6 ms·

Does it matter? PayPal and Stripe don't advertise that they will only do business with organizations with which they agree. To accept a business as a client f

by mikece 4y ago

Does it matter? PayPal and Stripe don't advertise that they will only do business with organizations with which they agree. To accept a business as a client for a mission critical service like payment processing and then summarily cancel or suspend service without notice should be able to be prosecuted the same as someone who vandalizes a physical storefront to the point they cannot open for business. This is non-trivial and PayPal and others are acting like rat bastards to accept a client, get them dependent, and then dump them without warning.

wpietri 4y ago
Is it all companies that can no longer decide who they do business with in accordance with the terms of the contracts in place?
bagels 4y ago
It does matter if it actually violates the TOS, or could be vaguely interpreted to do so I guess?
- mikece 4y ago
  And how many times does a company claim you have violated TOS and then refuse to tell you how you violated the TOS? To act in this manner nullifies the TOS in my opinion.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    It definitely sucks for the merchant companies ending up on the pointy end of the TOS. But you also need to consider the payment company side of things. They face a relentless tide of fraud and shady merchants. If they are too transparent about exactly how they detect a problem, that makes it much easier for the criminals, scam artists, and dodgy merchants to get around TOS enforcement. The real culprits here are the people trying to violate the TOS, plus everybody's desire for cheap services and easy onboarding. The historical alternative was very expensive setup (e.g., spend a few years building a relationship with your local bank branch manager and establishing a financial track record). Making it easy to get started means that most problems will show up down the road, and the lower merchant costs means less money to pay for smart people to carefully untangle the truly dodgy from accounts that just look that way.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      > If they are too transparent about exactly how they detect a problem, that makes it much easier for the criminals, scam artists, and dodgy merchants to get around TOS enforcement. I get that, but I don't see how actually telling people what term of service was violated gives too much leverage to the bad guys.
      - wpietri 4y ago
        Neither do I, but I wouldn't expect to see it without really understanding the bad actors and what they're up to. So this could be their best effort. Or it could be that they're just going with a blanket "say nothing" policy because it's too hard to create a more nuanced policy that the CSRs can apply consistently. Or it could just be laziness and a lack of customer focus. It's impossible to say from the outside.
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    Never. In 20+ years of using Internet I have never been banned unduly from any service. I have seen way to many stories about people claiming to have been banned for no reasons from services (online video games are a popular one) before it is revealed the ban was 100% legitimate, to take any new story like this at face value.
    - mikece 4y ago
      I was banned by PayPal once because I didn't sign up with an SSN or EIN and proceeded to make enough to trigger a review because they couldn't file a proper 1099-K on me. This was an oversight on my part and I offered to correct the situation by submitting any documentation they needed -- photo ID, SSN, prior year tax returns to PROVE that I was paying tax on the revenue coming from PayPal, the new LLC and EIN I had for that company's activity. They refused to update my account, told me to start over with a new account, and then similarly ban-hammered me again (probably because I started an account after getting banned even though it's what they told me to do!). I made a mistake out of inexperience, was refused the chance to correct that mistake, and all of my PayPal accounts -- including my PERSONAL account that I had had for years -- were banned because they were started by a person (me) who had an account frozen or banned. Is that a legitimate enough story?
      - iLoveOncall 4y ago
        No, not legitimate at all. PayPal had banned me because I was under 18 when I opened my account, they then allowed me to open a new one (right after this one got suspended) and it has been working fine without any issue since then (10 years+). Stop doing shady stuff.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        wtetzner 4y ago
        > Stop doing shady stuff. If PayPal requires an SSN or EIN, why do they even allow you to create an account without one?
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Somewhere between occasionally and almost always, depending on the reason. In most cases, you will not be given details if fraud is suspected. The reason being that companies don't want to tell fraudsters how they got caught.
  - irvingprime 4y ago
    Whether or not the TOS can be said to be legally nullified (not being a lawyer, I have no idea) canceling or suspending someone's account without telling them some kind of reason they can do something about is absolutely unethical. It is also very common.
    - nicce 4y ago
      It is very common because it is not benefial for the company to clarify reasons. It includes many risks. They can be proved to be incorrect, for exmpale if they refer into their own ToS, which is public information and binding. And then some legal expert says that this is not how it goes and it ends up into court, because customer sees risks being lower. If they made a mistake or there was a software failure, it is bad PR. If they ban someone for some specific reason but not someone else, there will be drama. It is very beneficial to just say nothing.
