Overview
Founded in 2010, Stripe (stripe.com) is a web application that allows merchants to accept credit card payments through their websites. The service is particularly tailored to merchants with web development skills who want to customize the application according to their specific payment needs. Stripe is similar to Braintree Payment Solutions in that it does not charge any setup fees, monthly fees or monthly minimum charges. Interestingly, the company has also received investment capital from the founders of another competitor, PayPal. Stripe was founded by brothers John and Patrick Collison, and Patrick currently serves as the company’s CEO. Stripe’s headquarters can be found at 3180 18th St Ste 100, San Francisco, California 94110-2042.
Video Introduction to Stripe
Key Points
- Sales & Marketing: Stripe does not hire independent sales representatives and has received only a few merchant complaints about its sales practices.
- Costs & Contract: Stripe offers a month-to-month contract with no early termination fees.
- Complaints & Service: Stripe has received more than 250 public complaints.
- BBB Rating: Stripe currently has an “A+” rating with the Better Business Bureau based on 394 complaints in the past three years.
- Rates & Fees: How Merchants Avoid Fund Holds With Stripe
Related: Our Top Picks For E-Commerce
Related: Phillip’s Mobile Processing Picks
Stripe Bottom Line
Stripe rates as an average merchant services provider according to our standards. The company has seen a large increase in complaints since our last update, but its overall complaint volume remains low for its size. Stripe’s transparent pricing model appears to satisfy the majority of its clients, but its reserve policy, cancellation policy, and customer support are responsible for most of the company’s complaints. Merchants are encouraged to carefully read Stripe’s terms of service before signing up for credit card processing through this company.
Related: Our Top Picks For E-Commerce
About Phillip Parker
Hi, I’m Phillip and I’m disgusted by the state of credit card processing in the U.S. and abroad. I believe that the industry has been overrun by people who engage in fraud and deception in order to steal money from hard working business owners. I’ve made it my mission to expose the companies and individuals who engage in predatory marketing, pricing, and contracts, or just provide terrible service. Along with uncovering the bad guys, I’ve also discovered the good guys who do stand out from the status quo. CPO is a website where you will find ratings and reviews of these companies along with advice on how to save money and which service providers consider. Together we can move the industry in a positive direction. If you would like to help support my work, please checkout “Fee Sweep” my eGuide to getting the lowest possible fees when accepting card payments. If you haven’t heard of “interchange” this advice will save you hundreds, even thousands, in processing fees.
Schedule a Consultation with Phillip
We started using stripe a few months ago, and i am really disappointed with it. We have to wait a full 7 days from a payment, to process a payout, and then that payout can take 2/3 days. So all in all, we have to wait about 10 days for our funds. Paypal is instant!
I know that Stripe is cheaper, but 10 days?
Basically seems like a scum.
We are “Golden Lion” Bed and Breakfast in Bouillon, Belgium, with hundreds of positive reviews at booking.com and expedia.
We added Stripe after completing our website with WIX and connecting to “WIX hotels”.
After proceeding one minor amount to our account, Stripe blocked the 200 Euro which w received from the customer online at own account, with an absurd notion that they need to “investigate our business”. After complaint I received knee jerk reaction that they cant provide any time-frame when the funds will be released
I have found that this is similar to the problem which many other clients have with their Payment Gateway.
It is logical that financial institution is running a check on its clients, however it would be also logical to run this check BEFORE setting the account, and not after receiving money.
Investigating the client after his funds have came in, without either refunding the person who has sent the money or sending funds to us, sounds like a plain fraud.
No respect for other peoples money is shocking from financial company.
Nicholas, Golden lion, Bouillon
http://www.goldenlion.be
I have utilised ‘STRIPE’ due to the collection of credit card payments via ‘WAVE’ and it has been a debacle!!!
For months now I have not been able to receive the thousands of dollars in credit card payment into my bank account! For the multiple emails sent between ‘STRIPE’, ‘WAVE’ and my bank the issue still has not been resolved!
With no phone contact and the ability to talk to someone has been a bane; though for this company to hold onto my funds, earn interest and not make the payment has been exceedingly underhanded and purely unprofessional.
There is no way in the world that I would recommend this organization to handle anyone’s finances!
Look else where and be careful!!!
Stay clear of stripe, they will hold your funds without reason they don’t answer their email, there’s no phone number to contact either. I think they are stealing peoples money, all my sales were legit there won’t ever be a chargeback
I keep getting an email notice that a large dollar amount is going to be charged to my Stripe account and yet I have no account. This has happened numerous times, total fraud/scam.
This company sucks. No phone # to call for help.
I got a notice that someone is trying to use my acct. – fraud. I can’t even call them to get help.
Bad bad company.
????????
Maria Munoz
This company has taken my business as a joke i have an e mail saying that they can no longer do business with us giving me 5 days to run charges while we migrate into another merchant, now they withholding the money i charge these 2 weeks and keep changing the date i doubt they need the money but i sure do as a small startup business they are ramming my business into the ground by not releasing our money and playing with the date please direct me to someone that can help me get my money or the little they are going to give me back while they steal the rest… !!! ALERT DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THEM THEM THEY APPROVED YOUR COMPANY TO HOLD ON TO YOUR MONEY FOR NO APPARENT REASON WARNING!!!
STRIPE is an overhyped company with no customer service. We had a legitimate customer charge that is processed on STRIPE and waiting transfer since Dec 20th, 2016. More than 5 months. STRIPE is neither allowing REFUND nor transfer money while siting on $2500 charged on the account. Hope there is a legal process to file a CLASS ACTION SUIT against STRIPE and make them responsible for this illegal act. They have no phone number and do not give any valid reason and just sitting on the money. Hope everyone acts quickly move out of STRIPE or choose an alternate payment gateway.
I bad to pay payroll from my personal account because they put my account on reserve I have no complaints or chargebacks!!! stay the fuck away yall!!!
I’ll stick with PayPal! I used stripe (unknowingly) because an online retailer used them. They took money from my card promptly but the retailer refunded over half my money due to missing items and I’m getting more than a little upset at the speed they are refunding my card(they haven’t yet, and it’s pissing me off more every minute!!! I won’t ever use them again and any retailer that does will not get business from me. Stripe Sucks!!!
Same problem. Their phone varification does not send a code. Google sends me a code on my phone twice a day with no problem, but Stripe says I am doing something wrong. They can’t tell me what I am doing wrong , of course, but they wont release my money. It’s been 11 days and I need that money. Their email responses take forever, and they don’t have a phone number? I told them that if they want to verify my phone number they could call me , and their reply, “I wish it was that easy.” Well, it is that easy. Don’t do business with this company!!!
They are the absolute worst. I was told that they were they new “Paypal” that is complete crap!! If there is a dispute and you have proof that the item has been delivered Paypal is there for you. Stripe allowed the bank pull money from my account after the customer was told by both me and USPS that their package was delivered and received by a person. Now I am out over $100 due to the inadequacy of Stripe protecting their sellers. I am trying to migrate asap towards Paypal. I hate stripe and I will be putting my words in dollars when I pull out of their ridiculous platform. Bottom line: Deal with Paypal– Stripe will allow shenanigans and fraud to run rampant and the seller is the one left with pulled funds.
Fraud incident: I submitted the order, the shipping info and the receipt of delivery……this is a complete racket and i hold stripe as the responsible party for this catastrophe as thats who i deal with…..i am out of a $400 purchase plus fees and we are just a small shop….completely devastating. Stripe labels their email as ‘we have some bad news’…..its devastating news……i will broadcast my opinion about this event…..i did my part and stripe failed…..and just points the finger at the criminal who initiated this purchase and their bank…. a catastrophic event has just occurred and even with detailed support it failed……i feel that stripe is involved with this fleecing. Total shock.
TERRIBLE…not even a phone number. I suspect this is a scam/fake company!!
I had a business account with stripe and they suddenly closed my account without any reason. They held my $2000 amount and it has been over 3 months,i have been trying to contact them. They don’t have phone # and they have removed live chat as well. They only option is to email them and every time i email them, i get this reply:
“Thanks for contacting Stripe!
This is just a quick note to let you know we’ve received your message, and will
respond as soon as we can.
Yours,
Stripe”
They are least bothered about replying to their customer especially when they close your account without any reason and keep your money.
If you are a legit company, contact me at my email address [email protected] (my stripe account id) and tell me when then hell will you release my money back to me.
Thanks
Mervette
I have to admit that as bad as paypal is, stripe is even worse. At least after digging around for 30 minutes paypal would give a phone number as allow to place a call to discuss a problem. No such luck with stripe. My problems were several back to back claims of unauthorized transactions after orders were shipped. It looks to me that stripe fraud prevention filters don’t work.
I am switching now to regular credit card processing company. I can’t deal with this incompetence and greed, which is the only way to describe stripe.
I had a large payment posted to my e-commerce Stripe account go missing and trying to resolve this issue has been nothing short of a nightmare. Limited response with no sense urgency, lack of clarity and horrible response time.
Stripe is probably one of the worst companies out there. They take 24hr or sometimes never respond back to emailes regarding issues from unsuccessful payments made by customers, I have lost about 6-10 customers since January because of failed payments. They are currently holding $2500 of my money because someone else used a fake card. I did all the work for the “customer” and I provided all the evidence to stripe but they yet are taking their sweet time. I was advised the investigation time is 2-3 months?! It’s absolutly ridiculous. I would give them a better review if the past 3 months haven’t been this horrible. I would also be writing a review if this public complaint would get an response because clearly my emails aren’t.
HORRIBLE COMPANY! Business BEWARE! Almost every transaction was fraudulent and Stripe lost me over $1500!! They have ZERO Fraud Protection and there is no phone number for this company! I hope they get sued with a class action suit very soon!
Beware and do not use stripe. This company took money out if my bank account to wake up to see my balance was over $500.00 in the negative. For a small business owner like myself is devastating and didn’t even get a chance too contest the disputed charge they just automatically gave my customers money back and now they sat it could take up too 60 days too reverse it and get my money back? No customer service or phone number for customer support they are slow replying back too your email. Had too drip these idiot’s and move on from using there services since any body can dispute a charge and the company that is supposed to be working for me sides up with the consumer and I have to fight to get my money back. I understand disputed charges but think that it’s wrong for the small business man having his money taken from him like Stripe did to me and have to jump through all the hoops too get it back. In my case my customer was happy and kind of did the dispute by mistake but that should have been investigated before Stripe turned my bank account upside down. Now I can’t deposit any money or take credit card transactions or order supplies and materials that I need for my business. Stripe has the most screwed up policies so I definitely do not recommend this company to manage your hard earned work money as I give them a half Star 1star would be to high of a rating. They have screwed me.
Small Businesses beware !
When there is a fraudulent charge against you, Stripe will do everything in their power not to PROTECT you and let you keep the hard earned money you make from a sale. Instead, they will take your money to repay the person who was a victim of fraud. Stripe does a very poor job at protecting their own clients from purchases made form fake credit cards. I had to learn the hard way. I lost my hard earned money from fraudulent cards which Stripe refuses to take responsibility for. I changed to PayPal Payments Pro right away (and oh yes, the have been protecting me in the exact same scenarios Stripe has not) !
This is the first review I’ve ever written, but I felt I needed to because of the way I was treated by Stripe customer support.
Do you know why they are keeping me on a 7 day money hold they keep saying 7 day rolling their policy say after 7 days transaction will post in 2 days they will not release any of my payments until 7 days I think that’s fucking restarted I can even call them just a stupid live chat or email
Let me know if the refounded your money same here I just started with them and they have me on the seven day hold but now we on the 3rd change of date and it’s going over 10 days help what can I do to get my money back?
Bad company no communication whatsoever and holding my money with no excuse just playing with the transfer date I don’t recommend stay away…
Agree 100% I am trying to migrate to Paypal. The person even posted the items I sent to them and was sporting it on their facebook page. Meanwhile they said that they did not receive their item when I have USPS proof that they did. Stripe did nothing!! I hate Stripe!!
Add me to the list of small business owners that took the risk of using Stripe even after reading all of the terrible reviews.
I’ve been using them for 3 months now and nothing but headaches. False charges, charge-backs, holding funds, no customer support…
It is really amazing that this company is able to function this way and continues to get investors.
PLEASE STOP USING THIS COMPANY.
Yes, you are tempted to use them, the same way I was. They “seem legit” and integration is easy. But they will kill your business.
Unless you are a giant company like Uber and have the ability to fight with them – do NOT use STRIPE!
You have been warned!
I have had problems with stripe from the very beginning, they have literally destroyed my business that took me 3 years to build. They have me in a very difficult situation now as no funds can be processed to me, all I got was a BS email saying the account was being closed, every single customer transaction which is not transferred is being reversed back to that customer, and the customer have their goods. I have had sleepless nights and had panic attacks over this as I now have no income to pay bills for my business. They do not care about any customer they care about the interest they get from holding payments and the fees they charge you. They do not reply. I should have new from day one when I noticed there was no contact number to call, that got alarm bells ringing.
I am honestly at my wits end as to what I do next, I have no idea who to contact and have no form of contact with them as each reply is automated and response timeframe is 5-7 days ( that’s If I am lucky to get a response )
I do not know how on earth this company has stayed open, I have been on near enough 42 forums so far with comments from people who were/are with them and have the same trouble, how are they still afloat, how are they allowed to do this? how are they allowed to ruin peoples businesses?
Any help right now would be great as I am at an absolute loss, I honestly feel like calling a day on my business I have worked day and night on through blood sweat and tears.
Sam they have killed my business quite literally. they will not transfer any of my funds nor nothing.
I purchased Trump coins in January in total amount $140. I Have yet to receive them and can’t get hold of anyone to help. I have already been charged. I want my coins. Can you help.
Don’t use stripe! I will never use stripe again. I used stripe over month ago to charge a credit card. I made a partial refund and I’m still waiting for my money!!! I made this charge over month ago and I still don’t have my money in my account. It says scheduling transfer…
There is no phone number to call.
I started using square instead and I have my money in my account in 2 days.
I purchased Trump Coins in December I still have not received the coins and I called Stripes and they said there was nothing they can do, I am not alone if you go to Facebook and look at the site Trump Coins you will see hundreds on there with same complaint. Stripes has to be involved! They told me they have no record but I have the bank receipts that have there name on it.
the worst bunch of thieves on the planet. Everyone told me not to use them. i didnt listen. they keep your money for weeks, make up stories and have THE WORST customer service. run for your life.
My Stripe account all of a sudden is not allowing me to transfer the funds out of my stripe account. They have money that is charges from the week, cleared, well into the 5 figures. All I get is “cannot create transfer, send us an email” to which I did an hour ago with no response yet. They say, we’ll respond within 24 hours, or maybe even faster. This is going to be a domino effect of pains in my ass without that money, and I hadn’t noticed it until 4pm on a Friday. It may be worth while to pay additional fees to a bank to avoid this crap. I have yet to figure out what’s going on, but I’ll be really mad if I have to contact all of my customers to charge back their transactions and re-run them with a different service.
I had one sale that was normal and successful. They emailed me saying my business was high risk and I have too many disputes and refunded transactions. Which was a lie, I only had one successful sale. They said I had 5 days before they stop accepting payments. They changed their policy that they will hold reserves for 90 days. Then 3 days later they changed my reserve from $0 to the full amount that was supposed to transfer the next day, $12.31. That’s just really really really bad business practice: To change a policy after the fact. This company is awful and it makes me sick cause the owners are billionaires!
I subcribe to stripe after anlo 4 days they told me i cant use their system cause a buyer have made a unautorize credit card payment . I cant because someone else ( a buyer ) use a autorize credit card .I v been punish because of some buyer made a fake credit card .What a bunch of company scrap this is im the seller and I cant use their payment system because of a stupid buyer .this is stupid its not my fault and im not responsable for the actions of someone else. This company is stupid . what a joke. Dont use their lame system cause youll see if someone make a unautorize payment you ll be ban like i was. HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED . I suggest using Paypal .
STRIPE JUST Keeps changing the Transfer date Every day. from 1/30/17 to 2/1/17 to 2/2/17 has this happened to anyone else an have they got there money they won’t answer my emails i have customers waiting on produt it been 10 days now
My company is dealing with this very thing now. It is killing my business. They’re holding over $15,000 for two weeks!
Hi, did you ever get your money back???
Hi,
I have my money in the stripe wallet. It’s been an year now, is there a way I can get it back
Sunny
They are pushing my transfer dates everyday! Has anyone ever got paid from this website ever???
This has happened to me I am at my wits end my business is about to go bust because they cannot transfer any of the money to keep it going. They then told me all transactions will be refunded back to customer so now I have to get every item off the customer back as they will have their money back. I honestly cannot believe this company is still going i just cant believe what i have been reading all over
Nell from Stripe got in touch to say Stripe could not support our business (we sell advertising space!) and is unresponsive when I requested a refund. I believe they’re holding up funds to shore up their woeful operation aka Ponzi scheme!
