Conversation

Feb 15, 2020

Stripe isn't sending my money because they don't seem to be able to handle Canadians with a USD bank account. Despite that, they provide it as an option, and the error claims the completely correct information is wrong. They didn't even make a 2nd attempt to send the transfer...

Show this thread

GitHub me create a Stripe account with an email and password, but once it was tied to GitHub Sponsors, Stripe blocked logging into it with those. The only way to log in is via GitHub and it doesn't provide access to the interface they expect me to use to upload documents...

I created this to be a generic / reusable Stripe account and now it can apparently ONLY be used for GitHub Sponsors. Logging in just leads to this now: "This account is linked to a business that works with Stripe. To view details, sign in to their website or app directly."

I've had nothing but problems with financial services companies like Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, etc. for years. I don't understand how things can be this messed up. They shouldn't expect to continue existing as businesses when the bar for replacing them is so ridiculously low.

At a certain point, it's probably just easier to contact a lawyer and demand that they turn over the money. Tired of these catch 22 broken systems where there's no way to resolve problems. How is it even possible that anyone else is getting their money out of this nonsense?

I don't think I'm wrong to think that after companies hang onto thousands of dollars for months, with no real justification, that they should need to start paying damages. If there was a verification problem, they should have told me, instead of just silently keeping the money.

10:36 PM · Feb 16, 2020Twitter Web App

GitHub Sponsors is going to be matching $5000 of donations if I can get people to donate that much through it in the first year. That makes it worth dealing with this nonsense, but it's still awful. I also really hope Stripe isn't just going to send international wire transfers.

Replying to

That's how Google sends out money for bug bounties, and it ends up costing $20 in fees to receive each payment. Hopefully, as a company actually providing financial services, Stripe is capable of doing direct deposit like PayPal. I'll remain skeptical until I get the 1st payout.

GitHub Sponsors originally wasn't using Stripe, and I was actually getting money out of it before they switched to this. They were sending international wire transfers, which was far from ideal, so hopefully the pain inflicted by this switch to Stripe will at least resolve that.

It's not a good experience for people elsewhere in the world to receive money from US companies. Also great how they all make you fill out a W-8BEN (which for Canadians leads to 0% withholding tax, but not elsewhere), when a signed statement of no US activities would avoid it.