  - adolph 4y ago
    Maybe there is a market for insurance to initiate a "Wrongful ToS Ban Lawsuit." I take no right/wrong position on the below gentleman but note that he did bring a lawsuit against Twitter for being banned and his account reinstatement coincides with a settlement of the suit. Right now the payment facilitators only have loss of an account in terms of incentive to reduce false positives in detecting fraud. One year ago this month, Twitter permanently suspended a 340,000-follower account for “repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules.” The owner of that account, the former New York Times reporter and vaccine skeptic Alex Berenson, responded with a lawsuit demanding reinstatement. . . . . . . Earlier this summer, Twitter put Berenson’s account back online, noting that “the parties have come to a mutually acceptable resolution.” Berenson wasted little time in calling out mainstream media for failing to cover the “pathbreaking settlement” that led to his return. . . . https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/alex-berenson-twitter-ban-lawsuit-covid-misinformation/671219/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/alex-...
- incone123 4y ago
  They did say they had been running the business for several years and have prior discussions with Stripe about TOS on file.
  - snowwrestler 4y ago
    Ok but is that a green flag or a yellow flag? How many companies using Stripe have had multiple conversations about the TOS? I would guess it’s a minority. Not a topic anyone is usually excited to talk about.
  - scsh 4y ago
    The TOS can be updated/changed/clarified over time and they could end up falling outside of what they cover as a result. It's not great and sucks as a customer but it can happen.
- toss1 4y ago
  NO, it does not in this case They can determine up front if it violates the TOS They can notify the customer of the SPECIFIC violation IN DETAIL, and what can be done to cure it, and provide time to do so. They can deny access to the transaction instead of nuking the entire business for some algorithmic flag. The Stripes and PayPals of the world do NONE of this. Instead, they act like they accept almost all businesses, get them dependent on that piece of infrastructure, then willfully trash the business on a whim.
  - bagels 4y ago
    The type of business matters if we're trying to guess whether they violated the TOS or not. I completely agree with you that how these companies handle these issues is completely wrong, if not fraudulent.
    - toss1 4y ago
      I agree that in general, it matters. However, by a long series of deliberate actions, Stripe has made it irrelevant to the fact that they are now deliberately, unilaterally, and with zero notice whatsoever shutting down that biz' critical infrastructure. They could have, and should have as a part of KYC compliance, already figured out what type of business it is. If they failed at that, then fine, give them 60 days notice to find other infrastructure. Stripe is taking its OWN FAILURE to properly vet their customers according to their own standards and dumping the consequences onto the ex-customers. Sorry, but unless we're talking actual provable international criminal/autocratic money-laundering, that's just wrong.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  The part where they said everything was fine and then re-locked so much a week later is completely unacceptable even if the business does violate the TOS.
jabroni_salad 4y ago
https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full always read the fine print
deng 4y ago
> PayPal and Stripe don't advertise that they will only do business with organizations with which they agree. Huh? Of course they do. Just one example: https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/what-is-paypal%E2%80%99s-policy-on-transactions-that-involve-sexually-oriented-goods-and-services-faq569 https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/what-is-paypal%E...
ceejayoz 4y ago
> PayPal and Stripe don't advertise that they will only do business with organizations with which they agree. https://stripe.com/legal/restricted-businesses https://stripe.com/legal/restricted-businesses
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  > Firearms, explosives and dangerous materials > Guns, gunpowders, ammunitions, weapons, fireworks and other explosives. Peptides, research chemicals, and other toxic, flammable and radioactive materials Why does the payment processor get to dictate whether I can run a defense ordnance company or run a scientific chemical supplies store? Some of this stuff needs to be challenged in the court or regulated so that payment processor has no say whatsoever in whatever their belief system says about legitimacy of a business.
  - marcinzm 4y ago
    You mean the belief system of wanting to not get sued by someone who get's hurt or killed?
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      I was considering starting a weapons ordnance company, getting federal ATF license and bid on a contract to USG and NATO forces. I guess Stripe billing isn't going to be our choice of service. Stripe has really good invoice/PO processing APIs.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > Why does the fucking payment processor get to dictate whether I can run a defense ordnance company or run a scientific chemical supplies store? Because they have the legal right to do so? They could ban companies run by redheads, if they like. As long as they're not discriminating based on very specific sets of criteria established by law, they get to choose who they do business with. The government requiring private citizenry to associate with everyone who wishes to associate with them seems like a very dark path to go down.
braingenious 4y ago
>Does it matter? That is indeed the question. There is no way of knowing if the nature of the business is a factor unless you know that nature of the business.

