showing up on the complainant's card statement. Looking at the three charges mentioned, it looks like two are currently being disputed by the complainant (charges from September 3rd and November 3rd), and the one from October 3rd was refunded by RankTracker. We recommend that the complainant continue dealing with American Express to resolve this issue.
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (2000, 7, 2015/11/16) */
(The consumer indicated he/she ACCEPTED the response from the business.)

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/02/11) */
Stripe attempted to transfer funds into this user's Bank of Nova Scotia account on January 22nd (for $69.63) and 23rd (for $133.84). Both of these transfers were returned to us, by the bank, with the error "No Account". The account and...

routing numbers for this account were provided directly by the user on October 28, 2014.
We informed the user via email that these transfers had failed. She updated her bank account details on January 24, 2015. We retried a transfer for $759.49 (the account's balance, including that of the previously failed transfers) on February 2nd. This transfer has not been returned to us, as of today, so it would appear that this transfer completed successfully.
We have communicated this to our user via email and the status of her transfers are available in her account dashboard.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/06/24) */
This has been incorrectly marked as a Revdex.com case against Stripe. The complainant is not a Stripe user and their complaint doesn't relate to our website or service. The complaint has been submitted against changemyaddress.net.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/01/28) */
After reviewing the user's submitted information and website, Stripe sent out an email to the customer on Jan. 19, 2015 explaining that we can only support users with a low risk of customer disputes, as her site presented a higher level...

of risk than we can currently support. For context, her business falls under the 'High risk businesses' category, as outlined in our Terms of Service, section B.5 ("Prohibited Businesses"): https://stripe.com/terms#prohibited-businesses
We also mentioned that due to an elevated dispute risk, we have to put her balance on reserve for the next 90 days, which is the industry-standard window. During this period, the funds will help cover any refunds or disputes that come in, and the remaining balance will transfer to her bank account when the window closes. Therefore, once this 90 day period is over, the customer will receive the remaining funds.
The user also wrote in on Jan. 22, 2014 and we responded that same day re-iterating the status of her account, and answered her questions regarding refunds during this process. After that last email exchange, there was no indication from the user that there were any lingering issues or questions to be addressed by Stripe.

You people know better. If this is your idea of doing business with all of these complaints I'm seeing, and now I'm a complainer. I'm still waiting on my little $400.00 to post. The dates keep switching and now like plenty of others you send out an email saying "you're hands are tied" and fraudulent transactions. Lol there's no way to contact you people. Why would you deal with people's money and have no way for them to reach you other than an email. I've never seen business done like this. I'm highly disappointed. PayPal never gave me any issues ever. If it's a problem, call them, they help you fix it and life keeps going. It's 2016 Stripe, step your game up and buy some phones. Quit being cheap especially when you got people all across the world's money in your hands.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/03/25) */
On March 14th, the user reached out to Stripe asking why a payment from over a month earlier had not been transferred to her bank account. A Stripe support representative responded on March 17th, acknowledging the request and letting the...

user know that we were investigating the issue.
There was an error on Stripe's end which had prevented the transfer from going through properly, and in the course of troubleshooting and resolving the issue, we took much longer than usual to respond to the user's messages. We were able to resolve the issue and follow up on March 23rd, and transfers on the user's account are now working as expected.
The representative who responded on the 23rd apologized for the lengthly process, and we'd like to echo that sentiment here. It took too long to respond to and resolve the user's issue, though we are happy to say that, as it stands, the transfer issue is resolved. We will provide faster assistance to this user (and other users with similar issues in the future), and would be happy to assist the user in closer her Stripe account.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 8, 2015/04/06) */
Stripe has taken this opportunity to further review the state of this user's account. We found that the account was indeed closed due to a false positive by Stripe's fraud tooling.
In light of our findings, we have reinstated this...

account; the user is welcome to continue using Stripe and should find that their account will function normally. Unfortunately, because the transactions on this account (though not the account owners themselves) were fraudulently made with stolen credit card numbers, refunds were already issued to protect the cardholders. Had these refunds not been issued, the charges would have been disputed, with the user subject to an additional $15 dispute fee per transaction. However, we do now believe that one of the three payments made may not have been fraudulent. As a result, we have issued a credit for the amount of this transaction on the user's Stripe account.
False positives like this are rare, and Stripe takes them very seriously. Stripe is reviewing this case to determine what led to the first decision and how situations like this can be prevented moving forward. In the meantime, we offer our apologies and invite the user to let us know what if any additional remediation steps they'd like us to take.

Stripe is a rip off. Anyway they want to scam you they will. Long story short I set up an account to be monthly charged 16 dollars. A couple of days later I get an email saying that they signed me up for an annual account at the 96 dollar rate. They took the 96 dollars and more. They don't even have a customer service number and I see why. Their grade should be an F.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/08/26) */
On 14th August, the complainant's account was rejected becuase it violates our Terms of Service. On the 15th August, the complainant accidentally deleted his account. The complainant wrote into us on 17th August requesting we re-open his...

