Stripe suspended our account without clear reason – need advice

[markdoppler]

Hi HN,

My co-founder and I have been building ArtificialStudio.ai since 2023, a SaaS platform similar to RunwayML and Krea.ai that allows marketers and agencies to easily use AI models for image and video generation.

Two days ago, our Stripe account was suspended without prior warning. We believe this might be due to 1 chargeback we received last month — not because of fraud, but because some users accidentally purchased an annual subscription instead of a monthly one. We refunded all of them and updated our checkout UX so the monthly plan is now the default option.

We comply with all of Stripe’s policies, and similar platforms in our industry (RunwayML, Krea.ai) operate on Stripe without issues.

We’ve contacted Stripe through email and the dashboard, but so far have only received automated responses. This is a critical moment for us, as our MRR has been growing fast and this freeze puts the business at risk.

Has anyone here been through a similar situation with Stripe? Any advice or contacts within Stripe that could help us escalate this?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[switknee]

>1 chargeback we received last month

>We refunded all of them

Was it a chargeback or a refund? It can't be both.

I'd assume one chargeback isn't enough to get your account banned though. There may be other factors, like one of your company officers sharing a name with a person the USA doesn't like.

I agree with the sentiment that you should have multiple payment processors set up in parallel so you don't lose any business due to this issue happening. Until you become big enough that they can't afford to do without your business, you'll be at risk of arbitrary suspension.

[markdoppler]

We had 3 people who confused the annual subscription with the monthly one, as the annual option was selected by default on the payment page.

Two of them contacted us for assistance, and we issued them a refund, but the other person simply filed a chargeback.

We believe that because the annual subscription amount is high, this chargeback triggered an automated bot flag, and we were marked automatically.

[1659447091]

> but the other person simply filed a chargeback.

I may have missed it, but did you respond to the charge back or simply let the deadline pass and the funds returned by default?

I am not an expert nor do I work with stripe; a few years ago I read through every document I could find to win a large chargeback vs a large corp. The company (you) has a deadline to reply to a dispute -- you can accept it or not. But not replying is one of the worst things to do as it can cause your rating to drop with the card networks itself. There was warning it could cause the loss of ability to take card payments from what I remembr. I forget all of the details. But that may be what happened if the dispute was left to default and an avenue to explore on what to do next.

[markdoppler]

Of course! I issued the refund without any problem just a few minutes after being notified. We never disputed any chargeback, but even so, our account was suspended.

[ergocoder]

If Stripe doesn't tell you the reason, then it's related to financial crime. Your account might be flagged by the authority.

They aren't allowed to tell you anything.

[ersshh]

Have you tried tweeting at them publicly? I've found having it out on Twitter often makes brands act quicker. They look to have a dedicated support account on there

[markdoppler]

It was one of the first things we tried, but it seems like bots are responding. Unfortunately, they’re not giving us a proper review, and this is very frustrating when you’re doing everything right :(

[A_D_E_P_T]

Dude you need to find a different payment processor now -- even PayPal, even just Sezzle. Just have something up as a fallback option so that Stripe Customer Service (practically nonexistent) doesn't run you out of business.

Back in the day, one of my companies was using Square. They hit us with weird and arbitrary restrictions from outta nowhere; we set up Stripe the same day and moved everything over. Our business kept moving along without a hitch.

[markdoppler]

Of course! The problem is that many of the other services also use Stripe in the background, such as LemonSqueezy.

In addition, we’re at the best moment for our MRR, with over 200 users paying every month. Obviously, it’s a simple and legitimate business, and we’re trying to get in touch with someone inside Stripe so we don’t lose months of work.

[A_D_E_P_T]

So find one that doesn't use Stripe?

Anything is better than nothing, and odds are you're not going to be able to get this sorted out before you start running into issues with billing.

[josephcsible]

Stripe does this to people all the time, through no fault of their own, and never seeming to get fixed. I recommend giving up trying to get reinstated and just moving to one of their competitors instead. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44521363 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44075038 for two other recent occasions (on the latter I posted a bunch more links of it happening).