Word of advice for Stripe:
If you are unintentionally delaying the refund, then you need to re-evaluate how you run your customer relations departments otherwise you will find nobody will trust you with their business and money.
They are scammer, they sell their service as payment gateway and even after using their shopping card plugins to do check for validity of purchaser any reported fraudulent transaction, they forced you to pay for them out from your own account. They the one checking it and approving it as valid previously. Avoid them at all cost. They will cause you nothing but grief and in the end lost of money and time.
My experience with stripe
the beginning.
launched a company
Went international
Built an open payment gateway that had fraud protection
the build
we used both PayPal and stripe
no charge back from PayPal. Fraud protect system works and was sufficient in acquired information to pass any inspection of transaction via ip.
stripe.com listed all transactions as fraudulent based on EIN numbers. We were 100 % legit. They took over 3000 in prior sales, 1200 of which came directly out of someone’s social security funds. Then they complained to the authorities about harassment after stealing this former us marines money because it threw him into a ptsd episode.
They tried to return 515 dollars of that man’s money, which was returned to back to stripe.com which immediately was immediately followed by his detaiNing
That man spent 2 months in jail over harassment of his social security funds being garnished illegally as stripe.com was made aware of the situation.
There is now a nocontact order between that man and stripe.com / ceo jon zeiger.
they still have not returned his cash, nor followed up with proper research on the business transactions which were shown as legit.
they even labeled donations from menial fundraisers from local friends as fraudulent.
B È W A R E
If you use this company, be prepared for being robbed, and them using the fbi, and local Authorities to cover up their own illegal activities.
their game is simply to create a system that taxes the merchant literally out of business, by way of financing and product.
we know this. Personally. Due to this experience our lives will never be the same. Thanks.
we will be seeking damages.
Sylvia do you have an email i can contact you on ? this is happening with me now and i am at a loss as to what i do
we found that the best option was to report to the BBB and to file with an attorney over damages and to cease all communication with stripe.com. we are still open to negotiating our terms with stripe over the funds that they wrongfully took through their predatory Bank practices. I hope this helps and finds you well
STRIPE JUST Keeps changing the Transfer date @ 12am eastern time Every day. from 1/6/17 to 1/9/17 to 1/10/17 to 1/11/17 & I checked it 1 hour ago & guess what it says now… 1/12/2017. I spoke via Email to Whitney & Brendan they both said it would transfer 1/11/2017. THEY BOTH LIED!
I am facebook messaging both of the CEOs Patrick & John Collison. I Sent DMs via Twitter, I mentioned them in tweets, I sent Emails via stripe.com. HOW ARE THEY STILL IN BUSINESS?! NEW BUSINESS is what keeps there ponzi scheme afloat I’m reporting them to my local news channel ABC 11 for investigation!
Have you ever received your money
They same thing is happening to me did you ever get your money
Their support team is very unprofessional and does not respond to urgent issues in a timely manner. We had our customer’s payments held up for 9 days (yes, 9 days), and Stripe kept saying “we’ll send you an email to let you know what is going on.” I never received an email. They also do not provide phone support, and we literally had no way to have our matter addressed in a timely manner. Next time, I’d look into Braintree as another option.
Still waiting on a pending direct deposit payment. It has been a week since payment has been held by Stripe. It appears to me Stripe is floating (holding) cash deposits as an intentional delay tactic for additional interest revenue. This is only company I know that floats EFT between banks for 5-7 days.
the worse company ever its the biggest scam ever i dont know how they could still be in business they do whatever they want with your money take from your account with no explanation freeze your money for months on end and not even tell you why
Stay Way they are just like PayPal or Worst. You better stick to Australian Banks or a Australian Gateway Payment company based in Australia Stripe is a US company who has offices in Sydney they do have a ABN number in Australia and you can however file a case on the Financial Ombudsman Services against them just like you do against PayPal if they freeze your funds illegally. 4 Stars ???????? lol Can’t really trust on a company who has absolutely no customer service at all not even a phone number. I can’t believe how stupid I was when I decide to use this company on my website.They will freeze your funds just like PayPal for no concrete reason illegally and in a predatory way. Our company was just 3 months old and we were doing good sales as Parallel importers out no where and against their terms we were forced to provided authorization for selling the goods we are selling. Now I ask when do Stripe has any authority to ask us to do that ? There’s nothing in their terms and I did check that because moving from PayPal this was my main issue. Perhaps they don’t know the Australian Government policy was developed to allow parallel importation, so brands could not get away with huge price discrepancies between markets, and therefore consumers could enjoy prices comparable with overseas markets.Is completely unacceptable when they are not the trademark owner and when we have a clear disclaimer in place saying we are no authorize and we follow the ACCC guidelines of Parallel importation providing all warranty and support ourselves. We are in the process of closing our account and I am alerting anyone who uses this company to move way as quickly as possible.
Oh i am so glad to read this Luciano in that I have lost funds to the ether in a two transactions between WAVE and STRIPE this week and neither party will help me fix it – it goes round and round in circles. I am literally at my desk on a thursday after wasting all week trying to get this matter resolved and in tears – I can’t afford to not receive this invoice payment and I am so upset that I have signed up for this service on my new website also. Stay away from WAVE also – no customer support of any value basically they are all completely incompetent. reading these reviews I can’t believe that no one else has warned me of this disgusting behaviour of this payment gateway frauds before. I have never had a problem with PayPal but as this is a NGO we have to use Stripe or a local Australian banks gateway which has more fees, but will be more secure so I am going to suck it up and shift to Westpacs merchant system. I pray filing the complaint and disputing the payments at payer end will resolve this.
Thanks to everyone that has posted here and I am so saddened to read the earlier review about the ex serviceman it is deplorable. how can humans be so unkind to each other.
Terrible company! They have been holding my money for 3 months now. Now they are telling me that another customer had a dispute. I don’t believe them at all. I know that no one is going to wait 3 months after they purchased something and then dispute a charge. People get statements monthly. If someone had had a problem, they would have done something before now. Besides, I know that NO ONE disputed anything. Why can’t all of us take out a class action suit against Stripe? Why are they getting away with doing all of these things against so many of us! They are withholding OUR money.
We can tell you for a fact STRIPE SUCKS! They are the biggest con artists around! Do not trust Stripe under any circumstances. First regardless of what type of account you open (type of business) they will immediately tell you that you have to wait 7 days to get your money. Every single transaction you get you have to go into your Stripe account to make sure the billing credit card address is validated. Stripe Promotes Fraud! When you question Stripe to why they don’t validate credit card addresses you get every single excuse imaginable! The biggest fraud commited by buyers is non receipt of merchandise in which the merchant has to prove that they shipped it to the credit card address. Stripe purposely doesnt implement this because they want to charge you $15 for the chargeback fee and catch you sleeping if you dont check the account to make sure the address is a valid credit card address. IMPORTANTLY : Stripe will make any excuse possible for closing your account making another excuse saying your to high risk. Do not plan on opening a Stripe account if you plan on selling electronics, computer items or anything that is considered high risk goods, they will shut you down immediately. They will send out a BS email saying 10 seconds after a customer completed a transaction from you, that every single customer called them saying they didnt authorize the transaction. That is 100% BS lie, the buyer doesnt know you process through stripe nor would they immediately call Stripe to make that complain. They want to put the blame on someone else for closing your account. Every time you try to contact them, you get a worthless excuse every single time. Do not trust them, trust us!
And we also have to state for sellers who had their stripe account locked, Stripe will deliberately remove the refund button on any purchases they place on hold. They do this so that you the merchant would incure a chargeback for non receipt of merchandise. They will say the money is going to be desposited into your account in 7 days, then when 2 days are left, they will immediately change it back to 7 every single time. Remember if any merchant company doesnt place the money into your physical possession you have no legal obligation to ship anything out. If there is a chargeback its clear the merchant processing company did not deposit the funds into your account and is illegally holding funds. Regardless of what a merchant processing company says, if your not legally paid for something you have no legal obligations to do anyting, sue the merchant processing company if you encure a chargeback when they dont deposit the funds into your account and in the reply state numeorus times for your processing company to provide documented proof they deposited the funds into the bank account you specified.
They put your account on hold with out notice they dont tell you what you did wrong or anything not sure why shopify uses them they hold your money make interest on the money 2 weeks later you will get some automated email response that you have a high risk or they suspect you processing charges with out owners consent. What a joke of a company they could give two shits about you.
Send out an invoice with all our payment methods, the customer sends payment from a button on our invoice to go email. And I have to accept 2.9% less from my payment. The worse still part is it’s going to take another seven days for me to get paid…not happy at all. Fuck u stripe. Legal con men is what u are
Did they ever pay you, by the way?
STRIPE is a fraud . They let anyone sign up , and hold there funds until you give up . It’s the biggest scam on the internet. Do not open an account .
They are bloody fraud and cheaters. I will definitely take them to court and make sure that they never be able to cheat anyone. They will raise false dispute and when as a company you ask them that show the copy of dispute they will never represent the same. Its a merely false company and you can also check why I am saying that by visiting their facebook page, over their they have disable the message functionality. I request you guys if you love your money then don’t trust this payment gateway. The one who is already cheated please mail me your scenario to make the case more stronger. My email id is [REDACTED – personal contact information].
Worst service faced ever. They do not have a contact number and they just copy paste the email whatever your issue is. DO NOT go with it for any reason what so ever…Go with payment gateways who have a phone service
This company does not want to speak to any of its customers they do not have a phone number to call! My customer had to email mail them about a charge dispute he never claimed, I ended up losing my customer.
Do not currently have, never have had nor do I own a small business yet I get multiple daily emails congratulating me on a deposit and then threatening me that my account will be suspended if I don’t confirm my email address. I continuously send the emails to junk mail, why would I confirm my email if I don’t have an account? Sounds like a scam to me.
Oh well, their customer service improved. They reply to your emails… but to set up Stripe you need to be an engineer. I haven’t started making money with my business yet, but reading these comments doesn’t really make me feel comfy.
Wait until you are hit with a chargeback. Stripe does nothing to defend you and they simply give your money away to credit card company for a product that was purchased by real customer and was delivered by UPS with tracking number and proof of delivery. All of which including customer communication via email was provided as proof to Stripe but they came back and said we have bad news, the dispute did not end in your favour. That is all….
So as a merchant i lost hundreds of Dollars for this order that was shipped and and this scumbag just tried to see if he can get his money back and sure enough he did because i use Stripe.
Stay away, can you imagine losing hundreds or even thousands of Dollars?
I was burnt and this was the first chargeback experience i had and i simply lost it because Stripe didn’t do anything about it.
Stay away from Stripe, the will not protect your money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! simple.
Our company has been with Stripe for a little longer than a year, and for the most part everything was smooth. Recently they ‘misplaced’ a transfer, and our company funds were never successfully deposited in our account. I first contacted the bank, then gave it a few days grace and contacted Stripe. They responded within 24 hours to tell me that the transfer was successful to to please give it a few more days. I did so (including a day longer than recommended), and contacted them again. They sent me back a similarly worded response about the transfer being successful, with no real recourse but to tell me that they understand my frustration.
It’s been nearly a week since the transfer should have happened, and more than 10 days since Stripe initially received the money from our customer. They have offered no real solution, so I’ve been forced to take action against them.
We are also actively recruiting another processing company. It’s a bit sad that this company got support from Paypal, which has a much more solid reputation in terms of due diligence and resolutions. Stripe appears cavalier about its reputation and ability to perform its advertised services in a timely and effective manner.
At this point I’m not sure if we’ll ever receive the money from Stripe, and I’ve taken steps to try and recoup the loss. This is a disgusting way to do business, and a great way to go OUT of business. I wouldn’t recommend this company to anyone.
WITHOLD FUNDS STRIPE ** Touch these at your peril. Do everything and everything to withold funds. ABSOLUTELY NO CONTACT PRICEDURE. Ask yourself this, would you want a company to have your hard earned money who do not even have a customer service number? Told me my payment would be kept for 90 days. I had to refund the client and get them to pay again through a proper merchant. You simply cannot contact them other than lengthy time wise emails. Simple, pick abother company.
Hate this payment service!!! 5 days to get payment is to long for any small business. Love Square!!! Next day payments. Can’t wait for Squarespace to get rid of Stripe!
I have had more chargebacks using Stripe in the past 6 months than I have in the past 6 years using other payment gateways. Stripe are just not very good at protecting you from fraudulent transactions; the options you have as a seller to protect yourself from fraud are very limited (for example, they do not support 3D secure). Their fraud screening is very patchy – sometimes allowing obviously fraudulent transactions to go through, even though they have blocked many similar transactions.
To make matters worse, Stripe do not fight on your behalf when it comes to chargebacks. I just do not feel that Stripe are “on my side”.
Fraud protection is not a high priority for stripe. Indeed, chargebacks would seem highly profitable for them, with Stripe charging a substantial fee to cover the cost of processing each dispute.
My advice would be to stay away from Stripe.
So I am a cam model starting up my own monthly subscription website selling my pictures, calendars, and social media sites. I have been using PayPal so far but resently they shut my account down do to “PayPal may not be used to send or receive
payments for certain sexually oriented materials or services or for items
that could be considered obscene.” Holding all of my funds. I was devistated because I still had to send out the products. Yes my material is definitely R Rated. What would be the best processor to use that will not care what I am selling. I’ve looked at KERPAY which states it can be used for any personal or business purpose. But they are back ended with STIPE and seems to be a new company with little to no reviews. Reading all of STRIPE reviews of people getting there funds with held definitely discouraging me from using them. And since BRAINTREE is back by PayPal another red flag for me. Is there any other good subscription based pay portals that are more lenient on so called “obscene material”? I have been having to keep up with all of the book keeping and payments myself manually and as my following grows it is getting a bit out of my control. I want a modem that will automatically deduct these monthly payments. Preferably without having to set up an account or profile. Please help me
Snapchat has a way to send money I believe, so does Facebook. Not sure who the processors are for either tho. How people get around the “adult” restriction on paypal is they get creative in the descriptions of the items they sell and don’t associate anything adult with it, like a website url in the invoice that is adult. PayPal reviews all invoices and transactions, so that’s how they found out what you were up to. You can find plenty of processors that will give you a keypad terminal so you can do phone processing, where the terminal dials up every time, or even uses your home internet connection. Why not just do that? They don’t usually care what you are selling as long as it’s not illegal. Psychics use them all the time that aren’t on those big psychic lines with 100’s ready to take your call.
Having successfully run business via three stripe accounts I am now locked out of all of them. I complete the photo puzzle every time and put in the correct access details but its always wrong. Customer service do not call. The emails are standard replies telling me to login first, which I cant. Then send me a new link to change my pw which expires in minutes. What is going on?
I thought I was the only one… I too am locked out. My username and password has now been changed or locked. I cannot get in either. Their reset password does not even work and sends me no emails to reset my password.
Fees are acceptible but not when it comes to chargebacks. $15 for a chargeback fee is exorbitant and i doubt Stripe needs to do much to submit the evidence that we users provide. I’m almost convinced it is their way of squeezing more money from merchants who are unfortunate enough to end up in a dispute.
Also, If the billing and shipping address of an order matches and all other checks pass, i don’t see why you should let the bank declare it as fraudulent. I submitted full proof evidence for the order but I still lost the case. If you are going to charge $15 for disputes, Stripe had better make sure that merchants are protected too.
Stripe will do anything and everything to steal people’s money. Whether your a merchant or a buyer. Chargeback fees are common and regardless of who you deal with your going to get hit with chargeback fees from everyone regardless. The fact Stripe does nothing but make excuses and lies so they can justify stealing every cent they can from you. In fact Stripe has their system set up so that you’d purposely loose any chargeback for non receipt of merchandise. You hear every single lying excuse from them. Reality is that Stripe purposely designed their so called verification system as a scam. They will pass a credit card if the billing address doesnt match, and will allow the zip code and csv to pass. The fact that if any buyer disputes a transaction for non receipt of merchandise, the seller has to prove they sent it to the buyer’s credit card’s physical address. So why would a credit card processing company deliberately make a system that will allow a card to go through if the billing address fails verification, but at the same time they have it in the system to only block a payment if the csv and/or zip code doesnt match. The reason is chargeback fees. We questioned them 7 different times and each time we got nothing but lying pathetic excuse as an answer to why they will allow this type of chargebacks to occur if they do. Do not trust this company at all costs. Everything we have said about this company is true and its documented.
Stripe is virtually dependent on WellsFargo and are doing false advertising, bait and switch to catch all as possible small and mid size business in quantity, after few transactions, months or a year they discard several business using some excuses based on TOS even if past records are good ones.
They allow all prohibited business from big players and promote them, they try to find how to catch all business as possible and then they discard mid size and small accounts out when they like under the Terms of Service (TOS) excuses.
Most of the business are in the list of ¨prohibited business¨ TaskRabbit.com (Computer repairs and other banned services), Lift.com (travel services), BestBuy.com (Computer repairs and branded products using sellers in their marketplace) sells products that are in the prohibited business list but was supported by stripe.
