[gharial]

I recently reached out to Stripe to get their opinion on whether or not I should bother trying to integrate stripe.js with my browser based game. I obviously didn't want to invest the effort if they were just going to shut me down a few weeks later. It says in their TOU that virtual currency sales are allowed so long as it's self contained and can't be traded for real money or across other websites - that was the case with my game.

After over a week of waiting for a reply (PayPal's initial responses are rarely helpful, but at least they tend to respond..), they told me I shouldn't use Stripe because I would almost undoubtably be considered high risk. Why not just say it isn't allowed?

[onewaystreet]

They do in their TOS.

[gharial]

https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses

>Video game or virtual world credits: Sale of in-game currency unless the merchant is the operator of the virtual world

I am.

>Virtual currency or stored value: Virtual currency that can be monetized, resold, or converted to physical or digital products and services or otherwise exit the virtual world (e.g., Bitcoin); sale of stored value or credits maintained, accepted and issued by anyone other than the seller

It can't and isn't.

Their TOS actually makes no mention of virtual currency whatsoever.

[pki]

Game currency purchases that aren't converted or sold are still disgustingly, ridiculously high risk, bordering internet pharmacy level stuff, especially if a lot of under-18 play your game.

[gharial]

Again - then why not just explicitly ban it altogether? Why say it's allowed under certain parameters and then ban users anyway when they meet those parameters exactly as required? They obviously have a list of products/transactions deemed too high-risk by their contract, they need to state what they are explicitly if they want to stop the PR bleeding.

I've been doing this for four years and we've never had a single dispute, but that's really neither here nor there.