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Stripe's ACH Limits Are Idiotic – Need Help (or Pile On)
2 points by WolandTheCat 1178 days ago
TLDR: does anyone know how to get Stripe to raise ACH transaction limits on your account?

I run a registered charity and our account is through Stripe. We accept donations from the public, which means that donors can set the price of their generous donations. I have had a Stripe account for 1.5 years and have so far processed hundreds of payments successfully.

However - I have had a total of 2 disputed charges. One was just a misunderstanding by a customer and that dispute was resolved in our favor. The other dispute we just lost (we don't know why it was ever disputed). Both disputes were for donations of only $50.

We have many donors that try to give large donations via ACH because the transaction fees for ACH are much lower than cards. Makes sense. However, Stripe is refusing to raise our ACH limits (currently at $6k per ACH transaction and a total of $10k per week) because we have had 2 disputes. Even the dispute ruled in our favor counts as a strike against us! This is 100% a barrier to our philanthropic growth. And we are quite literally raising money for a registered 501(c)(3) charity!

I have repeatedly asked the Stripe support team to raise our ACH limits. They wont, and cite a (dumb as hell) rule where there needs to be a ratio of under 0.2% of your transactions (that number is 0.002) before your account can be eligible to raise the ACH limit. EVEN in cases where donors personally reach out to me, and I know them, and ask Stripe to make a 1 time exception to allow a larger ACH transaction for our CHARITY - they still deny it. EVEN when I offer up collateral just in case there is possibly a large disputed transaction in the future - they still deny the request. Frustrating is a gd understatement.

I don't know what to do and wanted to ask if anyone else in this community has been able to get around this. It's crazy how if someone just wanted to ruin a charity's ability to fundraise from large donors thru Stripe, they could just dispute a few of their small donations (theoretically). It sucks and is a bad rule. Thanks.

1 comments

Why not use a bank account for receiving ACH transactions?
Thanks for your response and you bring up a good point. The problem is that our Stripe account is in this case connected to a larger donation marketplace designed to help us reach and attract more donors (multiple charities are connected to this marketplace alongside us), so we have to use Stripe and we are activated through Stripe Connect.
Could you email me at edwin@stripe.com and I can take about look?
Thanks a lot Edwin - I just sent you an emailing detailing our case!!