We sell over $ 1 million at stripe with good records but our growth was quickly from $20K a month to $200K a month in 1 year, we sell overseas and our chargback ratio is well belo 1%
They reviewed our account for the increased volume and without any instance of proofing they conclude that we are doing ¨prohibited business¨ selling branded products. Even after we sent several emails with proff of purchase and agreements that proof we sell only original items they continue with same answer, finally they change and say ok but you are doing ¨Drop shipping¨ that is also false as we buy receive in our warehouse the products and then sell to final customers. Anything (excuses) where used to keep us out. Real reson is under investigation by us to sue them we find as a possible reason one or more of the following:
1. simply discrimination.
2. pressure from one brand that works with Stripe or WellsFargo and don´t like that brand in our eCommerce site.
3. Avoiding a business that are selling cross border and maybe is non-proffitable for Stripe based on the fixed fee of 2.9% most cross border transactions are non-proffitable for Stripe.
However with a large customer base on board attracted with easy application process Stripe can select what they want to continue serving and what they want to keep out. Hurting business and industry.
Application on Stripe is easy even working with them for months or even years, but from time to time Stripe reduce their customer base based on unclear parameters, may be under covering other reasons (risks, customer support, pressure from other bigger stripe customers).
Most of the time Stripe will send an email with a robot paragraph like this:
It does seem that your business is in violation of our Terms of Service, section B.5 (“Prohibited Businesses”). Specifically, we are unable to accept payments for brand name goods resold without permission as mentioned here.
That’s it, hope this will change but Stripe is now under pressure of Wells Fargo and Big brands that means not longer support start up business.
The Monopoly of Credit Cards is a nightmare that need to be addressed by legal departments to avoid abuses in Fees, Business innovation and other important things for developing new business.
In middle time companies like Stripe that started as a good intention company to support innovative business will fall in the bureaucracy and rules of Establishment and finally will do the same of any other big credit card processor in industry (protect big fishes from small ones).
Good luck to Stripe customers and Stripe founders that works now like employees of Wells Fargo.
Just an update, Stripe will make you go through every single BS for verification and then give you a BS response to keep your account closed. They will make you do 2 charges to your account to validate who you are and then give you their general BS to close the account, like they did with others saying that your too high risk. That’s a load of BS because we have had a stripe account using it once in a while for 1 year and about 50 transactions without a single dispute. They make you go through all this time wasting, just to get more information so they can use it against you with collections or whatsover.
Anyone ever using stripe that they haven’t deposited funds into your bank account, remember your not legally paid for any products unless the funds are in your bank account. If you get a chargeback and stripe hasnt put the money in your bank account, you demand stripe to provide documentation they placed the funds into your bank account to make the transaction legal, or else you are not legally entitled to do anything. File a dispute with the Attorney Generals Office and the FTC against stripe.
First and foremost let me add additional information regarding these scumbags at Stripe.com and the games they play. Put simply Stripe.com steals money from any source they can get their hands on. (1) they will approve you for an account. (2) then they will send you an email saying basically “sorry your high risk so now your going to 7 day hold (3) get a few transactions and then they send you another lying email saying “oh sorry your account is now closed because the people that just purchased an from you 10 seconds ago just contacted us and said they never authorized the transaction (4) you’ll go into your account and see the funds date – on the date of the funds are so called to be transfered into your bank account, they move the date up a day, then next day they do the same thing (5) when you had enough of Stripe’s BS, they purposely disable the refund button so you cant even send the money back to the customer because stripe steals everything.
Remember your under no legal obligation to send any products out until your legally paid for it. If you get a chargeback because of stripes bs, reply back to the chargeback making a statement of proof that Stripe actually placed the funds into your bank account to legalize the sale, state that Stripe was the one that was the reason the chargeback was initiated, and the fact you tried to refund the buyer, but striped blocked you. File a law suit against Stripe.com. Because this is exactly what happens. They hide behind an email system playing stupid on purpose, you contact them via phone, you just get a recording.
STRIPE IS WORSE THAN PAYPAL. They love to send out automated messages that are outright lies. They make BS claims saying the customer that just bought the product not even 30 seconds ago didnt authorize the transaction and they closed the account. This is total BS because we had 2 charges for $10 and one for $1 for a test charge to see if the site was working fine. With in an hour of opening the account, after completing their BS verification, tax id and SSN, they gave me this bull crap letter saying :
Our systems recently identified charges that appear to be unauthorized by the cardholder, meaning that the owner of the credit or debit card did not consent to these payments. This unfortunately means that we will no longer be able to accept payments for (OmIted)
We’re sorry that we won’t be able to offer you service going forward, but our restrictions here are firm. If you believe that we’ve .
This is just an excuse to close your account, after they give you BS they make you charge several things to your card and then reverse them. Not only do you have to wait 7 plus days to get your money, they love to give you the run around to promote charge backs. DO yourself a favor, stay away from these theives.
I am a Certified Apple Repairs Engineer who is now independent and been running my own business buying and selling computers and all repairs. I had started to use a invoice system that used stripe and had one customer who had bought many products worth nearly £9000.Once the customer paid for the goods stripe had taken a very long time to process the payments saying its there “security checks” 14 days to be exact .. After 2 months from payment, purchases from the customer came back as fraudulent and i received alerts saying fraudulent cards have been used. Well it gives you a chance to give them the purchase and delivery info. Well i gave them all the details and address and tracking numbers that the products had been sent to with all tracking details, to say the product has been sent and recieved. After all the detailed info i gave it has come back unsuccessful and to say it had sided with the customer.. and fraudulent.and saying i owe £9000!! So many questions have been risen and one is why on earth do they say they are doing security checks in the 14 day period!!! why have they not seen the card address is the same as the delivery address?so all that time its just sat in there bank what for ? … . For all i know they could be lying about the fraud and just trying to charge back the money. Why would they not try and fight for the seller who has sent thousands of pounds of goods?? Or get the customers bank to get in touch for further investigation? They come across very dishonest and unprofessional. Very poor service and appears to be a major scam .
Stripe canceled their service just after 4 sales, saying that someone used a card without the consent of the owner.
I received just an email from their “support”.
The email was so short and badly phrased that I thought it was a phishing.
They directed me to paymentcloudinc, because they stated my business was a risk business.
I sell normal products to normal people, no porno, nothing weird…
Now they flagged me as risky business, for that issue where noone lost any money because I refunded the customer before sending the goods.
So as a result the other processors refuse to work with me, like Braintree, without any further inquiry, because Stripe flagged me.
So NO BIG TIME NO, I don’t recommend you to use Stripe EVER!
I wrote a review on BBBusiness.com, and Stripe answered a very appalling answer : saying that by their term of use : they have the right to stop a service whenever they want, they have the right to stop the money transfer for whatever reason they want, you are not covered anyhow in case of fraud, and so on.
So yes, working with Stripe is at your own risks, and they will be high.
I have been using Stripe for my online Shopify site. Two weeks ago, Shopify stopped paying out the money my customers were giving them. They gave no notice – and no explanation. Two weeks of constant online chats and emails provided no answers. Shopify said it was Stripes fault. Stripe said it was Shopify. After initiating legal action to get back the $52000 from Shopify, they suddenly ‘found’ the 52K. Apparently Stripe had frozen my account for ‘review’ without informing me and without admitting they had done so. We had done nothing wrong. This sort of action could break a small business (and nearly did.) Basically they will keep your money and deny they have it.
They just did this with me today and looks like they have broke my business. I have cried non stop i could be sick my business was perfevt for 3 years untill i wen with stripe. No email no nothing they will not transfermy money but instead have reserved £23k for 3 months
Stripe is the worst service I ever experienced.
I sell normal items on shopify.
After just 5 commands, they sent me a 2 lines email saying they stop their service because someone used a card without the consent of the owner…
No more information and nothing on my dashboard no neither.
They send me to paymentcloudinc which is an affiliated, unknown, gateway payment for risky business, which is not my case.
But it is surely a clever scheme to make me pay sky high rates for a service I don’t need.
Stripe are bad and unprofessional, they never answer to my questions about this issue.
It is like the support service is just an empty shell with very few people sending automated emails.
Lame, all the way.
Terrible customer service. Stay away from these scammers. What a terrible experience with Stripe. I had a large transaction for used computers. Stripe reached out to me to ask for invoice. I sent the invoice and a credit card authorization that my client gave me.
I got an email from them “While we hate to give you anything less than a great experience, it does seem that your business is in violation of our Terms of Service, section B.5 (“Prohibited Businesses”). Specifically, we are unable to accept payments for brand name goods resold without permission as mentioned here. https://stripe.com/terms#prohibited-businesses.
I read the section they are referring to, and there is nothing to indicate that I am in violation. I sell used computers all the time via EBay and Amazon and I never had a problem. They gave me a bull excuse that it is not their fault but the banks “These regulations come from our banking partners, so we sadly have no flexibility with them.” I guess Amazon and EBay are not following these so called banking regulations (sarcasm).
Now they are telling me they are holding the funds for 90 days. This is large sum and they are putting me out of business.
I can’t get a hold of them as they don’t have a phone number and I emailed three times, nothing.
I want to sue these guys.
did you ever get your money?!?!? I need to know because I am considering refunding 50 orders back because stripe keep delaying the transfer to my bank account and now they are not responding to my emails?!!
I moved to Stripe around 2 years ago and am very happy with them and now have 2 accounts for different business streams. We are in the UK and almost all our sales are software and other immediate delivery digital product. We get our money exactly one week after the sale happens and have never experienced any issues with funds being withheld.
The service IS a bit technical and is aimed towards developers – it can be quick to set up but it is important that you understand the requirements and the processes of taking a payment through to receiving your money.
I was previously with WorldPay and I find Stripe a lot better – transparent charging and no annual fees (has saved me a lot of money) and an API that I have used to set up processes so I can transfer all transactions to my accounts program – that has not been a trivial task overall but saves hours of clerical work down the line.
Stay away from this company. They approved our account and we let it sit for over a week before using it for the first time. They promptly seized our money and said our website did not meet their requirements. Never told us WHY it did not meet their requirements. They demanded to see an invoice of the transaction. We provided an invoice and they sent us the same form letter demanding to see an invoice… as if they never looked at the one we sent. They DEMAND that we have a phone number and take calls from OUR customers yet they do not do it themselves… shady, shaky, FRAUD!!! For almost a week there was nothing wrong with our website until we stepped into their mouse trap.
STAY AWAY!
I started a new business selling women’s clothing for the summer.
For the first few days I didn’t make any money until I started advertising on Facebook .. Then the money started coming in.
I made around £5000 in sales in just under two weeks but then I received an email from stripe saying they won’t be able to accept payments on my behalf anymore.
Then a day later they said my business model was RISKY and they will be holding ALL FUNDS for 90 days!!!!
I emailed them asking why and they said its to prevent excessive charge backs ….
I haven’t received one charge back .. So they are lying.
What is so risky about selling women’s clothing online…. They are obviously holding my money in their account and making money/ using it to fund their business!
The worst part is that I don’t have any money to send items off to my customers!
So now they are basically forcing me to kill off my business by refunding all of my customers!
I have not even received a penny from stripe yet!
How do they expect me to ship items to customers,
Pay suppliers and pay for my advertising and website costs when they are holding ALL my funds!!!
I’m trying to find a number to call or an office address in London so I can actually talk with one of their employees face to face as they rarely reply to any of my emails and usually after 2-3 days…
Why are they so afraid to talk over the phone…
It’s like they know what they are doing is wrong bevause they don’t have anyone shouting at them over the phone they ain’t bothered!
WORST COMPANY EVER.
They have literally killed my new business within two weeks.
Scumbags and cowards.
They are the worst ever. They said one of my customers claimed he did not authorize the payment. He found the item cheaper, but I had already shipped the item so could not refund. They told me they could not deal with me from this point forward and would be refunding all my money they have to customers. These customers have already received their items. They said to work it out with them-meaning the customers. Today they say they can’t give me my money because they cannot take my business. This was money already earned. Items shipped. 7 days BEFORE they decided to shut me down.
Did you ever get the money????? I am having same problem
Absolutely horrible this is the second time this is happening with me with this company I’ve accepted to orders and communicated with Buyers online shipped both orders I change tracking number both orders arrive both buyers open dispute stating they didn’t authorize the charge and stripe gave them their money back this company is absolutely unreliable I will not use them this would have never ever happened with PayPal extremely unreliable company save your money don’t use the
Unethical company, will refund payments without proper reasoning the support is useless. I wouldn’t recommend them for a business. Still haven’t received my transfer as well (the money I made). Will be closing my account with them soon.
Please do not use this app!!! I signed up for a month to month account and sent an email to figure out how to to use the account. They then charged me the yearly amount without my consent and there is no number to call.
I can’t stand these people. They hold transactions for no reason and never even contact you about it. Their set up is easy, which is how they rope you into their scam, then they won’t release your money. And since there is no telephone support, you can’t even argue about it with anyone. They will email you back at their own convenience without any kind of commitment to action. Totally nebulous and shady.
Stripe has held my money for over 1 month even though I’ve signed up for daily distributions. My contact form has gone unanswered for more than 48 hours and there is no way to contact them by phone. Very concerning.
I opted for the Stripe payment option while using the Gogetfunding site – its a fundraising page which accepts donations. Unexpectedly the fundraising project cancelled and so I had to manually refund the donations noticing a really high admin cost going to Striipe. Additionally, they arranged a DD to my personal account which I never authorised.
Pure headache
i have been getting buyers on my web, when i signed up with stripe i mistakenly left out a letter in the email address. they will not help me what so ever absolutely disgraceful customer service still cant get in to receive my funds for my hard work. plus they have no interest in helping people for one they dont want to talk person to person so you can better explain your self for an honest mistake.
Beware Stripe service. They retain funds as they want for more than 6 months and dont reply to emails. the transfers did not worked anymore… Avoid them, worse than paypal.
Worst agreement I ever signed – We lose over $500/month – yes a month – from chargebacks for any reason that Stripe hand over your money to any bank in the whole world without protecting you 1%
I looked for a review after I have been with them for over 2 years – to help someone looking avoid their business and save his money. You may ask yourself so why we still do business with them – the answer is cause they hold our clients data and we can’t take them back and also can’t force clients to re-enter their credit cards again.
You will lose every dispute no matter for what reason no matter for how much.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!STRIPE SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What he said is completely accurate. They will hand every dollar over, You will lose EVERY dispute
I stumbled across this page because I too have been greatly scammed by stripe over the past year in a half with not one but 2 of my businesses.
After reading nearly every single comment on this thread I am totally disgusted and feel compelled to tell my story in hopes of preventing others from experiencing the same tragedy. I opened up my first online store with “Shopify” in March of 2015 and set up a Stripe account being that it was their default payment processing system. This was also encouraged by Shopify as the only way to avoid “transaction fees”. What a way to lure people in. Straight away in the beginning I get a sale of $300 of which charged back on me nearly 2 months post me shipping the products to the customer. Right away something felt fishy and I had this overwhelming feeling that Stripe and Shopify are partners in deliberately placing orders through random shops with the intent of collecting the money from the chargeback. Basically they are the ones placing orders themselves and lying about the entire situation to steal money from merchants. It makes no sense to me that I would get an order that high right away so soon especially when my products only range between $25-$35. Who buys that many of the same product from a new company they know very little about? Anyhow I was informed by a Shopify representative that their payment gateway was ran by a 3rd party company of which they had no information on and would not be able to put me in contact with. They claimed their automated system was the only mediator in dealing with this 3rd party company (Stripe). I was told I would have to wait up to 90 days to receive a response from their chargeback team as to whether or not I lost or won this dispute. So I submitted the requested verification that the order was in fact delivered to the customer through their automated system, and in the meantime I would be charged up front the $300+ plus a $15 chargeback fee which would automatically be debuted from my bank account. I tried negotiating with them to see if I could pay this amount in payments rather than them just taking it all so unexpectedly but they refused. So I immediately deactivated Shopify payments powered by Stripe and set up my PayPal account to continue accepting payments for the time being otherwise they would be confiscating every single payment for all future orders until they received the $300+. Mind you I’m a NEW business still at this point so there was no way I was going to allow them to garnish my future payments AND get away with my product. Anyhow, they inform me 90 days later that I lost the dispute and owed $300+. I completely ignored it reopened a brand new account and continued to accept payments and grow my business through Shopify payments (Stripe) and PayPal. A year later they end up closing down my new site and demanding that I pay off the balance from the previous account before they would reopen my store which was understandable as I did owe them money technically. So I then paid off the balance since at this point $300 wasn’t really too big of an issue. My store was reopened the next day and I received an email stating I STILLL would not be able to use Shopify Payments (Stripe) although I paid off the balance. I felt powerless and decided to just accept this L. I then open a 2nd store of which 6 months later they end up banning me from using Shopify Payments (Stripe) again with the claims of my products being too “risky” mind you I only sell SUNGLASSES and other FASHION ACCESSORIES like necklaces, hats, keychains, etc. -_- So at this point they end up holding my existing payouts/deposits preventing me from being able to operate my business, and then closing the Stripe account. The thing I am most upset about is that they completely lied about their reasoning for closing the account, but I am glad because now I can take legal action against them for not only the inconvenience but the false claims. The only downside to this is I am limited to using just PayPal for the time being until I can find a legitimate payment processor that’s not on such BS. It’s such a huge inconvenience because now I will be subject to paying transaction fees of 2.9% + like .30 more cents on both stores for every single transaction no matter what 3rd party gateway I switch to. I thinks it’s really sad and disgusting that they choose to take advantage of genuine people this way, but keep your head up people and remember God doesn’t like ugly. What goes around comes back around 10 times worse and large companies or people behind the scenes are not exempt from this universal law. It’s only a matter of time before people stop supporting their platform and they go bankrupt. Then they will have a taste of their own medicine. After the extensive research I’ve done on other situations as such with Stripe, I think it would be best to set up a merchant account with PayPal or your regular bank. I hear Well’s Fargo is a good option as well.
