I got invited to the Quora Partner Program! 

I was so excited, I clicked the link that took me to the partner portal.

Is there anywhere Stripe doesn't integrate? Looks like they got Quora, too. 

So I signed up for a stripe account and received the following E-mail. 

I was appalled. How dare they? Do they not know who I am?

Me- a merchant service provider who was only using their overpriced payments service because I had to.

Because Quora said that was the way it had to be done. And now I understand why other businesses use Stripe.

Because they are told to.

Because it's easy to sign up.

Well I'm here to tell you setting up a merchant account is VERY similar to setting a stripe account up.

It takes 5-10 minutes to give stripe the information to set up an account.

The process is exactly the same as setting up a merchant account.

The difference? Stripe opens the account right away. Within minutes I could take payments.

A merchant account takes a day or so because the payment processor will verify your information.

Stripe will allow you to sign up, but then will pull the rug out from under you.

When I received the e-mail that stripe was shutting me down, I was furious. For about 7 seconds. Then I realized it really didn't matter because questions posted on Quora are worth about 10 cents each, and while it would be cool to get paid for something I was already doing, it REALLY DIDN'T MATTER.

But, if I was using stripe to process credit card payments for my business, I'd still be mad. Interruptions in cash flow can ruin a business overnight. And I see that stripe allowed me 5 days to find another provider. But is that really enough time?

The answer is absolutely not. That's not enough time to vet a new provider, and if you truly have a high risk business, it often takes 10 days or longer to open a new merchant account.

So if you're using stripe because you were told it was easy, and there was no other choice, think again.

Ethical Pay Pro can do the same thing for less money and as long as you abide by Visa and Mastercards rules, you won't be receiving a random surprise letter like I did.