EXCLUSIVE: A BIG Vulnerability for Substack and Creators: Stripe Payments
More creators are having issues with Substack's EXCLUSIVE payment processor, Stripe
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As a platform that advertises free speech and a censorship-free environment (as long as you adhere to their minimal Ts & Cs), Substack is hiding a dirty little secret. The company is stealthily outsourcing the potential for censorship to its exclusive payment provider, Stripe. They’ve been alerted to this and have been strangely silent. Alarmingly, Stripe has the control and power to indiscriminately close out one’s account, without further appeal, conversation or discussion - thereby eliminating a creator’s ability to monetize on Substack - and multiple other websites, too - like Locals and BuyMeACoffee , for example.
I have been trying hard the past 10 days (unsuccessfully, in my mind, so far) to raise awareness, to convince the Substack leadership (
and ) to address this.I’ve tagged the CEO & co-founder of Stripe (
) who has answered other users here on Notes before, for answers. Nobody has answered any of my questions. I’m not sure what else to do at this point, so I’m coming to you, the reader and creator community for help.There have been a handful of examples recently, just anecdotally in the world I live in, of monetized Substack creators having big issues with Substack’s exclusive payment processor, Stripe. If this is happening to so many people around me, how many more is it happening to? If it's happening to you, please comment below and/or reach out to me!
It appears to be a massive vulnerability / liability for Substack to put all of its “eggs in one basket” when it comes to a service as vital as processing credit card payments for all of its creators, the lifeblood of monetization for a publishing platform.
Show Me The Receipts!
Watch the above 3-minute video clip, where I explain the situation with The Last American Vagabond - from “Boats Smashing Into Other Boats” on INN, June 3, 2024
Stripe Demonetizing
: as of June 10, 2024. (see the above video) On the morning of May 27, Ryan Cristian, an honoree, published to Twitter (I hate calling it X!) that Stripe was terminating their account after paying out all money due. They will not be allowed to monetize on Substack moving forward after June 10. This has been going on since the end of May. There has been zero appeal process, to my knowledge. I am not privy to any further communication between TLAV and Stripe.
The Last American Vagabond and Stripe: A Story in 3 Images Stripe messaging a Canadian creator
recently to “provide verification requirements” - why are they requiring more personal ID? Are they going after Anons?Stripe rejecting some creators’ subscribers who are trying to upgrade their subscription - (from my Twitter DMs on June 4). “I’ve been told by multiple subscribers that they are unable to upgrade to paid sub. Always comes up with a credit card unknown error.”
Stripe Monetization is not available to all creators, as many countries are “ineligible” (from another creator via Substack DMs on June 4): “Stripe doesn't allow payments to XXXX like me (and most of the world) so there was discrimination from the beginning. Basically, writers from rich Western countries and their allies get paid, and those from poorer countries don't … the G7 is intending to sanction countries using Russia's alternative to Stripe.” If this is true, then there should be alternatives offered in those countries, no?
Stripe has canceled accounts they don’t consider to be “active” enough - ask
. “I can't make money anyway, because Stripe canceled my account for lack of transaction.”Stripe’s practices are making others hesitant to monetize their publications.
As I was writing this, I was tagged in another Note about a similar issue that
is experiencing: more than 60% of his Stripe transactions FAILED!! So frustrating. Whose job is it to track down all those subscribers? Because Stripe’s email, if the subscriber even sees it, clearly isn’t working.This one is UNREAL. Look at what
just found out: “I went to go undo my connection to Stripe, and found that if I stop using it, they want me to REFUND ALL THE MONEY THAT WENT THROUGH THEM, back to THEM, so they can REFUND it to MY READERS, and probably KEEPING THEIR CUT. When I clicked the button for assistance, nothing happened! Odd, huh. These people LIED to me when I turned it on, saying I wouldn’t have to have a “second verification” for a while, but… BS. Grrrrrrrr.”- had an issue with Stripe recently which he made public and was then resolved within 2 weeks, where they also were requiring additional income verification and financial details, which seemed odd…
- from the conservative also claimed that he had issues with Stripe at the end of 2023 and into 2024.
Not You Too, Substack! Stay Out of Promoting Content. Be a Platform.