I was hacked twice through Stripe. Never again!
I have read through many of the reviews posted and there seems to be a repeated theme with everyone, and now I add myself to the list. I opened up with Stripe and after several days, I get an email that I had several charges that were unauthorized and they were shutting me down. I explained that they were not unauthorized, they were two charges that I put through on my own personal credit cards for $1. each just to verify that the system was working. How ridiculous. Once I proved that they were my charges, they said they’d review the account, but followed up with another email stating that I would remain inoperable because the type of business was questionable and violated their bylaws with the banks. Through all of this I processed one charge, substantial, several thousand, and like many of you, the sale was on May 16 and it was scheduled for transfer Monday May 23. Then suddenly, the date changed on Sunday night to Tuesday May 24 Transfer, then of course on Monday night it changed to Wednesday, May 25, and a few hours ago, I checked and it’s now Thursday May 26. I get so frustrated that there are no phones, and I’ve emailed daily inquiring about my money transfer, of course to no avail. Hearing some of the other stories, I can’t say I’m encouraged that I will see it too soon, but it’s nearly $5K and of course I have to provide services to the client, and lay out for his purchase. Good luck to all of you. Truthfully, if this is the way Stripe conducts business and treats their clients, we may be better off being shut off and going elsewhere.
They are holding my funds hostage as well. You should refund the customer, don’t do any work and open up an account through squareup.com and process through them. They respect their merchants and don’t screw with our money.
Worst company ever who doesn’t even have their act straight. Don’t even know how they can be in this business. No customer service at all. So I signed up for an account with them. Spent money having a gateway developed around stripe for my website. Was still in the testing phase with their sandbox and then tried it live with one test payment. It didn’t go through. So it didn’t work or so I thought. A few days later they closed my account saying I violated their TOS. I looked at their TOS and I didn’t violate anything, so I contacted them. They were quite rude, but after a few emails after asking them to explain, it was discovered that they think I was doing a prohibited business. My business doesn’t even do that and doesn’t even use stripe. They apparently looked at another one of my website, and saw something that was on there and indiscriminately closed the account without looking further. The TOS says that we wouldn’t USE Stripe to accept payments for any prohibited business. First, that site didn’t USE stripe at all which they didn’t check. Second, that site doesn’t even Sell the item, it was an affiliate link to the seller, who doesn’t even use Stripe. Because of that, they closed the account, and the other site I have using stripe can’t use it anymore. I’ve wasted money all for nothing. I guess this can be a blessing in disguise as I don’t have to lose much more when customers start buying things like others have. Because, if I have a balance and then they decide to close my account, I’d be in worse off shape. STAY CLEAR OF STRIPE. They will close your account for NO REASON and you don’t have any recourse. You can’t contact them and they won’t care what you say at all. Save yourself the trouble and find another company to work with.
After days of trying our technical development team gave up on Stripe. There were technical issues with Stripe simply losing customers and 2 straight days of calls into technical support, with no response at all.
No response? Really? In today’s world – simply unacceptable. Other reviewers have said they feel like they have been scammed and I echo that.
AWFUL, stay clear.
We used them and they sent us a message saying they were closing our account because we were “offering a money-related service” – we clearly aren’t we use it to process invoice payments from clients for professional services (we are FCA and MOJ regulated).
We went into detail on our business model to explain that we didn’t offer “a money-related service” and they closed the account anyway stating “your business presents too high of a risk for fraud and disputes” – what a joke….we processed over £20k of business and didn’t have a single dispute, clawback or incidence of fraud.
Save yourselves the hassle and go somewhere professional such as Barclaycard.
they are condescending & unprofessional. thinking that you have a product, but it will be successful without clients is typical of their attitude. you have to repeat everything 5 times, & then, listen to the boys insult you by saying you didn’t understand…when the download isn’t available or doesn’t work.no one ever takes care of biz right away, or apologize for lack of clarity or efficacity-what a mess & a collection of pretentious people. not worth it-look elsewhere! jo-anna [REDACTED – personal contact information].
POOR customer service. My first “successful” charge was $240 on 3/22/16. Since then, we have processed over $16,000. We have received $0. Repetitive support requests have gone unanswered even though they claim to respond within 24-48 hours. It has been OVER A WEEK with no response and no money. If someone knows of a reliable processor, please contact me at [REDACTED – personal contact information].
Well do you have a transfer date???
Worst company ever! still waiting on a payment dispute which happened over a month ago. AND NO CUSTOMER SERVICE NUMBER!
I have been running a business through Storeenvy for more than a year no, however storeenvy made some changes forcing sellers to use stripe as a form of payment processing all card payments I chose to go with it then about a couple weeks ago I received a very vague email from Stripe letting me know that due to charge backs they will be deducting $1700 from my bank account directly!!!! the email did not say what kind of charge backs what accounts or any type of information I struggled that weekend attempting to get a hold of Customer Service and they don’t have a number so I called my bank and stopped any payments going in or out from stripe and also cancelled my account with Stripe. Today 03/20/16 I received another email from stripe stating that a payment of $3,500 will be in my bank account by February 03, 2016 lol I am so lost we are in March is this a joke Horrible experience DO NOT USE STRIPE.
I hate Stripe! The $15.00 fee for chargebacks is robbery. I have a $1.00 up-sell which sometimes means I have a customer who doesn’t recognize the charge and then calls their bank. This costs me the fee, plus $15 plus the $1.00
Stripe = Scum
Depends on whether the chargeback was justified. If it was unjustified, you get the $15 back.
Very poor company. I had researched various commerce sites to host my new business and settled on Shopify. After reviewing the cost of the credit processing for my high risk business, I regretfully signed up for stripe since shopify does not put a 2% additional charge on stripe. Everything was going fine until I processed more than 10 orders in a day. That was where things became a nightmare. Stripe sent me an email stating that I needed to send them all my manufacturer’s approvals before they can continue processing again with them and stated their terms and conditions. So I sent them over 150 manufacturer’s letters that they requested. Next day I was sent an email that stated. Thank you for providing us the information we requested unfortunately since you did not send us what we required. We regret to inform you that we turned off your account and will be happy to point you to another processor.
Hello,
They closed my account stating I have made fraudulent charges even though the customer was standing in front of me. Also, they are holding my $1820 since February 18th and now its March 8th. I have sent them several email with no response. The customer took the merchandise without paying us.
What a horrible company it is. Does anyone know how to sue them?
Your help is greatly appreciated.
Santok
Something is fishy.
I’d never even heard of this SCAM COMPANY until a few moments ago.
They are trying to charge me nearly $1800.00 for something with NO EXPLANATION.
I DO NOT KNOW HOW THEY GOT ANY OF MY INFORMATION.
Customer service? There is none. I have no idea who to approach about this.
BAD. BAD. BAD.
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Stripe is horrible. One Month ago I mistyped the CVC of a manual payment, which was immediately rejected, therefore no chargeback. They shut down my account saying they identified charges which appear unauthorized and they will refund the payments of this week. No further informations.
After patiently waiting a full month I was asking them last week when they plan to transfer the left funds on my account (showing as “Scheduling…”). No response at all.
Actually holding $500 without notice, without reactions on emails sounds like stripe is FRAUD to me.
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Scam, scam , scam
How can you say you provide fraud protection when you allow hackers to access my account, change the bank information 2 times and process stolen credit card transactions every 50 seconds with out notifying anyone or locking down the account. Now 15k worth of charges have been processed via my STRIPE account, 9K of which has been deposited to a strange bank in Texas and 5K still in the STRIPE account. I have tried to refund the 5K back to the card holders and STRIPE has blocked refunding on the account. Now I will be stuck with refunding the charges once they dispute the transitions at the cost of $15 each.
This entire scenarios has me and my business in a bad situation. Please stop the madness STRIPE has to be stopped. I have send 10+ emails in the past 2 days with no response other than the canned email … We will respond as soon as possible. As a small business owner this can not only financially ruin my business but all my business brand.
STRIPE if you are reading this please respond to my emails so that 2 things can happen 1). The funds in the account can be returned to the card holders immediately 2). You can provide me bank information that the 9K was deposited into so that we can catch the hackers and prosecute to the fullest 3) shut down my account immediately after you refund the 5K to the innocent card holders
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I do not own a business and do not have any reason for anyone to send me money. BUT I get several emails, 7 days a week, trying to get me to send my personal info so they can send me the money. Does anyone know how I can get them to stop emailing me? Thanks in advance
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I have received three emails telling me I have to resolve something at my bank so they can withdraw funds. I have no idea who they are or what they want funds for. And nothing in their email connects me to a real company or person. Is this a complete scam?
I received 3 emails like this as well and I have no idea what the company is or how it got my information. It’s worse because there is no number to call them.
Dale, one possibility is if you signed on to an “affiliate program,” where you earn commissions by referring people to an on-site marketplace. You might have signed on to a program like that but most affiliate programs won’t ask for your taxpayer info (i.e., fed form W9) until payment is ready to be made. If you weren’t aware that Stripe is the processor of the payment for the program, you would be alarmed by its request for info. Think hard! I think you might actually be due money!
Awful company. Closed my account without notice and they’re holding all my last week payments for 90 days! Over a couple thousand dollars! Again, without a warning. They don’t have a number where to contact the either! I’ve written them emails and no reply!
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They are fucking basterds. Since 12 days they closed my account and ask me to verify it, i verified it through my credit card but they dont activate account. moreover they are not transferring the the pending balance of 1000 USD to my bank account. They fraud, I am just waiting
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I agree. Stripe is AWFUL. Just as everyone says, there is no fraud prevention. You lose your merchandise and your shipping costs, then they turn around and hit you with a chargeback fee. I bailed from Shopify because the only payment gateway option they have is Stripe and I’m dismantling my Godaddy sites for the same reason. I don’t know if it will help or not, but I filed a complaint against the last fraudulent chargeback with the FBI internet crimes unit, the IC3. Let’s see if they are as useless as Stripe. My advice? find an ecommerce platform that allows you to choose your merchant account processor and make sure it isn’t Stripe. Good Luck, Linda
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Stripe? NO THANK YOU!
It looks good and professional, but it is an illusion. No fraud detection, bad support, and the worst thing is, if somebody made a chargeback, they charge you $15 for it!!! LIke what? You loose the money for your product and also must pay $15 fees. F*CK THAT!
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For those of you who can’t reach Stripe and want to sue / call them, here’s what I found.
Their office is at
3180 18th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, United States
Tel: 1 636-922-9310
Source: https://goo.gl/maps/2YVwBkw8E5x
We just started with Stripe, and its utter garbage. They can’t transfer funds, so we’re closing our account with a loss because they can’t get money to us. What a bunch of freaks. We are a huge media firm and we will not only sue them, but weI will also make this horsesh*t very public and run them out of business by the end of 2016. They have no idea what a sh*tstorm they just brewed up screwing with us.
Their CEO better look for the unemployment line at the local welfare office.
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Hii. If you do a class action, I would like to be in on that. They screwed me over too.
We have been using stripe for more than a year. Reading the reviews have scared me but so far since we opened an account with them, we have had more than 20 transaction amounting to over 30K. So far no problems, they have been transferring the funds exactly after 7 days. Having said that, all our clients are B2B, only B2B, hence probably very minimal chargeback risks. The have been fine with us so far….
Hi Kish,
Please reply to this comment with your business name and location in order to authenticate your testimonial. Thanks!
Simply Rip Off service with sugar coated brand.
Been with their service and it was more harm than good – unhappy consumers due to their poor customer support, reject payment without appropriate reason, NO buyer/seller protection, always preferable to the credit card companies in terms of dispute.
Never recommend STRIPE to any e-commerce businesses again.
Their system simply can’t cope with the frauds.
That’s why it’s simple.
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We’ve been with Stripe for 2 weeks.
Last Friday (Jan 15th) I got an email saying we were conducting fraudulent activities.
We were freaked out for the long 3 day weekend.
Then, Monday afternoon, we heard from the accuser, Silas Miller, saying, OOPS, I made a “misstep” and offered free processing for the next $1000.
Yesterday, Jan 20th, I heard from Chip Rodriguez, also at Stripe Fraud Department.
He said they were sorry for Silas and need confirmation of our “business model” which we provided when we applied and provided again.
We sell antivirus software CDs manufactured in Texas, shipped only to the US. I’m in CA.
Today, he says they’re holding our $3,000+ for 60 days due to the “elevated risk of the disputes”, won’t say the NATURE of the dispute(s) nor which of our customers, they’re referring to who have not contacted us with ANY complaints, problems or charge backs.
My Attorney says to give them 24 hours and file charges against them for Consumer Fraud. As they’re not a US based company, I suppose it would be International in Scope.
I believe they take our money and make money off the interest.
They have no Legal Leg to stand on.
Just back from the pawn shop.
Miss Cinthea T Coleman
Owner, Tech Global US
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Stripe is a scammer! They took the payments, and never transferred it to our bank account. They don’t respond to emails, they are just a bunch of thieves.
Don’t do business with them!
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I cancelled my membership with Stripe 3 years ago, thought that’s a done deal until they withdraw $600 from my bank account without notifying me this week!
Thank goodness I check my bank statement regularly and caught this within the same day or I will likely not able to retrieve my money back (as my bank teller has pointed out).
They are absolutely unprofessional and very dodgy, stay away from them and look for better alternatives!
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Stripe is unfortunately ruining my life my business, my employees, and Christmas for their kids.
We have been running various websites for many years and have always used traditional merchant accounts. Unfortunately, we run many websites, and with traditional merchant accounts the processors want an account for each site and business. When you have 15 sites, having 15 merchant accounts in nearly impossible to manage and we found ourselves creating more problems trying to manage each one vs finding a processor like stripe that we could create sub accounts or something of the sort and be up and running with each new website we launched in hours or less. We were finally making progress and excited to begin using stripe. Money was flowing, deposits were coming, orders were being shipped, chargebacks were low and next to nothing. Refunds, were only our own transactions that we were testing our sites with.
Things were good as all stories start out in the beginning. Unfortunately that lasted just a short while. We began to slowly receive notifications for each account one by one over time with each notification having different reasons. None of this made sense to us, we were shipping orders, refunds were low, sites were doing good, chargebacks were next to nothing, and everything was in place. The relationship should be perfect match and fit.
Recently as each account was being shut down, they were starting to place holds, change deposits to 7 days, then no deposits, and a constant loop of scheduling transfers that never happened. You can’t reach them, explain, discuss, or anything. I have managed to get some email responses here and there with very little information flowing, we are left with no choice but to share our story and hopefully avoid this happening to others.
We now have around $15,000 tied up with stripe. That is a lot of money, and we are 9 days away from Christmas, we have employees to pay this week, they have Christmas to buy for their kids, travels to see family, all to be destroyed over Stripe and their lack of willingness to work with their supporters. I was a big fan, loved their concept and ease to do business. I was like in my head, saying Finally a company that gets it and if for the small businesses out there. I love Stripe.
That is all being erased with the stress and frustrations they have caused on our business and our personal lives. We need our cash flow and rely on it to operate. They never inquired to see if our orders were fulfilled, customers happy, or anything just shut us down with no information or reasons that we could maybe provide documents, information to satisfy their concerns. While I realize businesses like theirs have to manage risk, I respect that, but did they reach out, inquire, or anything? NO. Worst of all, CHRISTMAS IS RUINED for many!
I also realize there is lots of fraud out there, they have to take preventative measures, but don’t hurt the good guys, or penalize the ones who run a legitimate operation.
As we are respected in our industry already which is internet marketing, It is not difficult to prove that a company who by procedure does not communicate by telephone with people, and has more negative press than a presidential nominee already ( as we learned in doing diligence on this issue ) is engaged in unreasonable business practices and unfairness to its clients. We will show this. Sorry your “Hands are tied”. We were hoping for a more favorable response as my concern is for the survival of our small business and my staff and their families.
