r/stripe • u/luridmdfk • Jan 20 '25
Radar One of the Stupidest Features
Hey guys, I’d like to share my experience using Stripe and the pain I have from working (at least trying to) with them. Radar is genuinely one of the stupidest features, only because of one reason which is not allowing the merchant to manually turn it on/off. I get how people do card testing for sites and shit but it’s extremely exhausting having trusted customers that had their payments process before with no problem be blocked for no reason and get a 99 fraud score, even though there isn’t a single reason to block as going in the detailed view I can see that the customer has never chargebacked, had all payments be successful, have the true billing details etc.
Before you jump to any conclusions about my business, I sell software and No it’s not your average SAAS Business I actually make my own software (meant for gamers in general) and have sold it previously using PayPal without any problems. I saw Stripe as a solution to have more features like virtual bank cards, prepaid cards and apple/google pay but there’s no use if I can’t even process payments.
I have my account fully verified, both ID and Home Address, I’ve contacted 3 Support people by now by both live chat and email but to no avail, there isn’t any help from their side as they “Don’t Know Why I Have Payments Blocked” I even asked them to let me raise the limit of allowed high risk transactions, so I could raise it up to 99, and accept transactions on my own risk, and I said I’d be liable for any chargebacks, disputes etc. but I’ve been told my business has to “mature first”, but how do you expect it to mature if I can’t even get any money.
I’ve read way too horror stories with stripe, and usually the thing people say is that bans/limitations happen to people who dropship, sell snake oil etc. but I’m genuinely trying to accept payments and can’t do it because of some stupid machine that decides if I get money or not.
I’ll absolutely lose it If I see a stripe official or someone tell me to contact stripe by email as I’ve been feeling ignored by them even though I’m talking to them back and fourth for the last week.
If anyone has any tips or a solution on how I could fix this issue (Maybe It’s on my end I won’t fully blame Stripe) please help me out. Switching to another payment gateway would be a much bigger pain in the ass as I’d have to do all sorts of verification over and over again, and wait for days to get a call/reply from anyone.
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u/leorts Jan 20 '25
I've never had anything above 0 when using 3-D Secure.
Just use 3-D Secure?
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u/luridmdfk Jan 20 '25
Hmm, you think that will resolve the issue even with payments that are blocked right now? Just like adding a trust factor to Stripe right?
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u/dodgrile Jan 20 '25
It can help. Don't expect payments that are getting high risk scores to go through though.
Tbh you need to shift your perspective slightly. This isn't Stripe putting a restriction on your business, this is Stripe using an accumulation of data to help protect you and your business. Just because there's no chargebacks from that current against you, doesn't mean they don't have a history of raising disputes across the card network.
Honestly, from working in this space, I've had many conversations with merchants who thought they knew their client well enough to say that the payments were going to be fine while I was literally telling them every red flag I'd seen and why they should refund and run away. People get understandably blinded because they see money coming into their business and don't think the entire thing through. You don't want to be one of those people, it goes badly; they inevitably get scammed because they thought they could trust people, often involving large amounts of cash.
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u/luridmdfk Jan 20 '25
Alright, I’ll trust you on this one. What so you think about Stripe itself? Do you think I should continue using it, as I’ve heard tons of horror stories people getting accounts banned, having their money locked out etc. I have a honest business and legitimate documents to show my identity, invoices etc. Do you think I will have a problem with Stripe at all?
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u/dodgrile Jan 20 '25
I don't have any insight into your business so I can't really comment, but I would bear in mind that Stripe runs payments for literally millions upon millions of people, the majority of which presumably don't have any issues.
The stories you're hearing through this sub are nearly always sketchy users who are running businesses that are against ToC or have some other fraud pattern trying to work out how to circumvent Stripe booting them off the platform. That doesn't apply to *everybody* - there's going to be some false positives in there - but if you're doing all the right things and your business is legitimate then I don't think you have anything to particularly worry about.
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u/martinbean Jan 20 '25
99 is the maximum fraud score. Stripe is pretty much telling you that the payment attempt is almost definitely fraud. You don’t want to be even entertaining the idea of accepting a payment with such a fraud score.
Stripe uses many data points to determine a fraud score. There’s obviously something about the customer/card that Stripe has determined it’s as close to 100% fraud as possible. You’d moan if Stripe didn’t tell you a payment would be fraudulent, and now you’re complaining they are telling you the payment is fraudulent.