Great question — and this hits on something a ton of founders and merchants overlook: getting charged (or asked for info) isn’t just about “processing payments” — it’s about risk, liability, and actual costs.
Most processors (Stripe included) evaluate financial health, history, and risk exposure before they commit capital/credit on your behalf. Chargebacks can be held for 6+ months, and if a merchant account doesn’t have good coverage or history, the processor actually faces liability — that’s why they ask for statements, cash flow info, etc.
Also, many business owners never see their true effective processing costs — they simply look at “2.9% + $0.30” and assume that’s what they pay. In reality the effective rate can be a much higher blended % once interchange, payouts, chargebacks, refunds, and dispute fees are included — and most merchants don’t realize this until it’s over $10k–$50k/yr they didn’t plan for.
If you want to quantify what you’re actually paying to process payments (including true rate vs sticker price), we built a free Effective Rate Calculator that highlights hidden costs and helps you compare processors and pricing models: https://effectiveratecalculator.com/
Happy to share insights on how different processors treat risk, chargebacks, and what you can do to improve your effective rates or negotiate better terms as you scale.
Braintree is now essentially paypal, so that is off the list. Adyen is good but can be strict with what businesses they support.
In short, i recommend using local providers, not these multinationals. Each country has a bunch of them, so there is plenty of choices, they are just not world renown brands.
What about the old school processors like Authorize.net and Cybersource? It has been over a decade since I worked with them, so not sure what they are like now.
Great question — and this hits on something a ton of founders and merchants overlook: getting charged (or asked for info) isn’t just about “processing payments” — it’s about risk, liability, and actual costs.
Most processors (Stripe included) evaluate financial health, history, and risk exposure before they commit capital/credit on your behalf. Chargebacks can be held for 6+ months, and if a merchant account doesn’t have good coverage or history, the processor actually faces liability — that’s why they ask for statements, cash flow info, etc.
Also, many business owners never see their true effective processing costs — they simply look at “2.9% + $0.30” and assume that’s what they pay. In reality the effective rate can be a much higher blended % once interchange, payouts, chargebacks, refunds, and dispute fees are included — and most merchants don’t realize this until it’s over $10k–$50k/yr they didn’t plan for.
If you want to quantify what you’re actually paying to process payments (including true rate vs sticker price), we built a free Effective Rate Calculator that highlights hidden costs and helps you compare processors and pricing models: https://effectiveratecalculator.com/
Happy to share insights on how different processors treat risk, chargebacks, and what you can do to improve your effective rates or negotiate better terms as you scale.
There are lots of different places credit is extended between counterparties in the credit card processing flow.
The most obvious one for processor to merchant is chargebacks. The window fo those can be up to 6 months.
Bank statements might also be used for fraud prevention and kyc requirements.
Disclaimer: I used to work at stripe but not in this area and I don’t know the specifics of why Stripe is asking for these documents.
They want to know your accounts, they will force you to link it so they can reach there and claw back money for disputes etc.
They do give an option to upload statements. I don’t know if that leads them to achieve claw back. Am curious if they can do this?
Don't use stripe. It's none of their business and they already have a bad reputation.
Any alternatives that you recommend?
Braintree is now essentially paypal, so that is off the list. Adyen is good but can be strict with what businesses they support.
In short, i recommend using local providers, not these multinationals. Each country has a bunch of them, so there is plenty of choices, they are just not world renown brands.
And how to connect them to your services without being a programmer?
Hire a programmer.
That might be considered once accumulated Stripe fees are higher than the competitors fees + cost of hiring a programmer + cost of change.
Which is a factor worth considering for medium to big business, but certainly not for small timers.
What about the old school processors like Authorize.net and Cybersource? It has been over a decade since I worked with them, so not sure what they are like now.