This is December 16th today. We will not be able to pay our employees for Christmas without our money. We have been effectively shut down by Stripes actions. Our business will be entirely shut down until we can reapply, open new merchant accounts and go through the painstaking process of integrating the new processors etc to our websites. Stripe didn’t provide a shred of evidence of chargebacks, or what risk level they speak of. Please define how you qualify “Higher than normal risk”. Because form the outside, it looks like you are using MY employee’s paychecks, to fund their company. However; we can absolutely prove we have shipped and continue to ship products. We can absolutely prove any chargebacks or disputes are handled by our accounting staff, we can absolutely prove that the level or “risk” you assess, is probably not based on anything specific to our industry or actual performance.
Stay clear of Stripe if you want to avoid things like the above, shame on me for taking a chance with a company that does not provide phone support or publish a phone number at all.
Scott Rogers
Sellaru
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Hands down, the absolute worst company to deal with. They are extremely unorganized and under staffed. They required me to do a verification of my site and I completed it. To no evail, they continue to ignore you. Furthermore, you will never speak with the same person about your issue. I have spoken with Tanner W, Neera Pearson, Silas Miller and Polly Gerrick. These people have the unmedigated gall to question he authenticity of my organization and they have no phone number. I’ve sent 6 emails in the past 3 days and have received no correspondence. So tell me who’s the scammer. I pray that my words resignate with all those who read my review…FINALD ANOTHER MERCHANT. A smart man learns from his own mistakes and a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. My attorney is in the process of reviewing the terms and conditions to see what can be done. But I will notify the world and we’re working on a news cover story for lack of communication with these merchants.
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We are a new merchant for Stripe , as they are integrated into a new on line event sales program called Gather. We love Gather and it is very user friendly and we expected the same quality of service and user friendly technology from their credit card processor Stripe. However, Stripe misrepresents themselves by telling merchants funds will be transferred in 2 days and does not advise of their “withholding of funds policy. I’m sure it is somewhere in the legal jargon.
Stripe accepted 2 payments and transferred both payments to the bank separately. Then they requested an invoice for the first payment.
Stripe contuined to accept our customers payments and did not communicate they were going to withhold funds.
To date they are holding funds from 11.19.16 and are holding a total of $19,000 which states on the dashboard the funds are ready to be transferred.
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I have a complaint! I do not recall EVER signing up for this “service”, and yet, I am receiving emails from them, stating they have attempted to transfer funds from my bank account, been unsuccessful, and that I need to rectify the problem. I don’t think so! NO ONE gets permission to transfer funds out of my accounts, not even my husband.
I think Stripe needs to rectify their own issues, and leave me alone!
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Tera, my comment to you is the same as my comment to Dale (above).
One possibility is if you signed on to an “affiliate program,” where you earn commissions by referring people to an on-site marketplace. You might have signed on to a program like that but most affiliate programs won’t ask for your taxpayer info (i.e., fed form W9) until payment is ready to be made. If you weren’t aware that Stripe is the processor of the payment for the program, you would be alarmed by its request for info.
This is the worse experience I have ever had with processing payments. Stripe doesn’t have a number to speak with anyone. They hold every deposit for almost a full week when platforms like square and PayPal have programs to access you money quickly. I’m not sure if they are hold their customers money to draw the interest that you don’t see or the company is just poorly structured. They are doing a net 7 with your money and they are charging you to do it , iunbelievable. This type of company will kill a small business. If you can’t get access to needed funds in time you will loose a lot of money and business just like I’m doing right now. I would recommend another platforms like square or PayPal in which I was using before, until my website hosting company forced me to use Stripe.
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Stripe’s fraud prevention is zero, they will process any credit card number regardless of the name used or address. Their vetting system is non existent at best. The merchant is charged back with no recourse. They have no phone support to avoid merchant complaints. Stay away from Stripe.
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I totally feel you. They sent us a chargeback after one month, we sent them back all the info about the customer along with email address and a phone number but to no use.
We have lost the merchandise and the money on top of that they charged us a $15 dispute fee. Go figure that!
They absolutely have no seller protection against credit card fraud.
At least all payment that get processed by PayPal is protected by their seller protection. Stripe no more!
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We have been with Stripe for several years and Ibhave zero complaints. Indeed their email only support could use a phone upgrade, however, given the low rates..it is something we can live with and frankly rarely use anyways. I’ve noticed them taking a little longer in transferring funds, once cleared l, which got me looking around for alternatives. However, given my experience… I am staying put.
In follow up, I should mention we only do B2B and have zero retail running through Stripe. Thus, I can only reflect my views in that end of the spectrum. Sorry for everyone else’s issues but we have none here as far as B2b goes. Zero CBs over 3 maybe 4 years now.
Horrible, Horrible, Horrible. I leave stripe this very minute,
customer claimed they never got the package i provided proof of delivery and communication log, and had it ruled out in favor of customer. so i paid for goods for mailing expenses and i was charged for dispute fee. Thank you very much STRIPE for showing me how much you care . they dont even have people to speak to. i would give a zero rating if i could !!!
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Not only do we no longer use Stripe for our new clients, we’ve recently begun a strategic effort to switch all our customers that we have [unfortunately] setup with Stripe. In the last 12-14 months we have implemented Stripe payment services for 173 clients who have processed an estimated $37,000,000 in that time. Of those 173 clients, 29 have complained that their accounts with Stripe were:
– Terminated immediately with false claims of fraud (Stripe making the claim when the card holder never made such claim).
– Terminating “soon” notice due to [most times] a single chargeback that was quickly resolved once the customer was contacted.
– Terminated due to “excessive chargebacks” when in fact there were either none or less than 1%
In general, Stripe takes no interest in building any kind of relationship with merchants. Stripe’s business model seems to be hitm’ and forgetm’ in the sense that as long as they can collect as many fees as possible without spending any time whatsoever dealing with the same, day to day things that every ecommerce merchant deals with, all is fine. However, as soon as anything steps away from charge-deposit-repeat, Stripe cuts you loose with little to no warning and often times with false claims made by Stripe themselves presumably to justify their actions.
I have personally confirmed that many of the claims Stripe made to our clients regarding fraud were completely a work of fiction. This is something that really put me over the edge with Stripe. It’s one thing to enforce very strict guidelines but to make false claims of fraud is unconscionable.
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Beware of using Stripe! It is impossible to win American Express disputes if you use Stripe as your processor – this is something I had to verify by directly calling American Express merchant services (1-800-528-5200). First you have to ask Stripe to give you their American Express ID number to do the verification but if you continue to press for this info and then use it on the call, you’ll be told that none of the payments going through Stripe can possibly ever win a dispute – this means that we merchants automatically lose every single time regardless of the situation!! This is unfair and I don’t know if it applies to Visa or Mastercard and other card transactions but this is important information to know about before using them!
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Yes, this certainly seems to be the case. Personally I don’t think that it is possible to win a dispute and that their “process” is simply a ruse to instill confidence when you have a chargeback dispute. In other words, utter bullshit.
Do not use Stripe. I have a brand new online store and decided to use Stripe. Unfortunately, our 3 last transactions, which were verified by Stripe, were reversed because of a dispute, and they took over 5000$ from our account within a 24 hours notice. It is very important to tell people that once a complaint is done you the merchant cannot do anything!!!! They copy and paste an email (because you cannot get a hold of any human on the phone because they simply have no phone number to reach someone when its urgent!) stating you can contest! Yeah right! The process will take up to 3 monghs. And bottom line you the merchant will never see the color of your money again! Use stripe if you want to lose money, lose customers and go bankrupt!!!
Don’t use STRIPE, bad customer service, they lies!
Do NOT do business with this company. HORRIBLE Cust service! Will close you’re account with NO explanation.
Ok , so Stripe.com – what is going on here?
We have used Paypal for 5 years , not a single dime lost in disputed charges etc. We have Stripe.com for a significantly shorter time and within weeks of using them we receive “Disputes” for goods shipped with tracking. Then it was ok , and now recently disputes have arrived again.
When Stripe email us about a “DISPUTE” – we respond with tracking details , at which point they take back all of the money + $25 dispute fee , and they keep all of the fees also?
At this point it’s a waiting game and we’re told that our payment being returned to us is dependent UPON THE CARDHOLDER’S BANK?
Excuse me if i’m wrong here , but surely the CARDHOLDER’S BANK is always going to favour their own customer which means you’ll lose out of pocket even when you’ve shipped the item with evidence provided etc.
We received one dispute > provided evidence of shipment delivery >> STRIPE EMAIL US “YOU HAVE LOST THIS CASE”.
We received another dispute > provided evidence of shipment delivery >> STRIPE EMAIL US “YOU HAVE LOST THIS CASE”.
Is Stripe.com a company to be completely avoided or am I missing something here?
Exactly the same happens with us. They are useless and always side with the bank and thus the customer. In one case a customer even emailed me to say that they made a mistake and contacted their bank, but Stripe still did not resolve in our case. I have had 5 cases so far and not a single win. Over €700 out of pocket which includes their ridiculous “service fees” for disputes.
Aweful service. I would not recommend Stripe to anyone. In fact I’ll go out of my way to let people know how bad they are. They closed my account and LIED about why. They said “Our systems recently identified charges that appear to be unauthorized by the cardholder, meaning that the owner of the credit or debit card did not consent to these payments. This unfortunately means that we will no longer be able to accept payments for xxx.foo”
LIE LIE LIE! I personally know every person (only two or three charges) I charged and spoke to each of them and they NEVER contacted anyone about the charge nor had anyone ever contacted them.
THIS COMPANY LIES!
DO NOT use stripe for credit card services, anyone can buy from your store and dispute as fraudulent and they will grant the money to the buyer that you’ve shipped and confirmed delivery. They don’t care about texts, tracking #s, emails, NOTHING!!! Name on credit card matches billing/shipping info, they need to have who ever receives our product from the address ship back then grant money. F for your shitty services…
Hello,
We use Paypal and Stripe for our online payments. Stripe definately have a better interace is more user friendly , however – Stripe appear to have no seller protection which means we use 3 fraud tools which we inspect before shipping any Stripe.com orders.
We have been using Stripe for a while now and in the last week have received 3 “warning” disputes – from buyers claiming they have not received goods. We have uploaded their tracking numbers to Stripe and now they are waiting on the “banks” to make a decision as to whether or not we lose the money (on the goods we have already shipped).
Is this the way Stripe operates , it’s a russian roulette situation. With Paypal, we provide tracking and we are safe from huge losses. With Stripe , it seems even after shipping goods with tracking – the “banks” can still make unfavourable decisions – putting businesses on the line.
Your thoughts?
We are using 3 fraud tools, for 3 transactions the fraud tool showed it was OK TO SHIP.
So we ship the item , provide tracking – and now we have 3 “warning” disputes from Stripe.com
Why does Stripe not have any seller protection like Paypal ?
Could you please tell us these fraud tools? Thank you
Stripe is integrated with our CRM platform. When it works, they are good. The API integration is good and their rates are much cheaper than Paypal.
However, when asked to help with a Xero integration the wheels started to come off. They refuse to get on the phone and answer questions and make it incredibly difficult to contact them.
They recently duplicated a pay out to our bank account. I tried to let them know, but could not reach any customer service team. I wanted to return the funds immediately, but instead they imposed a solution on us that has caused an accounting problem in out automated system. This refusal to communicate is not good when dealing with payment problems.
this is the worst credit card company processor do not sign up orders placed have a great deal of fake addresses fraudulent. no seller protection worth the money trying. stripe closes seller’s accounts afterwards when you report fraud and punishes seller for fraud instead of the actual users who committed the fraud. do not sign up.
I ran a GoFundMe campaign… I did not get a choice to not use Stripe… It is just the payment system that GoFundMe offered. My campaign raised just under $7000…now 3 weeks after campaign has finished I am starting to get “fraudulent transaction”claims for some of the donations. Credit card holders claiming that they did not authorise the donation…. I understand that this happens. What I was not told, nor did I get a chance to negotiate was that for every chargeback I am charged a $30 fee on top of the original donation… So if someone “donated” $5 and it is then disputed, Stripe take $35 out of my bank account. It just seems a bit exorbitant.
Stripe did not disclose the fact that there is no seller’s protection. We lost more than $3200 from a credit card fraud. Stripe did not take actions to protect us and just send us an email stating that they will withdraw the money from our account. This happens two weeks after we shipped out the product to the criminal. Even worse is that Stripe charges a transaction fee about $80 dollars on top of the money we lost. The customer service sucks too. There is no phone number to call. When I complain about the situation, the customer service simple just replied “Stripe isn’t the right fit for everyone “ . 6 months ago when we communicate with their customer services. We were never told that “Stripe isn’t the right fit for everyone “. When we asked them to compare the difference between Stripe and Paypal, they did not tell us there is no seller’s protection. With our sells volume, the fee is about the same as paypal except there is no reserve. Now we have to spend time to monitor all transactions and manually reject all the suspicious transactions. We will move to Paypal. Warning!!! If you really want to use Stripe, you would need to have the capability to filter out frauds, don’t count on Stripe.
Stripe is the worst. NO customer service. there is no number to call when you have an issue. You write them an email, and within 24 hours they will write you back, or not. I have written them on 2 separate occasions with no response. When I receive a payment on my website, I can’t access the money for 5 days even though they say it will be 2 days. Every day during that time, I would log on and see if I have money yet, EVERY time it says “funds available tomorrow”, I go and check the next day , and of course it tells me tomorrow. This goes on for a week. They give you no clue as to where your money is, why they are holding it, or when you will get it. Puts my business on hold when I can access the money my customers send. Company is garbage and won’t respond to customers.
We run a hosting business and they gave us 14 days notice as they would be closing our account because our business was in violation of their Terms of Service, section B.5 (“Prohibited Businesses”) I cannot find any reference to hosting in there TOS.
Its strange that wasn’t an issue when we signed up 2 years ago and have had over £120,000 in payments.
The fraud checking that Stripe use is rubbish which means we needed to manually check new orders someone could use 20 different cards and then one works and they accept the payment, they need to start using 3Dsecure and Securecode.
They are always very polite in there responses but they do take days to respond to emails and have no telephone support.
I never had any issues with them paying us, even when they shut our account they still paid us what they owed.
We are opening a merchant account, the fees are lower and the 3Dsecure,Securecode is included, I would advise any business doing more than 1000 transactions a month to move to a real merchant account.
Wow seems like most of us are having the same problem with this bad business people . Here is my story , i been a stripe costumer for over 6 months now one day in my office i came to my computer and it asked me to verified myself to log in , after putting in my password my whole account was deleted! after few attempts on getting a hold of someone from stripe i was unable to use that account again. I re-open an account started taking payments next thing i know they are sending me an email saying i have 5 days to find another server 5 days! and that the money will be on hold for 90 days! what is the issue? long story short this people cost me over 50k and a lot of new business opportunities because they feel i am high risk of something. I asked myself am i being judge for being successful ? I manufacture stuff ship it over to my clients and now i have to wait 90 days to even see my money ? are you kidding me ? who is running this show? why should i not be in tittle to something its mine for product my company is making. This is total bs it really is i thought very high of stripe till now.
Hi, same thing happened to me, about 7k on hold till mid January, at least did you get your money after the 90 days on hold reserve? Please answer.
Yes, they are the worst. We sell equipment for bicycle racers. We shipped product all throughout the Summer busy season without being paid for a SINGLE credit card transaction through Stripe. The Paypal and debit transactions all went through OK, so it wasn’t obvious to us why there was so much money not coming in. We didn’t realize until too late that the problem was specific to Stripe. This was over 50% of our business. It appears we are going OUT OF BUSINESS.
Since it’s past their 7-day policy, those transactions are no longer authorized. We are out of luck, according to Stripe. Stripe says we need to contact all of those customers (all over the world) and see if they will agree to let us run their credit cards again. Seriously?
Well here is an interesting twist to an already miserable experience with these scum bags. Last year I posted on this feed with the same complaint as most of the people here have experienced. They refunded all the money in my Stripe account to my clients and closed my account because the transactions couldn’t be verified. It was the biggest crock, I had to chase that money down from a bunch of new clients, install a new API into my website, new merchant accounts, a week with out taking new payments. It cost me a ton of money to fix, plus I lost out on new business. What a disaster.
NOW almost a year later I get an email from STRIPE CONGRATULATING ME that I received a payment from my client. It was a legit email from STRIPE, I went back in forth with a customer service rep who told me I needed to log into my account and cancel the transaction. YOU IDIOTS, you closed my account a year ago!!
This is just crazy… C-R-A-Z-Y. I contacted my client and sure enough there was a charge on her card. I told her to contact her bank and report fraudulent activity on STRIPE. I have no idea how this could happen… but it is disgusting!!
