Stripe Rejected You? Card Payments Aren’t Dead
Stripe rejected your business? That doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t accept card payments. The real question is which layer rejected you — and whether a higher-risk payment provider or direct acquiring relationship could be the better route.
Transcript excerpt
Stripe rejected your business, and that rejection feels final. Most founders now think that that means card payments are not an option for their business anymore. But, Stripe actually only controls one piece of a much bigger system, so card payments might still be an option for you. First, you need to understand who actually told you no. And that's because card processing runs through three different layers, and each layer makes a separate call. The card scheme sets the rules, the acquiring bank decides how much risk they want to take on, and the platform adds its own rules on top of that. And Stripe is actually the last layer, the platform. Stripe's business model is dealing with a lot of small merchants, bundling them together, and then bringing them to the acquiring bank, which is why they have a very strict risk policy. And now, this means a lot of clients who come to us, they're missing one important point, and that is that card payments are still possible for them. Either by working with a provider like Stripe, which is focused on higher risk and bringing them directly to them, or going directly to the acquiring bank and starting a relationship here if your volumes are high enough. But, don't underestimate the process. Both paths are possible, but they ask for a lot of documents and do enhanced due diligence, which is why people come to us in order to improve their chances of being accepted.
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