Speaking generally: Stripe provides an abstraction layer, such that there may not be a 1:1 mapping between features of our platform that you use and particular providers. We also have technical and operational teams, such that when an underlying financial rail has a problem we deal with it so customers do not have to.
knowing how most of the banking system works they are just doing all the accounting on their end and waiting to reconcile with Wells Fargo when they come back online.
I signed up for Stripe in 2011 or 2012. About six months after I signed up an account rep from Wells Fargo called me asking about my merchant account. Stripe never made it quite clear what was going on but apparently in the early days they opened accounts at Wells Fargo on your behalf without telling you.
Speaking as a Law afficionado, that is one great Terms of Service document! Kudos to whichever legal team wrote it! I'm not saying that it completely anticipates all potential customer-company interactions that could occur (no legal document could), but it seems to go very far, and seems to show a good understanding of the many potential issues that can arise. My future company might use this document (and others) for inspiration on how to craft its own Terms of Service documents. Thanks for the link!
Still do:
"The Payment Method Acquirer for Visa and Mastercard Transactions is Wells Fargo Bank, N.A, and you may not submit Visa and Mastercard Charges without first agreeing to the Wells Fargo Financial Services Terms."
Zero problems with Stripe, still processing payments without any issue. Just took a look at their status page too, in case something got posted, but no such notice exists.
"Wells Fargo as their bank" is a weird statement. Wells Fargo is a HUGE company with various banking services. This isn't as simple as "WF data center had an outage so WF as a company is completely down"...that's not how it works.
This does not impact Stripe customers at this time. Specifically, the Stripe API and Instant Payouts are functionally normally.
(We're aware of the issues Wells Fargo is experiencing, and have an incident response spun up internally.)