This is the worst company ever. It balances on the edge of estortion. I opened an account with only because if was offered on Weebly. Which I have no problem with Weebly. Then after accepting my account, and I had my first charge through them, for $ 1500.00, they sent me an email saying, they could no longer do business with me, I was too much risky, and they were going to hold my money for 60 days. What bull*&&+. Oh, I am sure its in some terms and conditions somewhere, or in a fine print. But, this is absolutely crazy. If they are going to accept accounts, they should do their due diligence before they approve an account. Not wait until the account has money in it, then decide they don’t want you as a customer. I don’t have a problem if they don’t want me as a client. The problem is, check it our first, and then approve or don’t approve an account. Plus, wonder what happens to that money that sits for 60 days? Do we get interest on it? I would never do business with them again, EVER. Now, to settle my issue, I was lucky, the client is a good guy, and I told him, he said just refund the money, and he would pay me in another way. So, I did. Hope that works. For those of you without that option, I feel for you. Someone should stop this.
I too wish I had read these reviews first..
For those of you having no issues, great to hear.
Anyone else thinking of using Stripe, stay away! I had the same experience as many above. Lost $12,000 and now my business is up in the air as we do not have the funds to restock.
We do plan on filing a civil complaint.
I’ve had the same experience as most people! I just started my first web shop and the first order I received turns out to be paid with a stolen credit card. Stripe closes my account out of nowhere and charges me an extra fee. I normally don’t give bad reviews, but please make sure you don’t choose Stripe for processing credit card payments! Avoid!
Hi Richard,
I’m afraid I need to reach out to you with some bad news. After
reviewing your information and website, we believe your business
presents a level of risk for customer disputes that we will be
unable to support. Specifically, your chargeback rate of 100.0%
is much higher than the industry threshold of 1%.
That said, we understand that there may be some work involved
with moving your business away from Stripe, and we’re happy to
help out with this process by giving you 5 days to switch to a
new provider. After that, you won’t be able to accept additional
charges on your account, but we will continue making transfers to
your bank account until you receive all of your funds[1].
Because the 1% chargeback rate threshold is determined by the
credit card networks, I’m afraid that our hands are tied in this
situation, and we will be unable to reopen your account. I’m
sorry we won’t be able to help with your business, and we wish
you the best of luck as you switch to a different payment
provider.
Best,
Sheldon
I am new to Stripe and discovered what a joke this company is after I received this email from them canceling their services to me for TEST CHARGES ON THEIR OWN TEST CARDS (!):
__________________
We’ve noticed that you have processed charges that seem to be unauthorized–in order to make charges with credit and debit cards, the owner of the card must consent to the charge. Charges on your account do seem to lack this consent, which unfortunately means that we will no longer be able to offer service to [site].
I’m sorry that your Stripe service will be ending so abruptly, but our hands are tied in this situation.
___________________
Can you believe this??? They cancelled the account for USING THEIR OWN TEST MODE CARDS!!!
What a bunch of amateurs. I struggled a week to integrate this payment system, and paid over $200 in plugins to support it, as everything failed, and then I get this ridiculous email.
Never again. I don’t recommend Stripe to anyone. This reveals that the service is completely unreliable.
Did you use test cards in live mode? If so, that was the problem. Banks go ballistic if you send them test card numbers more than once or twice (those numbers are standard across most card processors).
Not as far as I know. And Stripe never mentioned anything in the emails between us. I followed Stripe’s own suggestions step-by-step to set-up the account. So if any of that was wrong, then they need to change their own instructions. The set-up is actually not that simple to make it work. I had so many problems with it and it took over two weeks to finally get it to function, and they immediately cut me off and blocked the account before I even processed a single payment. $200 loss.
Just started using Stripe and received an email saying that they would not release our funds because they are not happy with our website. They should have told us this before we took payments of £4000. I received an email from them with no contact details other than a name and have emailed them 5 or 6 times with no response. DO NOT USE THEM.
they never ever rely to your emails – they have left me with NO TAKINGS after refunding all my transactions and now I may have no way of getting payments for the stuff provided,
Hi, same thing happened to me. 7k blocked because of high risk transaction till Mid January. Did you at least get your money back after 90 days?
I’m using Stripe with Shopify for my online toys shop. No issue at this moment.
I used to have increasing fraud and chargeback issue with Stripe. However, it has been reduced by using the free FraudLabs Pro module in Shopify.
I had started a fundraiser for a very good friend of mine who lost her husband suddenly in a tragic car accident over memorial day weekend. The funds raised were supposed to assist her with funeral costs. In 3 days we raised $20,000 and I receive an email saying they were going to refund ALL the money we raised – no warning or attempt to correct any unknown issues. They froze the donation page and no on will return any email attempts. Total scam. I hope they can sleep knowing the stress they are causing this young widow and her child.
I raised 1500 british pounds on a go fund me site. Stripe then informed me they were closing my account because banks asked them to monitor useres and i processed payments that weren’t authorised. They refunded 1 donor 200 pounds and deposited 555 pounds into my bank account, leaving a mystery total of 648 to 860 pounds in limbo. I have contacted them at least 10 times now asking how to get the money transferred and I get responses like 200 pounds was refunded or I apologize for the inconvenience. No instructions how to correct the problems they are supposedly having or get the balance transferred into my account. It’s just the same bs over and over. I really think they are going to try and keep my balance.
It’s now July 17 and I still have no valid response from stripe. This is about 4 months of them holding 648 pounds with no answer from my many emails to them. They just ignore me. I think I am going to pursue this with the law now. Them and go fund me both.
Very true, complete waste of money. Multiple fraudulent attempts by the same person that were denied 3 times within the same minute yet (people tried different cards until one worked) and when Stripe approves it. Week later the charge gets disputed, you have to provide evidence from your end that this was a transaction payed for the service and service was delivered, Stripe or Banks they deal with don’t provide you with any of their evidence whatsoever and simply tell you bank requested the money back due to fraud, and they CHARGE you $25 on each of those transaction. Seems like a great way for them to make money themselves, waste of time and money, definitely not recommending for any start-up that has a lot of transactions, Stripe has ZERO fraud detection capability and you will end up paying $25 for every fraudulent transactions every time. And you will always loose regardless of services or evidence you provide, the process is a complete black box.
I would have to comment here that I would have to disagree with you and others. Stripe does keep record of cards that are marked as fraudulent which is why that one transaction possibly got denied due to fraud. They do have a system in place to detect possible fraudulent charges, and yes the business is liable for the chargeback charges (which is $15 unless stripe changed it), unless you provide proof that a product was delivered/service rendered, which generally is easy. I have had chargebacks before and after providing evidence, I won the case and had the money + the fee place back into my account.
stripe is worst payment service. a buyer disputed a charge over a month ago the for fraudulant charge , stripe inform me that they will debit my checking account + 15$ severice fee first with out my authorization, and then I need to waste time to provide all related documents to fight for the money back. I provided all the delivery record, and close my checking immediately and inform my bank about the scam activity of stripe. Goodbye forever, Stripe!
I had to close my bank account also.
By any chance do you think closing the bank account could have a negative effect on your credit score? I’m seriously considering doing that if I lose the dispute but I would hate for them to report me to collections.
Laura, “YES”! Close your checking account! You can close it and reopen a new checking account. And to answer your question on it impacting your personal credit? No. Only if your business is incorporated and has it’s own E.I.N. number and you are just the signer on business checking account. If your business is a sole proprieter can you personally be held liable. I have had to close my accounts before to avoid scammers like Stripe from taking money on charge backs from shady customers and it has not ever impacted my personal credit or bank however, again, my business was incorporated and my personal credit and information was segregated from my business. But unfortunitly, Stripe has moved from taking a new client and waiting for them to transact their customers credit card and then they send a letter stating that you the company did not have authorization to make the transaction and therefore they are refunding your customers and closing your account. The customers never receive a refund and Stripe keeps your money and your out all together to now making bogus statements that your customer did a charge back and therefore debiting your bank account leaving you without your product and money. The customer never gets the refund or knows nothing about it and again leaving you without product or money! I would close it and go with a half way reputable processor.
I just had the same thing happen to me. A buyer I sold to over 2 months ago just submitted a dispute saying they didn’t authorize the purchase. I submitted all the evidence I have (including emails) to Stripe and also put a stop payment for the chargeback that Stripe was charging me. This is clearly a case of buyer fraud and I refuse to get screwed over. I actually don’t think Stripe is a bad company, their customer service reps are really nice, but they have an extremely faulty system. They shouldn’t do a chargeback on the seller until the bank finishes their investigation. I imagine I will be getting an email or a call from them when they get denied by my bank. If they are willing to be patient with me I will return the favor, but I utterly refuse to give a penny back to a buyer that is trying to steal my item. This has taught me that I have to refuse all purchases even if they only seem somewhat suspicious. I also plan on dumping Stripe after this has been resolved. PayPal isn’t perfect but I haven’t had this kind of issue and I have been with them for 10 years.
Have you any news? Did the payment pass into your account even if you put a hold on them?
Stripe is definitely a SCAM. I mean how can you not have a live contact or phonr number for us to call? I used stripe as a paymen option for my storenvy, and I been selling some stuffs. 1 day I received an email saying that 1 of my order, the credit owner reported that they did not made the payment and their bank withraw my money (straight from my bank without telling me) plus an extra $20 whatever fee which I had no idea. So like usually I would contact stripe, guess what no contact phone number, so I emailed them and they replied to me the next day saying there is nothing they can do and I just have to wait and deal with the charges. 2 days later that same buyer come back make more purchases (wth), I dont want to get in more problem so i refunded the payment and got charged $7 for that order :( it didnt stopped there. While i was waiting for that case to be solve another case from another customer was opened (and that customer bought from me before with no problem) and again Stripe just withdraw my money with another $20 extra charge. So no more. I called my bank to block them.
Hi im going through the same thing did the block work?
I blocked Stripe from doing a chargeback on my account by setting up a stop payment through my bank. The bank guarantees that Stripe can not charge me. A stop payment might last anywhere from 6 months to a year but after that they could still try. It seems the only way to prevent them from taking money back for a scammer is to close your account altogether. Personally I’m considering this option.
Hey guys is stripe trying to they are holding my $5,000 because on my website I didn’t have enough info ? I updated the info on my website how they wanted me to and guess what? they aren’t replying and holding my $$
Don’t ever expect them to respond to their own customer service email system. They have no interest in dealing with customers. No phone number. Will randomly not release money that customers send to you. For a company that just sits there and takes almost 3% of every transaction they process I think they can afford to hire one person to answer phone calls with questions regarding your account. But they choose not to. So I’m closing my account with them after a year and a half of this BS. Any other credit card processing company is BETTER.
I am very sad that i did not come to read all your comments before signing with Stripe!
WORST experience ever, NO phone number, and when you send them an email they never answer back!
I sell furniture, so you know furniture are expensive. First of all, i have to deal with their 7 days roll process wich is very sad for a business health,
and after that, a week after i ship products value of 3000$ they tell me that the payment was not authorized, so they just take from me 3000$ and i lost the goods! Very sad, i cannot lose hope and start to work harder, i sell goods 6000$ worth, and then SAME THING HAPPENS! they take from my account the money and then tell me that i am accepting fraudulant credit cards, and This guy names “Les” says that they close my account for that.
I feel like i’ve been scammed both by buyers and by stripe, NO marchant protection, NO customer service, VERY LONG processment time, VERY expensive, I chose stripe as an alternative to Paypal, because of the reviews i saw… But now i choose Paypal over Stripe and their bullshit service.
The author of this column Phillip Parker has another article describing what recourse you have against scammers like Stripe. I have filed complaints with all federal agencies, especially the ones that deal with cybercrime. And these guys should spend some time in prison for failing to protect their customers.
I have also just used Stripe, and I just got an order which I have shipped and the customer received the order. Now I find out that I can’t transfer the money from stripe to my bank account. I have also sent emails after emails and they have not reply once. Now I am out of the product and money spent and nothing received.
Found Stripe through Weebly and have recently discovered what a nightmare they can be when accepting credit card payments. It seems that fraudsters tried over 90 times to order the same item from our site until one finally got through. How their system didn’t notice this is beyond belief. And the worst of it is that you don’t see attempts unless you drill down a couple of layers to see what was going on.
I’ve been suckered by these sophomores in the industry. I’m more annoyed with myself as I should know better.
Hi Bob. Where did you find the additional article on stripe? I am also looking for legal action against Stripe. Which federal agencies did you file with? Maybe FTC? Attorney general? Anyways, i would love to see this company go down!!
David. I may have been wrong about Phillip Parker authoring an article. I’ve gone to the FTC and managed at one point to find a federal cybercrime form. There is the attorney route but you’ll need lots of docs. If you can get the Attorney General’s office in your state to take up the case then things can move. I’ve talked to one of the Asst. AG here in Honolulu and it takes research and time. Let us all know as will I.
Stripe.com is one of the worst company I have ever dealt with in my entire 25 year career as a business owner! Searching for a better merchant processor other then Square.com, My secretary stumbled across Stripe. After reviewing on how great they make themselves out to be, She decided to try our company out with them. After a couple of days of no business we had a rush of customers that needed service. When the service was completed, We started transacting their credit card payments. The following evening we received an email from a gentleman by the name of Les. In his email from Stripe he indicates that because our customers did not authorize any charges for the services we completed that Stripe was cancelling our account. WOW! We were to say the least blown away at this because most merchant companies would at least give us the option to provide invoices, receipts with signature etc. Nope, not this company, they just accuse you of unauthorized transactions and then close out your account and refund our clients credit cards! This to me is theft of services because now we can not recover the funds owed to us by our customers. So we worked for free while stripe played GOD with our money. Our company does not belong to Stripe and Stripe had no right to do this!
After reviewing Stripe on the BBB and other consumer alert sites, It became clear to me that this Merchant Company is a SCAM!! They hold your money for 7 days for no reason what so ever. Then when it comes time for them to transfer money into their clients bank account they continue to with hold their clients money and it basically takes legal action to get it out of them. If they do not like your process for recovering your money they place you on MATCH system and cancel your account leaving you with nothing to show for your hard work…
This company needs to go out of business! We will sure campaign in pure joy in those efforts…….
This comments are quite comical. Switching to Stripe was the best thing I’ve ever done.
First, your analysis is flawed. You’re comparing swiped pricing (SQUARE) to non-swiped. 2.9% if very good for a low volume, card not present business. Plus, if you’ve ever done business with First Data or traditional VISA/MC vendors there are all sorts of fees for international, business / debit cards, etc. SQUARE is not a good swipe rate at 2.75% (you can get much lower easily) and obviously you can’t do ANY card not present business with SQUARE, so you still need another solution for e commerce.
STRIPE also only charges 2.9% on international transactions, which is a huge savings if you do international business. PAYPAL charges an extra 1% for international, plus some other fees. The salesmen at Paypal get all mad when you tell them you’re using stripe, because they know they can’t compete.
The 7 days wasn’t an issue for me, although after 6 months they switched me to 3 days, which is fine. True they don’t have telephone, but they answer email fairly quickly. I’ve never had a chargeback or a missed payment, and almost all of my business is international. I actually lose money when someone send money via paypal, because paypal’s fee is higher for international payments.
Only someone from Stripe would post a positive rebuttle for them… Funny thing. Me and my customers still have not recieved a single refund from this company stripe and it has now been 2 weeks since stripe took it upon themselves to refund our company money… They are frauds, we have joined a legal action team in seeijing a law suit against Stripe..
Well I wish I had done my research before using stripe with my bigcommerce store. I am officially out of $6870 As of today March 20 2015. I signed up and verified my account i had three orders come in that were successful and not fraudulent. all orders where verified and shipped and delivered. Stripe out of the blue sends me an email and tells me that my account was being closed. I send them an email and attach all information showing the orders where shipped and delivered and out of the Blue stripe refunded the customer. After they received the product. SO now I have to close my New business. We need to start a class action lawsuit. These people are destroying lives.
Stripe, Inc. is one of the worse and most unprofessional companies I have ever worked with in my entire life of doing business! It seems that everyone who has an issue with Stripe, Inc. has the same related conflict of Stripe, Inc cancelling accounts because of “so called” unauthorized charges when charges were in fact authorized! Once again your account is cancelled they refuse to answer you back via email and have no customer service number! Or better yet once the account with them is cancelled they withdraw money out of your personal business account and state that they will be refunding the clients/customers back, but it has been months now and my clients have not received a refund! This company is fraud and everyone who has dealt with these particular issues needs to get together and take legal action against them! We cannot allow Stripe, Inc. to continue to ruin people’s businesses and hold on to money that is not theirs without issuing refunds when they say that they will! This is known as fraud and something must be done! We need to get together and do something about this! If you have been screwed over by this company and want to do something about it please contact me via email at [REDACTED – personal information] look forward to hearing from anyone via to email who is dealing with similar issues pertaining to this company.
I started with stripe on 7th march 2015 and on 17 march they send me email that they are not going to business with us as we sell controlled substance but they will continue my transfer but before sending this email they already disabled my transfers.
Whats the hell is this ?
I have remaining balance of 2500$.
We sell bricks and hardwares.
No one reply me as they mentioned within 24 hours.