account.
We re-opened the complainant's account on 24th August and informed him of this fact. An initial log-in issue occurred, and this was resolved on 25th August. The complainant is now able to access the payment data for accounting purposes.
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (3000, 7, 2015/09/02) */
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
A problem has been brought to my attention that is extremely urgent. Several customers have brought to me their statements showing that they never received any credits from the refunds that I issued them. I have messaged your support center for support but have not received an answer for over 72 hours. Customers are now threatening to file chargebacks if I don't provide more information to them as to what is going on and why this is happening. Why have my none of my customers received their due refunds that I issued?
Final Business Response /* (4000, 9, 2015/09/08) */
The complainant wrote to Stripe Support three times regarding this issue - on August 28, September 3 and September 5. Stripe Support responded on September 7 with information confirming one specific refund that the complainant referenced by email.
The complainant has not responded to that email requesting further action or information. If the complainant wishes to confirm further refunded transactions, we will need the identifying information for the original charges, and we will be able to confirm whether and how the refund was processed.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 8, 2015/12/26) */
Stripe operates within a variety of constraints imposed by our banking partners, credit card networks and applicable law. Since Stripe bears financial responsibility for all accounts using Stripe to accept payments, Stripe needs to have a...

high degree of confidence about their legitimacy, and their likelihood of delivering promised goods and services. Stripe periodically reviews accounts to verify that they meet these standards, and reaches out to merchants should any issues arise.
After a routine review, Stripe reached out to the complainant on December 11, 2015 asking for confirmation they have ownership of their listed web domain. The complainant confirmed this on December 12th.
The complainant reached out to Stripe on December 17th about her transfers, and we responded letting her know we were in the process of reviewing her information:
"During our review to authenticate that information, we have had to briefly pause your transfers. The review process usually takes a couple of days, and we attempt to make this pause seamless for our users to the greatest extent possible. I apologize that it has come at an inconvenient time for you."
We completed our review of the account on December 21st, and enabled the complainant's transfers that same day. The complainant's transfer was sent out on December 23rd and should arrive soon.
There was a delay between when the complainant confirmed their web domain and when we were able to review their account. We would like to sincerely apologize for this delay in releasing the complainant's transfers.
These precautionary measures are vital to our business, but in this case there was a delay in reviewing the complainant's information. If the complainant has any issues or questions we can help with as they continue to process with Stripe, we will do everything possible to respond quickly.
Final Consumer Response /* (3000, 5, 2015/12/24) */
[redacted],
Thanks for emailing me.
Stripe did contact me via email and my account now says that the transfer of $873.30 is in progress to my account and will be in my account by the 23rd of December. Thank you for helping out.
-[redacted]

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/12/01) */
Stripe operates within a variety of constraints imposed by our banking partners, credit card networks and applicable law. As a result, Stripe must fully understand its users to ensure their businesses are consistent with Stripe's Terms of...

Service. All users agree to these terms when activating Stripe accounts, and the terms are posted here: https://stripe.com/terms
Since Stripe bears financial responsibility for all accounts using Stripe to accept payments, Stripe needs to have a high degree of confidence about their legitimacy, and their likelihood of delivering promised goods and services. Stripe periodically reviews accounts to verify that they meet these standards, and reaches out to merchants should any issues arise.
During a routine review, Stripe identified signals that the complainant's account was potentially in violation of the Stripe Terms of Service. While we were investigating further, we paused transfers out of the complainant's account until November 27 as a precaution.
The pausing of transfers of this account is in accordance with the following section of the Stripe Terms of Service. Our terms state that we "reserve the right to change the Payout Schedule, suspend payouts to your Bank Account, or initiate a Reversal should we determine it is necessary due to pending disputes, excessive or anticipated excessive Chargebacks or Refunds, or other suspicious activity associated with your use of Stripe Payments".
https://stripe.com/us/terms#payout-schedule
On November 27, we determined that we had made a mistake and had mis-identified activity on the account as fraudulent. We then re-enabled the complainant's transfers. All of the above actions are well within our Terms of Service. However, we understand waiting on this verification process can be very stressful and we take these problems seriously. We aim to resolve similar issues much more quickly in the future.
On November 30, the complainant's Stripe balance of $514.02 transferred to her bank account. We would be happy to revisit having the complainant process on Stripe with an invoice of the goods in her store. Otherwise, she is welcome to close her Stripe account following directions on our website:
https://support.stripe.com/questions/how-can-i-close-my-stripe-account

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/04/15) */
A Stripe representative reached out to this user proactively to let them know that we could not support their business on April 8, 2015. This email noted that because of the elevated dispute risk their business poses, we put their...

remaining balance on reserve for 60 days. We noted that the reserve is in place to cover any refunds or disputes that come in, and that any remaining balance will be transferred to their bank account when the 60-day window closes.
We do indicate the possibility of holding funds in a reserve account in our Terms of Service: https://stripe.com/us/terms#reserves
Specifically: where needed, Stripe may, in its sole discretion, set the terms of your Reserve Account and notify you of such terms, which may require that a certain amount (including the full amount) of the funds received for your transaction is held for a period of time or that additional amounts are held in a Reserve Account.
On April 13, 2015, another Stripe representative responded to an inbound email request for explanation indicating the above, and included the original message that was sent. We apologize if these messages did not reach the account owner, and are deeply sorry for the frustration experienced, however we aren't able to release the reserve until the 60-day period has expired.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2014/08/27) */
Stripe helps thousands of merchants accept payments online. We don't charge customers' cards directly and it's an unfortunate bug that sometimes our information shows up on cardholders' bank statements instead of the business's. The...

payment in question would have been made with one of the many online businesses using Stripe to accept payments, and would not have come from Stripe directly. If [redacted] would like to write into us directly (for privacy and security reasons) with information about his charge, we'd be happy to look up the charge information and let him know which of our merchants created the charge. Specifically, the following information would be useful:
- last four digits of the card
- expiration date
- card type
If [redacted] could provide the information he's already conveyed in the email as well, that would be useful as well name on the card, charge amount, date.
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (2000, 7, 2014/08/29) */
(The consumer indicated he/she ACCEPTED the response from the business.)