This article was written in the context of a non for profit project. The non for profit mission is to support women in the workplace and Stripe as our primary payment infrastructure for our donations. Stripe was contacted for comments but never replied to any of my emails (Account Manager or Support). At a personal level, I still love Stripe for our corporate and personal project but will always stay away from them after this experience for a non for profit project
Why we selected Stripe
The non for profit needed to accept donations and wanted to offer services to our members in the near future - access to a community platform, webinar and masterclass. As a french non for profit organization with the hope to address the gender gap in the workplace in Europe and the MENA region, we had access to a small selection of solution providers. We selected Stripe as the gold standard in the selection of providers due to its native connection to both web CMS used and the capability to accept multiple currencies.
We quickly onboarded their solution and provided all necessary legal documentation for the creation of our account and even introduced ourselves as a non for profit and were welcomed to a great non for profit team. The non for profit Stripe team provided us with a discount on their fees and off we go with the integration of their solution on our website to accept donations.
Problem started
After 3 weeks of integration of their solution onto our website and the creation of extensive google ads and social media ads to bring donations to our site, we were on. Within 2 days we started to receive our first few visitors from the donation effort. The third-day Stripe support sent us an automatic email stating that our account was suspended and we needed to provide additional information about us in order to gain access again to our account.
We provided the additional information only to be welcomed by a follow-up email stating that we were a high-risk account and our account was closed for good.
At no point, we were able to gain access to our account to see what could have triggered such a nuclear response. And after several non answered follow up emails with their support, we never got access to our account ever again.
In which dimension can a small non for profit be cut out of their payment system out of the blue when no apparent transaction ever is processed and never provide information related to such suspension. I can only think that companies like Stripe are not interested in supporting non for profit outside the PR element of it.
Why refusing small organization
I understand the economics of a for-profit organization and their need to maximize returns for shareholders. And I understand the need to increase your clients long time value either by upselling or by changing cohorts to more valuable clients.
Back to Stripe, once they realise that our volume of transactions will be below a certain threshold then they suspended us pure and simple. The cost of processing the transaction and offering support will not be covered by our donation volume. It makes complete economical sense.
Intellectual honesty
It makes sense to fend off small clients but why pretend otherwise except for PR. I love every product of Stripes, their onboarding and day to day experience. But I can’t accept the lack of intellectual honesty when it comes to turning down smaller clients.
Why use a compliance smoke screen and tell us “you are high risk, therefore, we cancel your account” when they could simply say “you cost money to us, we will suspend your account but you can still access it to retrieve any historical data if necessary”.
Why can’t their support provide more than 2 standard emails filled with fluff and not answers to the actual questions: what happened and how can we process so to enter your guideline?
A long time ago, Stripe was a rebel standing above the crowd of early 2000’s faceless and supportless payment startups to do better. They officially became them.
Advice to Stripe and Stripe like organizations
Supporting Non for profit should be more than a PR move. It should be driven by the will of spreading good, the same will founders have when they went on to put together a better payment platform like Stripe. In the name of honesty, don’t reduce your non for profit effort to simply look good and PR reasons. Better not do it than pretend.
We could all save a lot of time.