[whatamidoingyo]

I spent months working on a dating website. Had Stripe configured, spent the whole time testing with it. Published the site, swapped Stripe to production, and boom, account was closed/banned.

According to their own documentation, dating sites are indeed allowed, so long as there's no adult content. The site I built didn't allow adult content. I argued my case, provided the TOS as well as showed that I had features built into the site to prevent that sort of stuff. Still banned. The next step was to go for CCBill, etc. But they all charge a ~$2,000 setup fee. Not happening.

It had so many features built into it, and was by far my favorite project. Sadly, I just unpublished it and it will probably forever sit in my project folder unused.

[cedws]

You should kick up a major fuss. Call the media. Write a blog post. These companies should not be the moderator of what is socially acceptable.

[jagaerglad]

if only a decentralized alternative had not become a money laundering tool and financial instrument

[Henchman21]

Hmm I wonder how that happened?

[const_cast]

It's annoying this is what has to be done, but when all our regulators have their balls chopped off this is the reality.

Rules are made on tiktok, twitter, and in the civil court room. It costs lots of money and is almost never worth it.

Which is why only the big dogs get to play these rules. Apple doesnt care if it burns money on a lawsuit that's stupid. That puts YOU at a huge disadvantage.

IMO payment processors are infrastructure, pseudo public. This amounts to free speech restrictions.

[jfyi]

What did the processing fees on CCBill look like, or did you get that far?

[whatamidoingyo]

Here's a part of the message I received from them:

- $25.00 - Monthly fee for the merchant account.

- $19.95 - Monthly fee for the Authorize.net payment gateway (API Connection to your website)

- 3.95% - Keyed rate

- $0.25 - per transaction fee

- $1,450 - HIGH-RISK fee

- 10% Rolling reserve

It just seems unfair, as these fees are for "adult content" sites (i.e. nudity, etc.), which is not what I built.

[ranger_danger]

Why not just go straight to authorize.net? Or your local bank can probably set you up with them... always worked for me.

[jfyi]

Because authorize.net is a payment gateway, not a processor. You'd still need a processor and the one your bank works with will have similar requirements.

Honestly, those rates are better than I expected. I think OnlyFans has a 20% rate and the one real experience I have had with processors that handle adult industry was nearing 30%. They had legitimate fraud problems though.

[whatamidoingyo]

I didn't even consider that as an option. I will look into it. Thanks for the suggestion!

[fknorangesite]

More than it's worth. Even if their fees weren't astronomical, their platform is a nightmare to work with.

[hellooooooo]

Could it run on lightspark?

[unstatusthequo]

Why not Square? Why not crypto? I realize HN kinda hates crypto as a group, but it solves your situation here, does it not? I realize it’s another step for users who don’t already have it, but I guess you need to determine whether it would cause enough friction to not get signups.

[whatamidoingyo]

> Why not Square?

I looked for alternatives, such as PayPal, and Square. They consider dating websites "high-risk", so they would most likely ban the account as well. It just seems like too much of a headache to rewrite the codebase to just have the account banned again.

> Why not crypto?

I thought about this as well. I don't dislike the idea of crypto, but what would users think? It would probably be a huge red flag and look like a scam site.

So, the dating sites that are already in existence are it - they own the market. I'm pretty sure I've read that the execs of Stripe are also invested in Tinder/Bumble*, etc. No wonder it's extremely difficult to compete.

* - not sure if this is actually true.

[justinrubek]

Why is the payment processor so strongly coupled to the point that you would need to rewrite it? I understand there's effort to adapt it but I don't think it's good to write the code like that.

[whatamidoingyo]

Well, of course some things are going to need to be rewritten? It won't be complicated at all, but the primary concern is registering new accounts, looking through documentation for API keys, testing, etc. This seems like wasted effort just to get banned again. Or worse -- get banned and account funds put on a hold.

[PaulHoule]

Most crypto protocols are completely transparent so somebody can write down your wallet address and hassle people you trade crypto with. For instance if you want to turn your crypto into cash the transaction can be blocked there.

[cyanydeez]

also, there's no legitimate uses for crypto currentl.