Like my writing about Substack? Check out this article from last September
Alternatives: Global Payments? Bring It In-House?
Most bosses can’t stand it when people complain without at least proposing a solution. The most obvious answer to me that protects Substack’s business long-term while supporting creators and readers, is to find at least one alternate payment processing solution, or a handful of approved partners. This competition can also be healthy, as it could keep Stripe from messing with creators and from raising rates on Substack in the future.
I do acknowledge that adding more providers adds a layer of complexity to finance and IT, to ensure that all the API fields align between processors. It’s critical that all creators have a consistent experience and tracking across processors isn’t a nightmare for Substack IT and Finance.
It’s also critical that readers and subscribers have a consistent experience, irrespective of payment processor. This shouldn’t be that hard!
Square might appear to be a potential alternative: a publicly traded, global org with an API and a direct competitor to Stripe. I am unaware of their censorship policies in relation to terms of service, “hate speech,” and how that can be manipulated to serve someone’s agenda. Reading that they also charge among the highest fees in the industry, as they are the largest and offer a wide range of services, well beyond Substack’s current needs.
Global Payments appears to be another potential suitor that could handle processing worldwide. They appear to accept major credit cards in most countries, which would empower Substack to expand its monetization footprint. This could add to the company’s bottom line, which I know the executives want.
Here’s a payment processor I found after a rudimentary search:
Clearly Payments (https://www.clearlypayments.com/solutions/enterprise-payment-processing/). Not sure of all of their global capabilities, but there are industry experts that can provide capabilities analysis for Substack’s IT & Finance teams (I am not one of them, nor do I know one personally).
While it appears that Paypal may present itself as an alternative, they have also been heavy on the censorship. They’ve been known to censor or mess with payments that even mention the word Palestine, for example.
has seen them censoring on the political right as well.
Another way to find an alternative? Substack, at this point, has the cache and volume to open the project for bid! Reverse the process, let the payment processors come to you and make you their best offer.
A suggestion from Substack creator
- why not bring the whole payment processing operation in-house?Clearly, there are alternatives out there. It required just 45 minutes of research to find these couple.
Why Is This Happening NOW? Some Speculation:
The “Censorship Industrial Complex” hard at work: We just saw through
’s articles published to at the end of May that the same academics who were effective in pushing Twitter to censor creators they deemed to be “Foreign Influence” based on flimsy or no evidence - are at it again for the 2024 cycle, looking to do it “bigger and better than before.” Most of the people who are having issues are also those that challenge & question the “mainstream” narrative on issues like COVID, Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, Taiwan-China and others.It’s an election year. See #1.
Substackers Against Nazis never really went away, they just chipped away at the biggest vulnerability they saw: Stripe. That group’s ultimate goal is to diminish Substack’s increasing footprint in the publishing space. Jonathan Katz, one of the principals of that movement, published multiple hit pieces in The Atlantic smearing the platform and ridiculously claiming it “had a Nazi problem.” That was quickly debunked & they left after a “censor or else” demand was not acquiesced to. In hindsight, it appears to have been a corporate-funded and corporate-media-driven effort to diminish Substack’s growing power, coming directly at the expense of corporate media.
These people wanted to “punish” Substack for ignoring their demand to censor the creators they didn’t like, forcing their hand to have to for the inconvenience of moving their newsletters & subscribers, so they sought and found a back door.
They knew that Stripe was the exclusive processor for Substack monetization (Locals and BuyMeACoffee as well), so they started reporting creators to Stripe quietly whom they deemed to be not worthy of monetizing, charging them with violating Stripe’s TOS. Substack doesn’t even hear about this until the creator gets a letter from Stripe.
The people reporting them to Stripe for TOS violations knew that they personally wouldn’t be affected by any move Substack made, since those creators had already moved to other platforms like Beehiiv - where they also get paid for referring the subscribers they brought with them from Substack, which Substack admittedly helped them grow, to other publications.
I covered this extensively back in December, we dedicated all of Episode 103 of “How Did We Miss That” to addressing and summarizing this controversy from a MULTITUDE of angles.
Update June 10, 2024:
Have you experienced issues with Stripe? What do you think of all this? Sound off in the comments below and share with someone who would get mad and want to do something about it.