They are fraud, Never use stripe, because when you accept payment then they will hold your payment and also they have no policy that for how much time they will hold your payment.
I really upset with Stripe service, They ruin my newly starting business.
Did you ever receive your money back. I had the same thing happen to me this weekend.
What an absolute joke. I ran one transaction for $150.00. I was informed that I would receive funds within 7 business days. 7 days? Are you kidding me. Square and PayPal do next day funding. This company is an absolute scam. Within 2 days after my transaction, I was informed that my account was shit down via email. There is no customer service what so ever. No phone number, and an email address in which you receive no response. DO NOT MESS WITH THIS COMPANY!!! If you are looking for a merchant processor that actually works and requires no startup fees, I would recommend Square or PayPal Here. I you want more advanced, of with First Data or authorize.net. I am sure any time now the FTC will shut down Stripe. You cannot run a company this way and survive in this world.
I originally was lured into using Stripe and used them for 2 businesses I own. Over a year I processed over $180,00.00 without a charge back or a problem. Then one day I received and email from them stating”
While we hate to give you anything less than a spectacular experience, it does seem that your business does not meet our current account requirements—we are currently only able to support accounts based[1] in the counties listed here [2].
WTF?? ( I am not selling porn, just online classes and I gave you my address, contact info, ID and website with all details on it. At least MY website has a phone number unlike Stripe!)
So I changed back to my old processor.
4 months later I started a 3rd company and unfortunately decided to give Stripe another whirl.
Soon as I had started processing they sent me an email saying they where extending the payout time from 2 days to 10 days. Ok, no big deal I can live with that. Then a week later they sent another email saying they are closing my account as I have previously had an account with them that was closed and I would have to wait 45 days to receive my funds. (This was on top of the 10 days I already had been waiting for them to pay me $2,500.00.
Suffice to say I am still waiting for my money and get generic email replies.
Stay away from any processor who does not have a phone number. Stripe sucks!
I have been with Stripe a few years, I do think their rules are very tight and I more or less stay near their 1% charge back rule (I do simple web hosting), but have not been terminated yet, and most importantly they have never been dis-honest or took any money from me like some of the comments on here claim. The earlier comment by Craig J says they terminated his account because they do not do business with company’s outside the countries they list, I don’t understand what Stripe did wrong there… there are processors in Europe I would like to use but they do not do business in the USA so I guess I have to accept that .. right? They are internet based and they kinda only deal with API / automated type websites … I think if your looking to sell goods at the flea market or something for example and need to swipe cards you should look into Square.com, seeing all the bad comments and horror stories on here (which I have been following also for a few years), they do make me worry, I like Stripe and think their system is great and don’t want to loose them, I do get a lot more charge backs from Stripe vs PayPal, about 1 every few months and only about one per year with Paypal, they pay every 2 days and have not once been late, and like I said I have never had a problem with them taking my money or anything, in fact I think their fees are very low for the service I get from them. I can understand some of the reviewers frustration, but I don’t think your hurting Stripe much with the bad (and many times made up reviews), I think Stripe is on fire and doing very well. they should they had a great idea, but your just making people like me worry more than likely for nothing — you should be honest with your reviews, if your site is a scam and your customers claim fraud, it’s not Stripe’s fault, get back to work and build something people will want to pay for!
I’m pretty sure that “Tommy” works for them.I had an account with them and did nothing fraudulent whatsoever and they said I had unauthorized charges so they can’t do business with me.All my charges were legit and I have recordings of all my calls with clients to backup any type of situation that arises like this.So they transferred the money into my bank account only to take it right back out in an hour without my authorization.I asked my client if she disputed something, and she said no, she is happy with my services.Stripe has not responded to my emails or anything so I just contacted my bank today to get my money back.They try to close out your account and keep your remaining balance.I did nothing fraudulent at all and they totally screwed me over.I’m just going to use paypal from now on.Paypal is actually cheaper if you process more than a certain amount.They have the same 2.9 percent +.30 cents fees but after you bring in a certain amount with paypal then it lowers so in the long run paypal is way better.I was using paypal for a few years before trying out stripe and never had a dispute or anything bad with paypal the whole time but once I went with stripe I had these problems.This guy “Tommy” has to be a worker or something for them because how can you say they are cheaper?What a fool.They have no phone number to contact them so that should have raised a red flag right away for anyone.I have 1.5million followers on my twitter page and just tweeted for them to never use stripes services at all because they try to steal your money.I am going to go on all message boards and tell people not to do business with them because I don’t see them lasting either because on the BBB they have 92 complaints in the last few months.Screw Stripe and anyone who is stupid enough to stand behind them
I think it’s funny that you can’t share a positive experience about Stripe without being accused of working for them. I’m pretty sure all the bad reviews here are from PayPal employees. That’s just as silly as all the “Stripe employee” comments. I don’t work for Stripe, Stripe works for me. They’re up front about all of their policies. You should do more research before signing up with a company that’s going to process your business’s credit payments. I was not at all taken by surprise by the 7 day payout or the email only customer service since they have it clearly displayed before signing on with them. And it’s not like you can never get them on the phone. If they can’t solve your issue through email, then they schedule a CS phone call. I’ve had no problems with their services, but it sounds like they’re simply not for all business types. I don’t process at a high volume and I don’t sell anything over $200. Average being about $30.
I just cleared up an issue with my account yesterday. I emailed them on Memorial Day and they contacted me the very next day. We went back and forth for a couple days trying to solve it and couldn’t figure it out. So they scheduled a phone call and after verifying my identity, we figured out the issue and they got me logged back in to my account. If you’re not the type of company that can take a little extra time to solve problems, then Stripe is not for you. Along with the benefits of how they operate come vastly different security measures. Don’t blame them, just choose the right processor for you business type. You want to benefit from their simpler and cheaper function so you sign on completely ignoring the risks associated. As much as I like Stripe, if I started moving 1000s of dollars of product a day, I’d definitely switch to a different processor and just pay the monthly dues and lower transaction rates. Like you all should have done.
The company has tons of complaints across the internet….If they’re all supposedly PayPal employees like you say, then that’s a lot of employees posting bad comments on their free time. Gee, how do they find time to actually get any work done at their offices? Maybe PayPal has a “Trash Stripe Department”? I doubt it.
By the way, i’m not a Paypal/Square/whatever other competing company employee…i’m someone who has also had a bad experience similar to most of the people posting here despite not having done anything to warrant it.
Hi Eric,
Can you elaborate on your negative experience? A bit more detail might be helpful to other merchants.
Same thing- getting the you have 5 days until your account is closed blah blah blah Bulls*it with them- And on another account I haven’t even utilized- they said ‘We’ve noticed that you have processed charges that seem to be unauthorized–in order to make charges with credit and debit cards, the owner of the card must consent to the charge. Charges on your account do seem to lack this consent, which unfortunately means that we will no longer be able to offer service’
There hasn’t even been a charge to that account made yet!
It’s crazy- they are nothing but a fraud- they are also withholding funds that should have already been in the bank days ago before they pulled this stunt on me. I think it is safe to say ladies and gentlemen- we won’t see a penny.
They are quite happy to be moving along with Bitcoin and kickstarter and ApplePay though aren’t they- dump on the small business now is what it seems. Sad thing that companies like Stripe get away with that.
No communication
No phone number ( guess that should have been a red flag)
Doesn’t send funds
Makes up erroneous stories on why they all of a sudden can’t process your business when you have been with them for over a yr with over 10K processed per month.
Smells fishy to me….just saying….
God luck to everyone – I sincerely hopes someone goes after them to protect other hard working businesses like ours.
I received an email from Stripe last week telling me that I needed to update some information or I would no longer receive payment transfers. I responded to the email within 10 minutes with the required information. Since that time (6 days) I have received no transfers from Stripe. I have contacted the company on a daily basis through their email/messaging system and have never received a response.
After searching the ‘net for a customer service telephone number I came across this website. Obviously, this company has some serious problems with their customer service. I have used Paypal for the past 7 years (over 40,000 transactions) and have never had a problem. I have found Paypal’s customer service to be great, although I rarely need it.
Does anyone out there have any suggestions as to how I get my money? Is there any way to speak to an actual person at Stripe?
Thanks,
Mike
Since these types of websites seem to exist for hearing complaints, I do want to say that after using Stripe for well over 2 years, I haven’t had a single problem with them and prefer them to PayPal. Unless it is a weekend or holiday, my money is being deposited within 24 hours to my bank account. No customer complaints either which over the course of years I have had plenty of times about PayPal to the point that unless I offered another payment option I would have lost that customers business.
while you can count complaints to give a business a lousy score here, you aren’t being sure that you are getting reports from the happy and satisfied Stripe users. I think if you did you would see a much better representation of how people feel about Stripe.
Stripe is a rip off and they need to be taken to court! If there a lawyer interested in this scam online, we will want to add our company to the battle. STripe “STOLE” because this is the word fro what they are doing. Someone bought an item with a stolen credit card. They told told us to go ahead and ship. Afterwards and Thank GOD we didnt ship as it was a $10,000 dollar watch. There was a chargeback because the credit card was stolen. They have awful costumer support. no one answer questions. At the end Stripe stole $350 dollar from us saying this is their fee for the dispute charge back. WHAT FEE? the transaction didnt went on. If we didnt waited on the shipment we will have been without the watch and without the money.
—
Are you with Stripe? Learn how to resolve this complaint.
My heart is sinking further and further as I read these comments. After 4 months of perfectly find business operations, using Stripe as our payment processor, out of no where they cancelled our account at 3:00pm on a Friday, telling us we had to find another payment processor in 5 days, which gave us until Tuesday. We emailed back requesting an explanation and told them we are more than willing to work with them in order to come in to compliance because, up until this point, we had really enjoyed working with them. No response. We worked all weekend and all day the following Monday to switch over our payment processor only to receive an email late Monday night letting us know they’ve changed their mind and have decided to allow us to stay. Hesitantly, we re-coded our website, once again, to use Stripe as our payment processor. Over the course of the next several days we received multiple emails from various Support persons at Stripe giving us completely conflicting information. One person said we were good to go, another said our attempts to be in compliance were essentially hopeless, and a third was instructing us on how to migrate our current client data over to our new processor. I finally started a while new Support ticket explaining the conflicting information and finally heard back from someone who confirmed we were in “good standing” and could conduct business as usual. Great. HOWEVER, they have not released our funds to us since January 30, 2015. We have no received a single transfer from Stripe since the beginning of this debacle. Two people have told me they are “looking in to it” and “will get back to me with answers” but we have not heard a single thing. We, like many of the people on here, are a small start up company, relying heavily on the funds we receive. I’m at a loss. They are so unresponsive, so disorganized, and so deceitful. They appear really helpful but completely leave you in the dark, instead. I am hoping they release our funds soon. It’s been almost a month!
I wish I looked this up to start with, joined free agent and they suggested that I join stripe so that people can pay through invoices, makes it easier for me as Im a carpenter and most people want to pay by card or cash but card is better so I don’t have to keep going to the bank to pay in money. Anyway I send the invoice through free agent then they click the link and pay. Had an email from stripe saying they can’t verify my website, 1. I joined to get paid through invoicing through free agent if they look they would realise this. 2. It’s taken them 4 days since the payment was made to decide to put my money on hold. I wonder how long it will take them to email me back.
Alex, it took them a week to respond to me… only to tell me they were refunding all my money to the credit cards that were charged.
I replied to that email five times and they never bothered to reply to me again. Closed my account and refunded the money. I had to manually contact my clients and ask them to re-submit payment through paypal. Even if they decide to unlock your account, I would get out as soon as I could. I went with Paypal, fees are ok… but most importantly it works and the customer service is phenomenal. I asked stripe for a phone number so I could call them, they told me they don’t handle customer service over the phone. This service is… well, not much of a service. Good luck to you!
Have you heard back from Stripe? We are experiencing an unexplained funds hold as well. They have not released funds to us since January 30th. We emailed on February 11th and have yet to get an explanation.
Yeah, they emailed yesterday apologising and saying the funds will be in my account within 7days. I’ve asked them to close my account once the funds are with me and ive moved over to world pay
This company sucks ive been waiting for over a month to get my money and all they make is excuses as to why the transfer didnt go through and then they urge you to contact your bank when the bank has nothing to do with it. Alot of peoples businesses have gone down the drain because of them and not to mention they ignore your emails and they randomly shut peoples accounts! its an awful company, I should have stuck to paypal.
I am fundraising through gofundme which uses Stripe to process payments. Mid way through my campaign, Stripe tell me that they are terminating my account because I pose a high risk. I have been given no explanation whatsoever about this supposed ‘high risk’ and I cannot use another provider on gofundme so will have to cancel my fundraising page. I am raising money to work with orphans in East Africa and this happens? I am totally shocked and sad about this.
They did exactly the same to me the other day and I’m desperately trying to open up some form of discussion with them. It’s absolute nonsense as we’re an online store selling massage products, nothing inherently risky about us at all.
Not easy to discuss anything with them WHEN THEY HAVE NO PHONE NUMBER AND DON’T ANSWER EMAILS!!! What kind of company doesn’t have a phone number? The kind that know they’ll have lots of angry people ringing them.
Hi, same thing happened to me. 7k blocked because of high risk transaction till Mid January. Did you at least get your money back after 90 days?
I am shocked, I received an email two weeks ago from STRIPE stating that they were refunding all processed funds to my customers because of (what appeared to be) unauthorized charges.
There was a days notice between them draining my account, refunding the money to my subscribers, and closing my account.
I provide an audio production service… nowhere in their terms does it state there is a problem with any such service. I scanned my STRIPE customer log and found nothing even remotely fraudulent.
Now, I have lost my lease money, my general expense fund and any glimpse of a profit that there might have been.
Now, in order to run my business I have to have my developer re-integrate a completely new credit card processing service….. and this is going to cost me.
During the past two weeks I have made several attempts to contact them and resolve whatever issue they have.
There is no phone number…. I have emailed four times in two weeks and have not heard back from them.
THIS IS CRAZY – How can a company like this just shut you down over assumed business practices?
If they would reply to my emails I could have navigated through my dashboard with them and shown them there is clearly no fraudulent activity happening.
#puzzled
#shocked
#stripebadbusinesspractices
I completely agree with Sierra. Sharing the same feeling. Stripe is killing lot of start up businesses. NEVER TRUST STRIPE FOR YOUR BUSINESS. STAY AWAY.
Stripe my customers. Infarct, since it is a startup , all the customers are loyal and had long term tala tigons with them
All of sudden stripe sent the below message and refunded all money. Scary thing, it’s unsure whether you customers really received refund.
Stripe mail.
Hi
Stripe provides a service between banks and our users. In order to provide service to our users we are urged by our banking partners to keep an eye on all accounts that sign up for our services. In the process of keeping an eye on your account, we’ve noticed that you’ve processed charges that seem to be unauthorized. In order to make charges with credit and debit cards the owner of the card must consent to the charge. Charges on your account do seem to lack this consent which unfortunately means that we will no longer be able to offer service to your website.
To guard against currently pending charges that may be unauthorized by the cardholder we will be refunding all charges that have yet to reach your bank. If you’d like to recollect these funds you will need to reach out to your users and arrange an alternative form of payment.
I do apologize that your Stripe service will be ending so abruptly but our hands are unfortunately tied.
Best,
Stripe
I had the exact same thing happen and it has cost both my clients and me time and money – I cannot say how disappointed I am in their abruptness and lack of customer service.
I’m a consumer who was warned by the retailer processing my payment through Stripe that although he does not save credit card information, Stripe does. Is that accurate and how can I prevent that from happening? I’d like to purchase the product.
Don’t have idea if Stripe are scammers or not …. but after I received 2 orders on my website and the payout were scheduled to be sent on July 9 , I received an email from Stripe saying : “we’ve noticed that you’ve processed charges that seem to be unauthorized. In order to make charges with credit and debit cards the owner of the card must consent to the charge” Anyone received the same email from them and after that the customers were refunded and stripe account closed ? Is really weird.
Has anyone been able to get a normal “bank” statement from Stripe like you receive from every other financial institution in the world? Why is this a foreign concept to provide a month end statement of activity? Am I missing something?
Thank you
@Sierra,
We are currently having the exact same issue with Stripe. They are claiming our company has duplicate accounts, that have received high numbers of chargebacks. Well, that 100% is not the case. We have only ever created one account so I have no idea where they get this cock and bull information from.
Luckily for us they cancelled our account after they’d sent us the clients money so apart from the fact that we are now unable to process with Stripe we haven’t lost any money.
All I can say, is good riddance to Stripe. We’ll be happily taking our business to another provider.
Be aware anyone considering using Stripe! They will lie and make things up just to be able to close your account. I’d be interested to see if they do actually refund those payments Sierra that they claimed to or whether they keep the fees etc.
Stay away from this company, definitely a FRAUD company.
