Stripe rejects some creators

[Changaco]

Someone who wants to collect donations through Liberapay received the following email from Stripe:

Thank you for completing our verification process. Unfortunately, we still
won't be able to accept payments for redacted.wordpress.com moving
forward.

Stripe can only support users with a low risk of customer disputes—after
reviewing your submitted information and website, it does seem like your
business presents a higher level of risk than we can currently support.

We're sorry that we can't offer ongoing service, and we wish you the best
of luck with your business.

[Changaco]

Stripe is currently kicking out or scaring away some creators:

• https://pub.mastodon.sleeping.town/@unascribed/112513908012567841
• https://ko-fi.com/post/URGENT-PLEASE-READ-IF-YOU-PAY-WITH-STRIPE-P5P7YGWWC

allegedly based on this section of its Prohibited and Restricted Businesses page:

Content creation

• Transactions that provide compensation to creators without an underlying piece of digital content associated. Examples include subscriptions to free, public content or a tip button on a profile page

which, looking at archived versions of that page, was added in January 2024.

See also:

• https://mk.asie.pl/notes/9tsu4ufp3j
• https://x.com/stripesupport/status/1795168327620510004

[Changaco]

As long as Stripe doesn't decide that Liberapay itself is unacceptable, the potential solution to these problems remains the implementation of #2238 and/or #2324.

[Changaco]

Stripe's policy was updated again in June, removing “Content creation” from the list of prohibited businesses.

[Changaco]

After targeting “content creation”, Stripe moved on to targeting “crowdfunding”. I've received reports of users who got their accounts shut down. I've also noticed that “crowdfunding” and “donations” appear in a short list of prohibited use cases that Stripe has added specifically for cross-border payouts. This means that even if Liberapay had a subsidiary in the US, we might not be allowed to use it for cross-border payouts.

[henry-fisher]

Yep can confirm we were hit with the crowdfunding shut down on one of our accounts. Appeal was rejected. Hope there's a longer term solution to this! Really nice to see an open issue 🙏