Tell HN: If you operate a .box domain, Stripe may decide to close your account

3 points by mrmufungo 1 year ago

For the past three years, we've operated a Stripe account without issue. We run a marketplace where we need to payout to multiple users internationally, so we opted to use Stripe Connect.

More recently, we decided to re-brand and re-focus our development efforts, so we decided on a new name, registered a .box domain, created a new company, and created a new Stripe account. The process was exactly the same as it was three years ago; we were approved and ready to start integrating Stripe.

That is, until we received an email a few days later from Stripe that they could no longer support our business. The email declared that "we're currently in the early stages of offering support for NFT sales, and we're not in a position to support every business that signs up". The thing is, we aren't an NFT marketplace: we handle digital sales and physical merchandise for musicians using credit cards, so how did they determine that we were somehow associated with NFT sales?

The .box TLD is operated by My.box, which is a project that handles domain ownership via NFTs. The domain itself works with both DNS and ENS (Etherum Name Service), so it's routable on the internet just like most other domain names. Our new company name contains the word "box", so the domain offered a memorable option for site visitors. That's the most interaction we've had with Web3 though: the project under this domain has no connections to Web3 projects.

When we registered this domain, we did not update any records, so it pointed to a default page where it listed some information about the wallet that purchased the domain. Our guess is that someone on Stripe's team assumed we were some sort of cryptocurrency project, and deemed it as a restricted business. We've tried communicating that this is a case of misunderstanding, and that we were willing to speak over the phone to explain how our business works, but communication has essentially ceased, and it seems like Stripe is going to simply let the deadline expire and allow the account to close.

It's frustrating that this happened, as we spent a good amount of time setting up endpoints for webhooks, UI work, and incorporating their SDK, only to now have to find another provider. We were hoping Stripe would be more understanding in the matter, but it looks as though they'd rather be done with us entirely.