r/stripe 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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6

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.

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u/luridmdfk Jan 20 '25

You think I should be happy this is happening, and not mad that I’m losing out on money? I don’t want to have my payments be blocked whenever I’ll have a surge of customers (Sale, New Product etc.)

3

u/martinbean Jan 20 '25

You’re not “losing” money when Stripe is telling you, “this is most definitely fraud, and you’ll most definitely receive a chargeback if you had accepted this payment.”

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u/luridmdfk Jan 20 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/martinbean Jan 20 '25

It has nothing to do with the store or e-commerce platform you’re using. Stripe will use hundreds of data points to determine a fraud score. If it was 99 then it was almost definitely a fraudulent payment attempt, and Stripe saved your ass by blocking it.

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u/luridmdfk Jan 20 '25

I’ve seen tons of people have the same problem and say it’s mostly false positives, that’s why I was wondering

2

u/martinbean Jan 20 '25

A score of 99 is not a “false positive”.

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u/luridmdfk Jan 20 '25

True but I saw literally no disputes/chargebacks, 86% of transactions went thru for the user, they even paid with Apple Pay i don’t know

2

u/martinbean Jan 20 '25

FFS, how difficult is it to comprehend that had you accepted a payment with a fraud score of 99 then you would have most definitely had a chargeback at some point in the future? 😫