Allow me to enlighten you about 3DS, Before I share what exactly happened:

As an Indian business using Stripe, all international card payments made to my Stripe account will go through 3D Secure (3DS) authentication.

What is 3DS?

3DS means going through an additional step (2FA) when making a card payment, but in case of a dispute, the liability shifts from the business to the card issuer.

ref: https://support.stripe.com/questions/3d-secure-authentication-for-international-card-payments-to-indian-businesses

Now, here's what happened:

One customer reached out to me to do a promotion on my product.

I sent the customer a payment link.

The customer's payment didn't go through because of the following error:

"3D Secure was completed, but the customer hasn't been verified because the bank does not support 3D Secure, has not set up 3D Secure for the card, or is experiencing an outage. The card network has provided proof of the attempt."

screenshot: https://cln.sh/ZTGrX85T

So the customer tried with other cards but faced the same issue.

Here's the screenshot of the conversation with the customer over email regarding this: https://cln.sh/NGVRg449

When I went back to the Stripe dashboard to see what's going on, I saw a scary orange banner at the top stating: "Your account is under review." I panicked and reached out to support. They sent me this email:

"We recently identified payments on your Stripe account that don’t appear to have been authorized by the customer, meaning that the owner of the card or bank account didn’t consent to these payments. As a precautionary measure, we will no longer accept payments. We’re sorry we can’t be of more help, but these restrictions are firm."

That's it, they blocked the account and can't be of more help. I was not expecting that at all.

I responded that the customer indeed tried to pay but couldn't complete the payment because of some 3DS issue from the bank side. I also attached the screenshot of the conversation I had with the customer.

screenshot: https://cln.sh/yxRc6tmM

I didn't get any reply from the support team after that.

As a second-to-last resort, I reached out to their Twitter support to explain the situation and got the same response:

"Thank you for waiting while we looked into this. We have taken a thorough review of your account and have concluded that we are unable to support your business. We appreciate that this is far from the answer you were hoping for. Unfortunately, we do not have any further information to share. We wish you the best moving forward."

screenshot: https://cln.sh/0cZRgwTh

I was also not expecting that at all.

As a last resort, I reached out to Hacker News now.