by mikece 4y ago

wpietri 4y ago

Is it all companies that can no longer decide who they do business with in accordance with the terms of the contracts in place?

bagels 4y ago

It does matter if it actually violates the TOS, or could be vaguely interpreted to do so I guess?

mikece 4y ago
And how many times does a company claim you have violated TOS and then refuse to tell you how you violated the TOS? To act in this manner nullifies the TOS in my opinion.
- wpietri 4y ago
  It definitely sucks for the merchant companies ending up on the pointy end of the TOS. But you also need to consider the payment company side of things. They face a relentless tide of fraud and shady merchants. If they are too transparent about exactly how they detect a problem, that makes it much easier for the criminals, scam artists, and dodgy merchants to get around TOS enforcement. The real culprits here are the people trying to violate the TOS, plus everybody's desire for cheap services and easy onboarding. The historical alternative was very expensive setup (e.g., spend a few years building a relationship with your local bank branch manager and establishing a financial track record). Making it easy to get started means that most problems will show up down the road, and the lower merchant costs means less money to pay for smart people to carefully untangle the truly dodgy from accounts that just look that way.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > If they are too transparent about exactly how they detect a problem, that makes it much easier for the criminals, scam artists, and dodgy merchants to get around TOS enforcement. I get that, but I don't see how actually telling people what term of service was violated gives too much leverage to the bad guys.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      Neither do I, but I wouldn't expect to see it without really understanding the bad actors and what they're up to. So this could be their best effort. Or it could be that they're just going with a blanket "say nothing" policy because it's too hard to create a more nuanced policy that the CSRs can apply consistently. Or it could just be laziness and a lack of customer focus. It's impossible to say from the outside.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  Never. In 20+ years of using Internet I have never been banned unduly from any service. I have seen way to many stories about people claiming to have been banned for no reasons from services (online video games are a popular one) before it is revealed the ban was 100% legitimate, to take any new story like this at face value.
  - mikece 4y ago
    I was banned by PayPal once because I didn't sign up with an SSN or EIN and proceeded to make enough to trigger a review because they couldn't file a proper 1099-K on me. This was an oversight on my part and I offered to correct the situation by submitting any documentation they needed -- photo ID, SSN, prior year tax returns to PROVE that I was paying tax on the revenue coming from PayPal, the new LLC and EIN I had for that company's activity. They refused to update my account, told me to start over with a new account, and then similarly ban-hammered me again (probably because I started an account after getting banned even though it's what they told me to do!). I made a mistake out of inexperience, was refused the chance to correct that mistake, and all of my PayPal accounts -- including my PERSONAL account that I had had for years -- were banned because they were started by a person (me) who had an account frozen or banned. Is that a legitimate enough story?
    - iLoveOncall 4y ago
      No, not legitimate at all. PayPal had banned me because I was under 18 when I opened my account, they then allowed me to open a new one (right after this one got suspended) and it has been working fine without any issue since then (10 years+). Stop doing shady stuff.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - wtetzner 4y ago
        > Stop doing shady stuff. If PayPal requires an SSN or EIN, why do they even allow you to create an account without one?
- kube-system 4y ago
  Somewhere between occasionally and almost always, depending on the reason. In most cases, you will not be given details if fraud is suspected. The reason being that companies don't want to tell fraudsters how they got caught.
- irvingprime 4y ago
  Whether or not the TOS can be said to be legally nullified (not being a lawyer, I have no idea) canceling or suspending someone's account without telling them some kind of reason they can do something about is absolutely unethical. It is also very common.
  - nicce 4y ago
    It is very common because it is not benefial for the company to clarify reasons. It includes many risks. They can be proved to be incorrect, for exmpale if they refer into their own ToS, which is public information and binding. And then some legal expert says that this is not how it goes and it ends up into court, because customer sees risks being lower. If they made a mistake or there was a software failure, it is bad PR. If they ban someone for some specific reason but not someone else, there will be drama. It is very beneficial to just say nothing.
- adolph 4y ago
  Maybe there is a market for insurance to initiate a "Wrongful ToS Ban Lawsuit." I take no right/wrong position on the below gentleman but note that he did bring a lawsuit against Twitter for being banned and his account reinstatement coincides with a settlement of the suit. Right now the payment facilitators only have loss of an account in terms of incentive to reduce false positives in detecting fraud. One year ago this month, Twitter permanently suspended a 340,000-follower account for “repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules.” The owner of that account, the former New York Times reporter and vaccine skeptic Alex Berenson, responded with a lawsuit demanding reinstatement. . . . . . . Earlier this summer, Twitter put Berenson’s account back online, noting that “the parties have come to a mutually acceptable resolution.” Berenson wasted little time in calling out mainstream media for failing to cover the “pathbreaking settlement” that led to his return. . . . https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/alex-berenson-twitter-ban-lawsuit-covid-misinformation/671219/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/alex-...
incone123 4y ago
They did say they had been running the business for several years and have prior discussions with Stripe about TOS on file.
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  Ok but is that a green flag or a yellow flag? How many companies using Stripe have had multiple conversations about the TOS? I would guess it’s a minority. Not a topic anyone is usually excited to talk about.
- scsh 4y ago
  The TOS can be updated/changed/clarified over time and they could end up falling outside of what they cover as a result. It's not great and sucks as a customer but it can happen.
toss1 4y ago
NO, it does not in this case They can determine up front if it violates the TOS They can notify the customer of the SPECIFIC violation IN DETAIL, and what can be done to cure it, and provide time to do so. They can deny access to the transaction instead of nuking the entire business for some algorithmic flag. The Stripes and PayPals of the world do NONE of this. Instead, they act like they accept almost all businesses, get them dependent on that piece of infrastructure, then willfully trash the business on a whim.
- bagels 4y ago
  The type of business matters if we're trying to guess whether they violated the TOS or not. I completely agree with you that how these companies handle these issues is completely wrong, if not fraudulent.
  - toss1 4y ago
    I agree that in general, it matters. However, by a long series of deliberate actions, Stripe has made it irrelevant to the fact that they are now deliberately, unilaterally, and with zero notice whatsoever shutting down that biz' critical infrastructure. They could have, and should have as a part of KYC compliance, already figured out what type of business it is. If they failed at that, then fine, give them 60 days notice to find other infrastructure. Stripe is taking its OWN FAILURE to properly vet their customers according to their own standards and dumping the consequences onto the ex-customers. Sorry, but unless we're talking actual provable international criminal/autocratic money-laundering, that's just wrong.
Dylan16807 4y ago
The part where they said everything was fine and then re-locked so much a week later is completely unacceptable even if the business does violate the TOS.

