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This exact thing happened to us. We have a store located in Puerto Rico and Shopify would randomly stop payouts every 3-4 months or so because they needed to re

This exact thing happened to us. We have a store located in Puerto Rico and Shopify would randomly stop payouts every 3-4 months or so because they needed to re-verify our owner address information. Apparently, most of Puerto Rico is not verifiable by their shitty address verification API, so it triggers the freeze every time it retries the verification. It was one of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had and cost us thousands of dollars. Stripe also did the same exact thing for very similar reasons and at one point we had over $300,000 USD frozen with them, which was basically our entire monthly payroll expense. We had to explain to our bank why our accounts were suddenly drained. This one was worse than Shopify's since we actually never received any communications notifying that this was going to happen. At least we got an email from Shopify that we just hadn't noticed. They're all broken. And Know Your Customer needs to eat shit and die.

thejosh 4y ago
Address validation is the biggest piece of automation that needs to stop. You're not going to stop people from misentering addresses, and many countries have terrible validation or streets that don't exist yet take forever to show. Or the system that suddenly decides to start doing validation doesn't actually accept valid addresses. Companies think automation can handle it, but it's an absolute nightmare.
- rexf 4y ago
  Address validation is not 100% reliable, so systems should have an override "Yes, this is my address" option. Unfortunately many forms assume address validation is foolproof, so there is no mechanism for entering in your actual address. It just gets rejected. As a customer, I wanted to buy something and the website wouldn't accept my address (since it wouldn't accept any "/" characters). Guess what? There are plenty of addresses in the US with "/", such as 50 1/2 Foobar Street. Address validation does not always work, so companies shouldn't act that way.
  - curiousgal 4y ago
    Try living in a newly built building. Every developer seems to be under the impression that if an address doesn't exist in the Google maps API, then it doesn't exist at all.
    - nibbleshifter 4y ago
      Or streets subdivided into clusters of houses with their own numbering systems for legacy reasons. "4 Blah Terrace", "4 Foo View", and "4 Bar Lawn" are all within 100m of each other, have the first half of the postcode the same, etc. Google Maps/etc can't handle this at all.
  - thejosh 4y ago
    Or subdivided houses are common here in Australia, where it's suddenly 11B Some Street.
  - collinmanderson 4y ago
    Yes. I’ve stumbled upon some organizations in small towns in the US that want all postal mail going to their PO Box, nothing going to their physical address. The small-town post office will sometimes _delete_ the physical address in the mail system so the actualy physical address is completely in-valid (or worse gets autocorrected to an address a mile away). Turns out FedEx and UPS base their address validation off USPS and also don’t ship to PO Boxes.
- jessaustin 4y ago
  ...many countries have terrible validation... In "federal-style" countries like USA, it is possible for some jurisdictions to have adequate validation while other jurisdictions (e.g. the rural county where I live) do not.
- mrjin 4y ago
  The problem was really why keeps validating an address if there was no change since marked as verified?
- TacticalCoder 4y ago
  > You're not going to stop people from misentering addresses, and many countries have terrible validation or streets that don't exist yet take forever to show. I live in a place where the official address changed: as in we got a letter (in 2016 I think) from the town hall saying "your address is now ... and you have to ask everybody to mail you at that new address". Well... Most utility bills' systems have been programmed in a way that make it impossible to keep the same "installation ID" (as in the ID on our electrical install) while changing the address. Somehow "the street got a new name" is a case that had never been planned. The implications are wild (for example the bank refusing to open an account because the official, legal, address doesn't match the address on the utility bill and then the contry's IRS thinking there are shenanigans going on). That's in a civilized, western EU, country. It's Brazil (the movie).
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    > That's in a civilized, western EU, country This feels a lot like Germany (from experience).
urza 4y ago
Bitcoin literally fixes this. Bitcoin is the first public infrastructure for sending money online without intermediaries and trusted third parties. This is the problem it solves, yet any mention of this on HN gets downvoted. You can use something like https://btcpayserver.org/ https://btcpayserver.org/ and be your own payment processor with very little work. Kind of frustrating that HN hates bitcoin so much, that even under link/article about small merchant getting harassed by shopify/stripe, they would rather downvote any mention of real solution..
- HorizonXP 4y ago
  I don’t know if BTC fully fixes this, but I agree that crypto in general is heading down the path that will likely fix this. And agreed, HN continues to hate crypto due to 99% of it being garbage, and ignoring the 1% that is actually revolutionary.
  - ecopoesis 4y ago
    “'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.” It doesn’t matter if 1% of cryptocurrency useful and not a scam: because 99% of it is, if you use crypto you’re going to get scammed.
    - theplumber 4y ago
      If you use money you're going to get scammed
      - anonymousab 4y ago
        The key is that the vast supermajority of your interactions with fiat won't be at high risk of being a scam.
        theplumber 4y ago
        Because you are familiar with fiat/cash and its risks and you use crypto only for "crypto" stuff not to buy your groceries. You won't send cash to someone you don't really trust, would you? How is crypto different? With paypal you get some "security" with the tradeoff that sometimes you won't get it(i.e you get scammed either as buyer or seller) and many times it just pissesoff both the sender and receiver using "fraud detection" and treating both as criminals.
theplumber 4y ago
Ohh so the old "paypal" issues are back. Fortunatrly there is a true peer to peer payment technology: "crypto". Unfortunately it's been hijacked by speculative "investors"
- jwolfe 4y ago
  And requires centralized exchanges subject to Know Your Customer regulations to get your money out as fiat.
  - aabbcc1241 4y ago
    It the ecosystem of the "crypto" is self contained, and both the sender and receiver are living in the ecosystem, then they may not need an exchange. (As long as the transaction throughput and transaction fee are reasonable)
NonEUCitizen 4y ago
Does Evertec (or other PR-based payment systems) have a solution for Puerto Rico businesses selling to customers outside Puerto Rico?
- matiasfernandez 4y ago
  I don't know, but we've tried our hardest to migrate all of our software as far away from Evertec as possible. We're still stuck with their payroll software that still requires a Java Applet on Internet Explorer. It's horrible.

