This may be of interest to users of Stripe.
We had Stripe integrated into our hivepress website to take payments for listing fees.
Before making the website live we did alot of testing and everything worked as should.
As a safeguard against future problems we sent an email to Stripe asking for them to check our website and confirm that we were OK to press ahead and use Stripe for payments on the website. We specifically asked that they check and confirm that the website does not violate any of their Terms and Conditions.
We got a reply telling us that our website had been thoroughly checked and that we did not violate any of their T and C’s and infact they actually said this:
“After a careful review, it appears that accepting payments through your website shouldn’t be a problem at all. Your account, along with your website, has been fully verified, so there’s no need to worry.”
So we pressed ahead, leaving the website exactly as it was when checked by Stripe. We made payments live and did some small live test payments.
The following day after we did the live test payments we receive a ‘CLOSURE OF YOUR STRIPE ACCOUNT’ email.
“We’re writing to let you know that we have determined that your business, is in violation of the Stripe Services Agreement.
Due to the high-risk nature of this violation, we are unable to provide you with a notice period. As a result, we have closed your account and you will no longer be able to accept new payments.”
Beware. Stripe can be brutal with Account Closures as you can see from our experience.
Always have an alternative plan for payments ready to switch over to.
Important update: Since writing this post we have found that we now cannot use Woocommerce Payments as access has been removed completely. The reason is that Woocommerce are partners with Stripe for account verification purposes. Therefore if you are unlucky and Stripe Closes your Account like they did with us, then you are deemed as an unverified business with Woocommerce and you will be shut out of using Woocommerce Payments.
It does appear that we are able to use Woocommerce without the Woocommerce Payments.
So sorry to hear that! It is customary to ask stripe to review that your website does not violate their T & C or were you worried this might happen based of the nature of your business?
Sorry to hear man. PayPal Business also offers credit cards and more. That could be at least an interim solution. Also try Quickbook Payments and Authorize. If you’re based in Europe, Mollie could be an option, too.
OK. So considering risk factor and reducuing problems going forward we have changed our payment system to Bank Transfer. We are able to do this because we only take B2B payments for the listings and promotions of listings.
We are continuing to use woocommerce plugin. Then we have added CURCY - Multi Currency for WooCommerce plugin. This after testing works well with the currency conversion and it ensures that customers see their own currency on Invoices.
Of interest for general website conversion we are also using Yay Currency converter. This converts currency on listings as it sees it. By that I mean if you have currency figures produced by an attribute.
Update. Since my last post, we are continuing to use CURCY for currency conversion on the merchant side. However, When also installing Yay currency (which does convert the listings prices) it causes a conflict with the CURCY conversions. So we have had to remove YAY for now.
To recap.
Yay currency converter does convert listings prices. BUT it Does Not convert the prices on the merchant side when purchases are being made.
Curcy currency converter does convert the prices on the merchant side. BUT it does Not convert the listings prices.
Using both causes a conflict.
It is a directory that does include competitions. The website and company does not host or run any kind of competitions or gambling, it just allows listings of such.
However, taking payments by stripe to enter competitions and gambling are on Stripes restricted/prohibited list.
This is why we asked for the review by Stripe at the start.
UPDATE TO MY LAST POST. Since my last post, over the past 4 Weeks we had a few emails go back and forth with Stripe.
FURTHER UPDATE. Yesterday, we finally now have an email from another Stripe Customer Service representative who has told us that they have carried our another full review of our website and we are good to go again.