They emailed which i pasted below, they have clearly allowed the my customers to get charged and now they are keeping my money and not receiving any response to any of my emails. If you are a starting business, never trust this company, or you will have a BIG BIG headache. Bunch of thieves!!!
Hi Jerome,
Thanks for using Stripe! We periodically review accounts and your account recently came up for review.
In reviewing your account, it looks like the payments you’ve processed with us so far have been entered manually through manage. Stripe isn’t a virtual terminal, so this isn’t its intended use; we can better serve you and your customers when your customers give you their credit card information via your website, or perhaps through one of the invoicing applications that integrate with us:https://stripe.com/docs/integrations.
Given that you are manually keying in transactions at this time, we will need to review invoices for the payments accepted to date. Would you mind sending along this documentation at your earliest convenience?
We will need to confirm this information before we can transfer payments to your bank account. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
Sasha
Worst Customer service ever. No Phone number. Under no circumstances, you should use them. We were prompted to use them thru our on line store Big Commerce. Wost mistake EVER. They have accepted to credit card charges for a total of $1160.00 and for some reason, don’t have the ability to get our account set up.
TOTAL RIP OFF—–STAY AWAY FROM STRIPE
Refused to service our card business because they dont like weapons. We sell mace and pepper spray along with other self defense products. See e mail from them below…….
Thanks for signing up with Stripe!
Unfortunately, we will not be able to help out with payments for bodyguardsecurityproducts.com, as the site is in violation of our Terms of Service, section B.5 (“Prohibited Businesses”). Specifically, we are unable to accept payments for weapons — which includes pepper spray — as described here: https://stripe.com/terms#prohibited-businesses
These restrictions come from our banking partners, and so sadly we have no flexibility here. It’s frustrating for us to have to turn away businesses, but in this case our hands are tied.
I’m sorry we won’t be able to help beyond this point; please let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
Les
Do not I repeat do not sign up for Shopify Payments aka STRIPE. It is a scam as others are stating. Avoid at all costs. Use another credit card processor.
I was using North American Bancard as my processor for 15 years prior to starting a small subsidiary website @ shopify.com. I never had 1 problem in 15 years with NAB. My credit card payments were always deposited in a timely manner, and the correct amount was deposited and I never had my money held or had any charge-back issues, not once.
Well, after using STRIPE for 1 week, I have encountered 3 major problems that I never encountered with any prior processor going back to 1996.
1) my 2nd sale for $1100 is being held for 60 days, they are stating it is fraudulent. I have provided them with information stating it is not…so far I have not received any timely response concerning this matter.
2) my 2nd payout to my bank account was the incorrect payout amount, and was incorrectly itemized
in my Shopify “dashboard” which shows you everything related to your shopify.com hosted website including individual sales.
3) my 3rd and 4th sale occurred on 2/21 and 2/22, the money was deposited on 2/28 = 6-7 days later. This is not acceptable. This could be a big reason on its own not to sign up for STRIPE.
The customer service for Shopify and Stripe sucks to say the least. No one seems to know anything or is of any help. It’s always “someone else is working on it” or “so and so will get back to you” or “it’s been kicked up to another department for review” etc etc
I have provided Shopify with detailed information on all of the above issues and have not received any positive response or a solution, as of today 3/2/14
After 10 days I have deactivated STRIPE. I repeat to all who read this. Do not sign up for any of the 3 programs offered by Shopify and use STRIPE for your credit card processing. Pay the $79 for the Pro level and pay a 1% service fee or pay the $179 Unlimited fee and use another processor at 0% service fee, but do not sign up for STRIPE. I am saving you time, money and aggravation.
After I signed up to use Shopify as web host in early January I started using Paypal Payments Pro to handle my processing and that worked flawless, not one problem, 5 Star rating. You receive your money instantly in your account. You do not have to wait 1 week to receive your money as with STRIPE. I am switching back to Paypal Payments Pro or another processor like NAB to handle all my credit card sales at my Shopify website.
So far not too good. I glad I am testing my site before going live. There are server issues and no support.
I wish I had taken the time to read reviews before I agreed to using Stripe for my web based business. Good thing is I can still change providers.
Had 20,000 waiting in an account and stripe completely refunded all of my customers without even speaking to me! What kind of bs is that????
NEVER AGAIN WILL I USE STRIPE!!!!!!! it’s a scam!!!!!!!!!!!!
This company is FRAUD. This is my letter to them, I hope you will understand everything from it:
Stripe Team,
First of all, I’m very disappointed in your customer service. You do not stand behind your customers. You are not replying in time. You were lying about the status of my account by saying that you want to transfer me the money back.
Second,you closed out the dispute without even considering the documentation (Customer’s signature upon receiving my product). Nothing was explained to me.
Third, I consider your company as a Fraud and I’m not allow you to deal with my financial institution & my funds. I don’t owe you any money.
Forth, 80% of reviews that I have read about your company indicate that you are “fraud”. I’m going to post my reviews about your company and share my experience as well.
If you are not agree I will take a legal action against your company. I can easily proof that I’m right. My customer did received my product, signed upon receiving my goods, etc.
Thank you for understanding.
Very disappointed in Stripe’s customer service. They do not stand behind their customers but rather the consumer when it comes to disputed charges. They closed out the dispute without even considering the documentation (signature from UPS) Will be looking for a new gateway.
I’ve had a merchant account for years, with not so much as a single problem. I’m now trying to consolidate all my processing under one umbrella that will work with my main site as well as Shopify. Our processor of choice is taking a while to get going, so I decided to try Stripe as a stop-gap. It was easy enough to install, and the customer service folks assured me via email that we could authorize-only. I did a test-run, charging my own card for a small sale, and unfortunately, just as Sierra said, the sale was captured. I talked to Shopify support, and they verified that my settings are correct, but told me that Stripe had something set on the backend that they could see set to capture, and he (the Shopify rep) was quite concerned. I emailed Stripe and asked for help, but have heard nothing back after three follow-up attempts. Indeed, this feels quite ominous to me. Having just gone through a “real” merchant account application, this was too easy, and while I should pass with flying colors, the fact that they’re capturing when they assured me they wouldn’t, and now basically “not answering the phone” is highly concerning. y new store isn’t open yet, and I think I’ll keep it that way until the real processor is up and running. This isn’t worth the risk.
*****Before I even got to actually post this, I heard back from Stripe…. it seems they say that SHOPIFY does not support authorize only.. that’s right, they’re blaming the problem on Shopify. They told me:
“I’m afraid that doing this via Shopify would not be possible, as it is not currently supported by that platform.
It sounds like in your case you would want to go ahead and capture those funds before your work on the custom piece is completed, and then make sure that your customer is well informed of the timeframe that it will take for you to complete and ship the piece.”
Yup, Stripe encouraged me to circumvent Visa/MC rules. I also quite plainly TOLD Stripe that I was on Shopify when I asked them about authorize only in the first place, so this is really interesting. I forward this entire email to my support guy at Shopify – he was not amused. Well, I won’t be using Stripe. Too bad, they were a nice interim solution.
I am a single mother of 4 children that decided to use my last $2000 to start a business online. I am not able to get a job due to many factors, and I have a business with fantastic potential. Well, that all fell apart when I decided to try using Stripe, who took $450 of my $2000 and ruined my business before it could even get off the ground.
I was reluctant to try Stripe payment processing because of all of the negative reviews I have read. Let me tell you, if you are considering opening an account with Stripe, please believe that they will most likely rip you off, lie to you about account status, and take your money. This is a new company in the financial world that clearly is trying to lure customers in with promises of instant approval, only to take your money and close your account with no warning. And if you are an honest business person who ships orders quickly like me, then you will also be out for the cost of the product you shipped to your customers.
So here are the details of my story to back up my claims:
March 1, 2013 –
I sign up for Stripe and provide standard information. Confirm email address. Because of the bad reviews I have read I decide to wait a few days before implementing Stripe.
March 4, 2013 –
I send follow up email:
Hello there,
I signed up last week and I wanted to check to see if the account was fully active and ready to begin processing payments. Can you please tell me if I am fully approved? The account is under [email protected].
Stripe response from same day (from Naomi):
Your account is fully active from the time you activate it so you’re good to go with us :-)
All the best,
-Naomi
I reply the same day to double check because of the bad reviews I have read. I wanted to make certain that I could begin charging customers. I write:
Thanks but I thought there was an underwriting process..? I just want to make sure there will not be any issues once we start charging out customers because I have read some bad reviews and it spooked me a little bit. Thanks for the quick response by the way!
Stripe response same day (from Naomi):
No problem :-)
We reserve the right to review your account at any time, but you can take payments immediately once you activate your account:
https://support.stripe.com/questions/what-do-i-need-to-do-to-start-running-real-transactions
If you click the link you will also read Stripe claim:
It takes just a few minutes to activate your account by providing some basic information about you and your business. Once you’ve activated your account, you can begin running real charges immediately.
At this point I feel that enough time has gone by, with assurances from the staff that I can begin charging customers.
March 5, 2013 – First succesful order charged using Stripe. I notice that Stripe automatically charges the customer instead of ‘Authorizing’ and then later capturing the funds. I am ‘by the book’ and am concerned so I again reach out to Stripe:
I do have a question though because I see that the customer was charged right away. I double checked our shop setting in Shopify admin and we have the option checked to “Authorize Only”. We do not want to actually charge the customer until the product ships which is best practice. I do not see any settings in the Stripe admin to change this. Any ideas…?
Stripe response:
Stripe doesn’t actually allow authorizations so that setting in Shopify won’t work with us.
Hmmm, okay this sounds kind of strange and phishy to me…. I wonder why….
There would be two more orders to go through for a total of $450. I purchase the products from my suppliers to fulfill the orders. I am trusting at this point that I will see my money from Stripe in 7 days (as they promise).
March 5 & 6, 2013 – All 3 orders were shipped to customers and are in various stages of delivery. Customers are provided tracking numbers, everything seems good, until…
Received email from Stripe (from Lucy) –
Unfortunately we won’t be able to help out with payments for openboxsavings.com, as our banking partners prohibit us from helping with payments associated with a business we’ve had to reject previously.
Sadly we have no flexibility here. It’s frustrating for us to have to turn away businesses, but in this case our hands our tied.
Weird. I think that maybe they accidentally sent me this email or just made a mistake.
So I reply:
I never applied before, what do you mean?
Stripe reply (from Maria):
Thanks for your email and I am sorry about this situation.
Unfortunately, you account was associated with several we have previously had to reject in one or more ways. This might not be 100% accurate, but our banking partners require that we follow these security procedures. You will have to find another way in which to accept payments from your users.
All the best, good luck on your business,
I like the part where she says “This might not be 100% accurate” and how I am wished “All the best, good luck on your business”. I can’t help but think she is writing that in a sarcastic tone because she knows that luck is the only thing that can save me at this point.
My response (to Maria) –
What about the few charges that were made and the balance in the account? I have already paid for the goods and shipped the orders (I have tracking numbers if you need).
Response (from Maria) –
I am sorry for the trouble, but you will have to find alternative forms of payment from those customers. There is nothing we can do.
All the best,
Okay wonderful, so first you cancel my account after I made certain the account was okay to begin charging customers. I don’t have any alternative payment methods except if the customer mails me a check. I am sure they are going to get right on that (after they have already received their product). And wouldn’t that sound incredibly “scammy” for me to contact my customers and ask for a check? I give that about a 1:1000 chance of actually getting paid.
My reply:
What?! You mean you are keeping my money? You have got to be kidding me!!
Response (from Maria) –
Thank you for your email and sorry for the confusion.
We are not keeping your money. We are refunding each payment to your customers.
All the best, good luck on your business,
Wouldn’t it be a good idea to inform your clients in the first “our hands are tied” email to explain that the customers are being refunded? I mean, do I really need to inquire about this and dig up the information. At this point time is of the essence because if what Stripe says is true and they are refunding my customers, then I am now up against the clock to try and locate these shipments before they get delivered.
They also do not acknowledge the fact that I have tracking numbers, nor do they seem to care. I still have no idea how I am going to handle this situation and my choices are to either have the product delivered and beg for a check to be sent in the mail, or try to stop the shipment before delivery, then make arrangements to ship the product back to the supplier. In this case, the customer will not receive their merchandise, and unlike Stripe, I care. So I guess my only option is to let the product deliver and hope to get paid.
My response:
“So will they have already seen the refund on their statement? Because obviously they are not going to pay me with any other method if the charges are still showing on their statements. Do you have proof that the refunds have happened.
Your process is completely backwards and Stripe is causing unecessary problems. You should never tell someone that they are approved and good to start charging, wait until charges are made, and then cancel/refund orders when goods have already been shipped. Clearly it is an attempt to lure in honest business people with an ‘instant approval’ which really is not instant. I double checked before starting to charge customers with your company and was reassured.
Don’t tell vendors they are approved if they are not. You really have no clue on your side how much havoc this creates.”
Do I get a response? Nope.
So, if any others have a similar experience then I recommend writing about it. I am leaving my contact information for an attorney who is investigating a class action lawsuit against Stripe. These business practices are detrimental to small businesses like myself. As I mentioned in the beginning, I had only a couple thousand dollars to try and get this business going. I feel like it coould have provided enough money for my entire family to get by. But now, I have had 25% of this money taken from me, and have also spent 2 days trying to rectify this mess. I don’t know if my business will make it now, because I need to pay my supplier for the goods before I ship products out.
In my opinion the root cause of all of this is that Stripe is trying to gain business from Paypal. They are trying to streamline the setup proccess and make it faster than Paypal. In my case, Stripe is pre-integrated with Shopify and the setup process was very simple. But, this is a deceitful advertising and business practice that Stripe is doing. They are willing to wreak havoc after the fact and cancel customers if it means that they can quickly sign up thousands of unsuspecting new customers.
My final email to Stripe:
As I mentioned before I will be posting on the websites I mentioned and will certainly email you links once posted. I will also place comments on blogs with this same topic and attach myself to any civil or class action lawsuit (believe me it is coming if there isn’t one already). Shame on your company for poor business practices, you are truly showing that you are rookies in the world of financial business practices. As you can read, I am well spoken and will share my story with the world. I hope to pursuade as many people as I possibly can to not use your services and I truly hope that can translate into thousands of dollars in lost business for Stripe.
Thank you,
Stripe Enemy #1
If Stripe were a responsible business, then they would take your application, process it for however long it takes (3-5 days maybe?) and then give you a response. But because they are greedy and sneaky, they tell you that your account is “fully active from the time you activate”. For me this was March 1, 2013. I am just thankful that I was smart enough to trust the other reviewers out there to not jump in so fast. If I had starying charging my customers right away, then Stripe would have taken all $2000 from me and I would be completely broke and shut down for good.
If you are a lawyer who is considering legal action against Stripe, then please contact me at [email protected]. If this email address can not be posted, then reply to me in the comment section and I will find you.
I should also mention that the system we use (WHMCS) also has a type of anti-fraud plugin (MaxMind which is free), it helps block fraud which is very common now a days, PayPal, for example, has fraud prevention built in and was built for E-Bay when they first started and best for shipping goods like you do Harry… Stripe seems to be geared toward web businesses such as web hosting providers, membership sites, etc. … While we have very few problems with PayPal fraud, customers can still open PayPal disputes which we almost always loose because they require a shipping confirmation but since we deal in digital goods there is no shipping label.
It’s now been several months and Stripe is still doing great, no problems and payments still come in like clock work., always on the 6th day unless it falls on a Saturday or Sunday, in that case we get them on that Monday
Stripe is great, clients never leave the website, does single and recurring, they claim to send out payments every 7 days but I always get my payments a day early, very simple and very fair fees. My Auto DJ is a SHOUTcast and Web Hosting provider, so we don’t deal in shipping goods Harry, but I am so sorry about what happened, I have had nightmares with other processors so I have been there many times but so far Stripe is working out great! When clients get their credit card statements the charge is listed as MYAUTODJ, with other processors such as PayPal (who we also love :), the charge on their CC bill is listed as PAYPAL, somethins the client can forget what it was for and open a dispute — not the case with Strip! We use WHMCS as our client & billing manager, and use the Stripe gateway, check out the order process, https://shoutaccount.com/cart.php — works seamless!
First transaction on shopify. Payment received via stripe and I was told to ship. I validated my account and shipped my package. Then I received an email that stated that they could no longer do business with me because I’m reselling name brand electronics. Fair enough, I”m okay with that.
Then a few minutes later I get a message that they wont be able to transfer my funds because the successful transaction was likely done with a stolen credit card.
Okay…. well that’s interesting and there is insurance to protect the consumer so I assume I’ll be made whole as well. So I try emailing back to discuss with swipe….. nothing….. So, I go to their site and look for the customer service line….. nothing…. now I’m feeling like I’ve been scammed….
So…. I send another email to their only contact information available… nothing….
I would recommend going another route if your a small business.
We did not receive our scheduled transfer from Stripe.com today. To say the least, we are extremely concerned. This throws up red flags.
Hi Shari,
I would appreciate it if you keep us updated on the progress of your situation.