Stripe closed your account. What you do in the next 48 hours matters most.
Appeals rarely succeed. The priority now is getting a new account open quickly and correctly, without creating problems that follow you to the next processor.
The closure, and what it does to your balance
Stripe has closed your account and will hold your remaining balance, usually for 90 to 120 days, to cover disputes that arrive after closure. You can't accept new payments through it. The reason given is often a single line: elevated risk, unsupported business, or terms of service.
What happens next depends on two things: whether Stripe reported the closure to the card brands (most platform closures aren't reported, but some are), and how your dispute and refund history looks to the next underwriter.
What not to do
- Don't open another Stripe account under a new entity, a partner's name or a new website. The systems link them, and a second closure can land you on the card brands' terminated merchant list, which follows you for five years.
- Don't run your sales through a friend's account. It ends the same way, and takes their account down with it.
- Don't sign with the first processor that says yes in 24 hours without asking who the sponsor bank is. Some of those accounts close as fast as they open.
What to do today
- Download everything from the Stripe dashboard while you still have access: dispute history, refund history, payout history, the closure notice.
- Pause ads for 48 hours if you can. Every order you can't charge turns into a refund request or a support ticket.
- Get a complete application package together: formation documents, owner IDs, three months of bank statements, three months of processing statements, URLs, product list, fulfillment and refund policies.
- Apply with a specialty processor whose bank underwrites your category. With a complete package, the initial review takes about a day, submission one to three days, and approval typically two to seven days depending on the bank.
- Set up two accounts, not one. Then a future closure slows you down instead of stopping you.
What we do. A 15 minute risk read: whether the closure was reported, how your history reads to a new underwriter, what to fix in the package before it goes in, and which banks will take you. Free. If we can place you, we'll give you a realistic timeline. If we can't, we'll tell you who can.
If one of these is you
Book a 15 minute risk read
Tell us where you process and what you sell, then pick a time on Eli's calendar. You get the written summary whether or not you work with us.
- No pricing or quotes on the call
- We won't contact your customers or your current processor
- If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you who is