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EXCLUSIVE: A BIG Vulnerability for Substack and Creators: Stripe Payments © 2024 by Indie Left, Indie News Network is licensed under CC BY 4.0
A very well-researched piece about the constant attack on the First amendment. Thank you for this.
@Hamish, @CB and @Patrickcollison are playing on the same team, the ole game good cop, bad cop. Substack is not the playing field for free speech, it has never been. The only advantage is, that you own your subscribers. Therefore, save them daily and save your content weekly. You never know ...
I have also informed Hamish McKenzie and Chris Best several times about this problem and have also suggested — even with my help — Substack to become his payment processor. There was never an answer. This is the answer to this question.
I have posted my note from yesterday which you linked above to mostly all content providers with over 1,000 paid subscriptions. ONE answer came in, defending the system from a nice MAGA guy. I have not expected more, but I did this to uncover that you must be compliant in this simulated free speech arena if you want you grow beyond 1,000 subs.
Robert Malone spent thousands of crowd funded $s on legal defense, that is not the average publisher here.
My yesterday note proves that all big paid accounts are corrupted by the system and play the game following the rules.
I am also fascinated that nearly nobody questions the Substack prices. If you have 10,000 subs at $80 yearly, you are paying 80,000$ (EIGHTYTHOUSAND!!!) for near to nothing. For much more, you pay on Mighty Networks 2,148 yearly. But wait, I forgot, these 10k guys get even paid by Substack to join and might not pay these ridiculous fees.
For avoiding misunderstandings — I'm not concerned about high fees when I get a super service. But that does not happen here.
One last point. Always consider that the starting point of Substack was the University of Waterloo. The same place where the privacy scam BlackBerry started. I was also not liked when I told Balsillie and Lazaridis in 2011 that their technology is spyware for 3-letter-agencies. But then Ed Snowden came ...
For now, I must assume that Substack is the next BlackBerry.
But I'm always open to be convinced about the opposite.
Great article, but I wouldn't expect change from Substack. To make a few points:
1. Asking a Canadian to provide additional information about themselves is particularly concerning since it is a country that persecutes dissidents and shuts down the bank accounts of protesters and political undesirables. That Stripe would do this and Substack is silent in the face of it means no one should trust either of them; should you be in actual danger for what you say, they will help the state catch you.
2. From what I recall, when Substack was pressured to censor "Nazis," it actually did end up caving and doing so banning a couple of obscure publications. However, this was hardly noticed at the time and barely anywhere reported on the fact that they did end up caving to censorship demands.
3. If Substack was serious about free speech, they would follow the lead of cypherpunks like Julian Assange, Satoshi Nakamoto, and Ross Ulbricht. Why does anyone need to provide personal identity to them in order to receive a payment at all? It shows the lack of integrity, skill, and trustworthiness of the Substack team.
Darknet markets and other services on TOR provide users ways to trade, buy, and sell all sorts of illegal goods without anyone ever having to reveal personal identity to the website itself. It is none of Substack's business who anyone is or what country they live in. So why do they make it their business?
There is no excuse for Substack not to allow payments via Bitcoin, and it should not be necessary to provide them with more info than a wallet address. Legal reasons are no excuse either: either they are not skilled actors capable of utilising the proper opsec and evading LEOs long term on the clearnet, despite there being private torrent trackers that have done so successfully for 10-20 years, or the safety of their users and their dedication to free speech are tertiary to their obedience to oppressive states that seek to prosecute people for what they do and say online.
4. For all the above reasons, Substack is not trustworthy and anyone in danger of censorship or persecution should operate using zero trust principles and without reliance on them as a payment processor in the first place, without ever using them as one or providing personal info.
In the future, it can be safely predicted they will follow the pattern of other websites and become less secure and more censorious; not otherwise, as they prioritise market and state concerns over user safety, privacy, and security, quite unlike any serious service such as DNMs, other Onion services, and torrent trackers. Whether or not it is their intent or just a lack of foresight, Substack is easy pickings for intelligent services to use to track down dissidents, and given how much data there is on all of us, this should be feared in the future as a likely course of action from our totalitarian states.