I believe you, but I was also triggered by this line here

> They know exactly who our customers are and what services we offer, and have approved it as such.

which sounds like you offer services out of the ordinary.

Which is besides the point.

It is not. A company like Stripe is free to decide it does not want to be associated with certain services. You may disagree with that, and I would certainly agree they should at least be upfront about it, but it is not beside the point.

It is free to do that, but if it decides it wants to kick customers out immediately without explanation, we are free to tell one another and use a different provider. That is the point we're discussing, whether the dev community can still consider Stripe reliable and professional.

It certainly sounds like it’s some sort of e-pimp business based on what we know so far.

Source for that? OP is usign a throwaway account and hasn’t said anything about the business.

That's most of it; having clients that have their own sub-stripe accounts that are triggering fraud detection and not mentioning the business.

It's not much to go on but it's all we have.

Are you sure it's not a medium risk business that IS benign, but STILL is considered medium to high risk?

For example, selling video game digital products like a strategy guide is benign, but gaming industry is ripe with fraud so most processors will give you shit if you're in the gaming niche, let alone (non-crypto) digital currencies, crypto, health products, non-snakeoil supplements, etc.

Even if this is the case, it doesn't mean that Stripe should just be able to turn off a 3rd of the guy's business with no warning or reason. If they don't like what he's doing, tell him and give him notice to switch to another provider rather than just tanking his business over night.

Yeah that isn't how payment processors work. If his clients are in breach of Stripes TOS it puts Stripe at odds with the compliance teams at Visa/MC/Amex immediately if they are processing his payments.

Source: I used to run adult websites which is considered 'high risk' and also these days responsible for overseeing 1M/m in CC processing for a state agency.

They only reason theyd do this is for reputation. They don't want a good reputation with people in risky business.

Since HN is a community, you might have more luck getting this fixed if you posted this with your regular username? Never mind this suggestion if you have previously posted "sketchy" opinions that would harm your business, although you may be past that point now...

The problem is that my real HN account is my actual name. It'd be like 2 clicks to figure out what my business is.

Totally understandable, but what kind of business is it? If you just keep saying 'it's a business' but refuse to provide any further details then people are gonna make assumptions, eg adult entertainment. Nobody's asking what your specific business model is.

Also consider that if the situation continues your pissed-off downstream customers will ID you sooner or later.

He's ignoring the "what type of business" questions. I'm getting downvoted. I don't care. He's ignoring it for a reason still.

We operate in the public sector.

Yeah, me too. I was wrong to suspect that you wanted to avoid associating your business with your HN content. So, are you trying to avoid leaving an online record of "this business helped Stripe screw over its customers"? Unless your customers have strong incentives not to talk publicly about their experiences, that ship has sailed...

Ha, not quite. It's more I'm concerned that people considering using my product will see this in the future (hopefully when this issue is resolved) and be wary of doing business with us.

Is it an animal, a mineral, or a vegetable? Surely you can give us enough generic information that we can know roughly what kind of business you run without making it searchable.

We operate in the public sector where the number of startups is small. If I shared the vertical you'd be able to narrow it down to 2 or 3 companies.