jabroni_salad 4y ago

https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full always read the fine print

deng 4y ago

> PayPal and Stripe don't advertise that they will only do business with organizations with which they agree. Huh? Of course they do. Just one example: https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/what-is-paypal%E2%80%99s-policy-on-transactions-that-involve-sexually-oriented-goods-and-services-faq569 https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/what-is-paypal%E...

ceejayoz 4y ago

> PayPal and Stripe don't advertise that they will only do business with organizations with which they agree. https://stripe.com/legal/restricted-businesses https://stripe.com/legal/restricted-businesses

systemvoltage 4y ago
> Firearms, explosives and dangerous materials > Guns, gunpowders, ammunitions, weapons, fireworks and other explosives. Peptides, research chemicals, and other toxic, flammable and radioactive materials Why does the payment processor get to dictate whether I can run a defense ordnance company or run a scientific chemical supplies store? Some of this stuff needs to be challenged in the court or regulated so that payment processor has no say whatsoever in whatever their belief system says about legitimacy of a business.
- marcinzm 4y ago
  You mean the belief system of wanting to not get sued by someone who get's hurt or killed?
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    I was considering starting a weapons ordnance company, getting federal ATF license and bid on a contract to USG and NATO forces. I guess Stripe billing isn't going to be our choice of service. Stripe has really good invoice/PO processing APIs.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > Why does the fucking payment processor get to dictate whether I can run a defense ordnance company or run a scientific chemical supplies store? Because they have the legal right to do so? They could ban companies run by redheads, if they like. As long as they're not discriminating based on very specific sets of criteria established by law, they get to choose who they do business with. The government requiring private citizenry to associate with everyone who wishes to associate with them seems like a very dark path to go down.

braingenious 4y ago

>Does it matter? That is indeed the question. There is no way of knowing if the nature of the business is a factor unless you know that nature of the business.