<story><title>Getting Fucked by Stripe</title><url>http://edoceo.com/blog/2015/06/getting-fucked-by-stripe</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pc</author><text>Stripe CEO here: In general, selling anything related to illegal drugs is strictly prohibited by our banking partners. I wish we could be more permissive here, particularly as marijuana legalization gathers pace. That said, it&amp;#x27;s still illegal at the federal level, and the government doesn&amp;#x27;t mess around on this stuff.[1] Software is an interesting case; I&amp;#x27;m going to go talk to our compliance team to see what we can do.&lt;p&gt;In general, we try to make our prohibitions clear[2], and we try to give a grace period (the five days referenced) in order to minimize disruption.&lt;p&gt;If anyone has suggestions for how we could do this better in a world where stringent prohibitions exist, we&amp;#x27;re all ears. (I&amp;#x27;m patrick@stripe.com) We don&amp;#x27;t like imposing others&amp;#x27; rules, but that&amp;#x27;s part of the reality in operating in the US and on Visa&amp;#x27;s&amp;#x2F;MasterCard&amp;#x27;s&amp;#x2F;etc. networks.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Operation_Choke_Point&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Operation_Choke_Point&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stripe.com&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;prohibited-businesses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stripe.com&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;prohibited-businesses&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wfunction</author><text>If banking partners are the problem, why did you mislead him by blaming &amp;quot;customer disputes&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;(Pedantic note: I know full well that the second part of the sentence that actually places the blame on the &amp;quot;risk&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t mention customer disputes as the source, but the former part does, and since it&amp;#x27;s clearly intentionally misleading I am asking why it was necessary to mislead him by mentioning &lt;i&gt;customer disputes&lt;/i&gt;. Those seem far from the core problem here, if not outright irrelevant.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Getting Fucked by Stripe</title><url>http://edoceo.com/blog/2015/06/getting-fucked-by-stripe</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pc</author><text>Stripe CEO here: In general, selling anything related to illegal drugs is strictly prohibited by our banking partners. I wish we could be more permissive here, particularly as marijuana legalization gathers pace. That said, it&amp;#x27;s still illegal at the federal level, and the government doesn&amp;#x27;t mess around on this stuff.[1] Software is an interesting case; I&amp;#x27;m going to go talk to our compliance team to see what we can do.&lt;p&gt;In general, we try to make our prohibitions clear[2], and we try to give a grace period (the five days referenced) in order to minimize disruption.&lt;p&gt;If anyone has suggestions for how we could do this better in a world where stringent prohibitions exist, we&amp;#x27;re all ears. (I&amp;#x27;m patrick@stripe.com) We don&amp;#x27;t like imposing others&amp;#x27; rules, but that&amp;#x27;s part of the reality in operating in the US and on Visa&amp;#x27;s&amp;#x2F;MasterCard&amp;#x27;s&amp;#x2F;etc. networks.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Operation_Choke_Point&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Operation_Choke_Point&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stripe.com&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;prohibited-businesses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stripe.com&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;prohibited-businesses&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Alupis</author><text>You did right by your business and other customers.&lt;p&gt;The risk of supporting a single company who chose to participate in the illegal drug market (yes, Marijuana is illegal still under the Fed folks) far exceeds any potential benefits they could of brought.&lt;p&gt;Frankly, the article and title are written by someone who is upset they didn&amp;#x27;t understand the reality... It&amp;#x27;s rather unreasonable to blame Stripe here for their own ignorance.</text></comment>