Stripe
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“Rug-Pull” - A.K.A. “STRIPE”
Stripe has knowingly engineered a system to engage in “rug pulls” of small businesses. The numbers work and that’s why they do it. Read carefully. Stripe uses “AI Machine Learning” and their AI looks for “high risk transactions” - and this is entirely “gaming” - it’s their game. Allow me to explain. Transactions over a certain amount (sometimes anything over $100.00 and sometimes anything over $1000.00) get flagged by their AI as a “high risk transaction” or “possible fraud” if it’s been keyed in manually. As in a “card not present transaction”. So here’s the multi-million dollar question. Stripe, why would you allow any merchants to complete “card not present” (manually keyed) transactions if they are flagged by your AI as “high risk transactions”? I am going to answer that question for the review readers, as I suspect other merchants have come here looking for answers for the “rug-pull” like I have. At first Stripe allows these transactions (keep in mind we’re not talking about consumers disputing these transactions) these are all valid transactions that the consumers consented to. And Stripe has discovered that some of these merchants have opened a door for them to explore a new frontier. That’s what I’m referring to as a “rug-pull”. There’s many businesses out there (lots of them service based) that consistently do transactions over $1000, and at the end the service the customer just hands over the credit card and tells them to put it through. Most customers don’t want to go through a sophisticated 2 factor authentication, address verification blah blah blah just to do an online payment. And honestly at least half of people over 45 are not tech savvy enough to do them timely or at all anyway. Which is why businesses like mine need a “card not present” option for manual entry. As a service based business we have a lot to carry, and we do a lot of appointments so carrying another terminal would just slow us down. Stripe allows payments like this for quite a while and then one day their “AI risk factor scoring system” (entirely made up by their own standard and not used by others in the industry) starts to block payments until you have to contact them to ask what’s going on. The next day after you contact them you get a notice saying “payouts have been paused pending a review of your account”. Then very shortly after that you get another message saying that “we can no longer support your business due to high risk transactions”. They block your payouts and they keep whatever funds are in your account for themselves. These are funds that have NOT been disputed by your customers. They tell you the reasons for keeping the funds are to prevent money laundering and facilitating fraud - but remember they allow these exact same transactions to go through for some time before they decide to “rug pull” another small business. So of course the merchant doesn’t see it coming. And if this isn’t deliberate - Stripe your AI is wrong! They also tell you that they will be debiting your account to refund consumers for transactions that they have (themselves decided) were not authorized. Yeah right Stripe! - no business returns money to consumers that haven’t asked for a refund or disputed a payment. That would be stupid business and there’s no way that you refund consumers cards without being ordered to by a bank. It’s a ruse. Some have lost 100K+!! The reason why you do it is for profit. Collison brothers should be shot! Stripe only makes a small amount from every transaction so by “rug pulling” businesses that transact high amounts they earn in one shot as much as they’re going to make from that business for the next 2-3 years anyway. They’ve made that without any work, plus the “fine print” allows it, and they’re justifying it by saying to the SEC that their “AI Machine Learning” has detected high risk and possible fraud - “so don’t worry, pat us on the back we’ve just prevented money laundering”. Yeah right Stripe! You have a 1 star trust rating by your merchant customers - you are the fraud, and you damn well know it! You’re getting your “team” (who are all people that work from home) to close accounts that meet specific criteria - (high value transactions and maybe 1 or 2 payment disputes) - which is regular in business. Then send out pre-written responses like “as stated in our user agreement, these funds will not be returned to you” and “we understand this is not the outcome you were looking for”. You’ve just found a new frontier Stripe, and not many have caught on yet. The reason you have so many customers but yet your ratings are in the toilet is because merchants have few easy options. Businesses also honestly expect that their money is theirs - not to be “rug pulled” Thank you for preventing money laundering through fraud however... “You are Gaming”