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I lost 46% of profit to Stripe "refund fees" after a fraud attack

I recently caught a fraudster on my marketplace trying to pay themselves with stolen credit cards. Thankfully, we caught them, stopped the transaction, and refunded the charges to all the cards saving Stripe and myself penalties from potential chargebacks.

This attacker charged thousands of dollars through my site so the fees ended up being 46% of my profit this month so far.

Stripe keeps the fees. I don't understand how this fee format is maintainable for businesses.

Why is Stripe keeping the full fees on refunds in the first place since Stripe gets the money back themselves? It's especially tough to accept that Stripe would keep fees on fraud attacks, when they processed those orders and we had no say in the matter; and that we caught before Stripe caught, saving them from going through disputes.

I read a similar thing happened to this stripe customer on YCombinator and the stripe co-founder chimed in saying that they could work something out if they reached out to customer service: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22371330#22372086. But customer service hasn't been very communicative with me and even gave me incorrect and costly advice.

Has anyone had any experience with this? I'm really confused how Stripe keeping the refund fees is maintainable for small business with slim margins, particularly in the case of fraud, when Stripe is the only party who determines which orders get processed.

on December 21, 2021
  1. 2

    Sorry to hear that. No personal experience but have read similar in the past. That info suggested not allowing small payments and requiring card address confirmation makes you less of a target.

    1. 1

      thanks rab. By card address to you mean collecting the billing address associated with the card?

      1. 1

        Yes. Stripe's advise is collect as much payment information as possible. Perhaps tricky for your app. People also mention Stripe Radar, which perhaps you've dug into now. The following victim story appears to be relatively well known https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/stopping-credit-card-fraud-and-saving-our-nonprofit/

        1. 1

          Hmmm I wonder why he didn't say anything about the fees. It would have been thousands of dollars. But maybe it wasn't a huge deal to them.

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