thejosh 4y ago

Address validation is the biggest piece of automation that needs to stop. You're not going to stop people from misentering addresses, and many countries have terrible validation or streets that don't exist yet take forever to show. Or the system that suddenly decides to start doing validation doesn't actually accept valid addresses. Companies think automation can handle it, but it's an absolute nightmare.

rexf 4y ago
Address validation is not 100% reliable, so systems should have an override "Yes, this is my address" option. Unfortunately many forms assume address validation is foolproof, so there is no mechanism for entering in your actual address. It just gets rejected. As a customer, I wanted to buy something and the website wouldn't accept my address (since it wouldn't accept any "/" characters). Guess what? There are plenty of addresses in the US with "/", such as 50 1/2 Foobar Street. Address validation does not always work, so companies shouldn't act that way.
- curiousgal 4y ago
  Try living in a newly built building. Every developer seems to be under the impression that if an address doesn't exist in the Google maps API, then it doesn't exist at all.
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    Or streets subdivided into clusters of houses with their own numbering systems for legacy reasons. "4 Blah Terrace", "4 Foo View", and "4 Bar Lawn" are all within 100m of each other, have the first half of the postcode the same, etc. Google Maps/etc can't handle this at all.
- thejosh 4y ago
  Or subdivided houses are common here in Australia, where it's suddenly 11B Some Street.
- collinmanderson 4y ago
  Yes. I’ve stumbled upon some organizations in small towns in the US that want all postal mail going to their PO Box, nothing going to their physical address. The small-town post office will sometimes _delete_ the physical address in the mail system so the actualy physical address is completely in-valid (or worse gets autocorrected to an address a mile away). Turns out FedEx and UPS base their address validation off USPS and also don’t ship to PO Boxes.
jessaustin 4y ago
...many countries have terrible validation... In "federal-style" countries like USA, it is possible for some jurisdictions to have adequate validation while other jurisdictions (e.g. the rural county where I live) do not.
mrjin 4y ago
The problem was really why keeps validating an address if there was no change since marked as verified?
TacticalCoder 4y ago
> You're not going to stop people from misentering addresses, and many countries have terrible validation or streets that don't exist yet take forever to show. I live in a place where the official address changed: as in we got a letter (in 2016 I think) from the town hall saying "your address is now ... and you have to ask everybody to mail you at that new address". Well... Most utility bills' systems have been programmed in a way that make it impossible to keep the same "installation ID" (as in the ID on our electrical install) while changing the address. Somehow "the street got a new name" is a case that had never been planned. The implications are wild (for example the bank refusing to open an account because the official, legal, address doesn't match the address on the utility bill and then the contry's IRS thinking there are shenanigans going on). That's in a civilized, western EU, country. It's Brazil (the movie).
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  > That's in a civilized, western EU, country This feels a lot like Germany (from experience).

urza 4y ago

Bitcoin literally fixes this. Bitcoin is the first public infrastructure for sending money online without intermediaries and trusted third parties. This is the problem it solves, yet any mention of this on HN gets downvoted. You can use something like https://btcpayserver.org/ https://btcpayserver.org/ and be your own payment processor with very little work. Kind of frustrating that HN hates bitcoin so much, that even under link/article about small merchant getting harassed by shopify/stripe, they would rather downvote any mention of real solution..

HorizonXP 4y ago
I don’t know if BTC fully fixes this, but I agree that crypto in general is heading down the path that will likely fix this. And agreed, HN continues to hate crypto due to 99% of it being garbage, and ignoring the 1% that is actually revolutionary.
- ecopoesis 4y ago
  “'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.” It doesn’t matter if 1% of cryptocurrency useful and not a scam: because 99% of it is, if you use crypto you’re going to get scammed.
  - theplumber 4y ago
    If you use money you're going to get scammed
    - anonymousab 4y ago
      The key is that the vast supermajority of your interactions with fiat won't be at high risk of being a scam.
      - theplumber 4y ago
        Because you are familiar with fiat/cash and its risks and you use crypto only for "crypto" stuff not to buy your groceries. You won't send cash to someone you don't really trust, would you? How is crypto different? With paypal you get some "security" with the tradeoff that sometimes you won't get it(i.e you get scammed either as buyer or seller) and many times it just pissesoff both the sender and receiver using "fraud detection" and treating both as criminals.

theplumber 4y ago

Ohh so the old "paypal" issues are back. Fortunatrly there is a true peer to peer payment technology: "crypto". Unfortunately it's been hijacked by speculative "investors"

jwolfe 4y ago
And requires centralized exchanges subject to Know Your Customer regulations to get your money out as fiat.
- aabbcc1241 4y ago
  It the ecosystem of the "crypto" is self contained, and both the sender and receiver are living in the ecosystem, then they may not need an exchange. (As long as the transaction throughput and transaction fee are reasonable)

NonEUCitizen 4y ago

Does Evertec (or other PR-based payment systems) have a solution for Puerto Rico businesses selling to customers outside Puerto Rico?

matiasfernandez 4y ago
I don't know, but we've tried our hardest to migrate all of our software as far away from Evertec as possible. We're still stuck with their payroll software that still requires a Java Applet on Internet Explorer. It's horrible.