First problem, Stripe will create a new, separate Stripe account for you to use with Atlas. So if you already had some transactions (hope you do if you're forming a company) then you're going to need to migrate them. For my company, they just created another account with exactly the same name and just one capitalization difference, pretty confusing. Migration is likely automatic with a cool company like Stripe, right? Nope, they only can migrate your customers -- everything else, subscriptions, coupons, tx data you need to write a script and DIY! Have fun wasting an afternoon updating all your API keys and re-testing too.
Side note, if you had special things like the Stripe startup school discount applied to your account, you'll lose it on Atlas. Unless you open up another support ticket with Stripe and wait for a couple weeks.
Second problem, if you form a c-corp Stripe will create an account through SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) for you. You can go ahead and read the reviews on that bank yourself, but the biggest annoyance for me was a $25/mo account maintenance fee. OK, not atypical for a business bank, but most banks don't have a $25k+ min. balance for that fee! I do care about $300/year for my company when I specifically payed for Stripe Atlas thinking it would be more convenient and save me money.
Third problem, want to switch to Azlo bank so that at least you don't have to pay monthly fees? That's great except Azlo will tell you that you need to talk to Stripe to do that, and surprise Stripe will tell you that... https://gist.github.com/mikob/3cd3d141c60596ee50c0ab2603b5bd...
2) SVB seems to be nobody's favorite bank, but it's quite clear to me that they have been chosen for their willingness to bank for every Atlas customer—including companies founded and operated by non-U.S. persons—without requiring an in-person visit. If this is not a problem for you then consider yourself lucky for having other choices.
3) Your third problem sounds like you've identified a better bank, but they have not accepted you as a client. How is that an issue with Stripe Atlas? They have simply identified and worked with a bank who was willing accept you.
I don’t know which other country you are talking about or which legal structure ... even in the US, the extent of limited liability can vary depending upon which you use. There are partnerships, limited partnerships, S-corps, LLCs, sole proprietorships, etc.
2. There are other business banks that don't need in-person visits, eg. Azlo and Capital One Spark business.
3. You should be more careful about victim blaming. Azlo is willing to accept me as a customer, they just asked me to go through Stripe since I am a US Citizen that lives abroad and since I have Stripe Atlas.
I think you should be more careful with how you use the phrase "victim blaming", which is commonly used in cases of injustice towards victims of sexual assault in particular. You haven't been victimized, you've been inconvenienced and/or had a poor customer experience.
I suspect (without proof) that if you are a big trusted entity, Stripe and the whole financial system probably greases the wheels a bit to improve your success rate...
If you email in (https://support.stripe.com/contact), we also have a declines team that can investigate (I'm also happy to help at edwin@stripe.com).
Does Stripe publish any statistics on what is normal for decline rates, perhaps broken down by categories like payment method, whether it's a first payment or a subsequent subscription payment, how effective the various automatic retry strategies are at saving an initially failed charge, etc?
Are you guys actually collecting all of the relevant information for an account, like billing info?
We've only had a single failed payment in the past year and it was an issue at the card's bank rather than Stripe.
Maybe that's part of the problem?
However this was the happy path that Stripe's docs encouraged me to use.
A lot chargebacks would mean you're selling porn ;)
I have a majority of international customers, which maybe doesn't help...
It reminds me of the similar bit of "I'm sorry you're upset." With that, you're not really sorry, and you're fake-apologizing for someone else's actions.
Are you a customer of theirs?
If it was a Ruby question, on the other hand...
Most companies have massive T&Cs which, if we ever read, we'd have objections to. As Stripe is a middleman in payment I can see why they want to protect themselves from any transactions where there's a higher than acceptable risk of the seller breaking the law.
In the US a business needs to have a license to sell firearms and that business has to follow lots of laws, and Stripe probably doesn't want to be in the business of policing their clients.
You also can't sell things like mortgage advice and e-cigarettes, even anything that's considered "flammable", so it seems a quite a jump to call this "anti-rights" rather than simple legal protectionism.
... they'll do anything they can to help you, will support you over live chat and email, but they're not Azlo Bank and can't open an account there for you? That sounds pretty... reasonable?
Instead, all I'm seeing is an OP who doesn't understand how the world works, and multiple voluntary, glowing, customer testimonials.
This is fabulous marketing for Stripe.
The Stripe Atlas product has some very rough edges as you'll see others also experienced in the comments.
Methinks you are probably overcomplicating things at Azlo. Open the account with your org that was created via Atlas at Azlo, stripe should have nothing to do with that. Inform stripe this is the new bank account.
You have the controlling interest in the org that was created via Stripe Atlas don't you?
They want Stripe to close their company's account at bank A (that is not Stripe) and create a new account for their company at bank B (that is not Stripe) not realizing that is THEIR responsibility.
If you're not in the US, let me first point out that Azlo doesn't even support international transfers. They do not have login system for multiple founders. I'm very sure they don't work with ITIN and require SSN to open an account. Also, only one debit card. No checkbooks.
It appears that you somehow expect every step of the process to be smooth as butter. But nothing about running a startup will be like that. Transferring subscriptions from one Stripe account to another should be the least of your problems when porting an existing business with transactions to a c-corp. Talk to a lawyer and an accountant to understand what you got yourself into. Since you're trying to migrate transactions before the incorporation into the company account, you should talk to them earliest you can.
The only thing I have to complain about is that (as of a year ago) they don't offer an overdraft line of credit for small business accounts.
Even in our situation, where we are a 2-person consulting company that isn't taking any outside investment, and have to run pretty lean (since we only get to eat and have a house every month if we do enough business to cover it), it's not worth our time to switch.
But at a higher level, the Stripe Atlas (and Stripe in general) people have been SO responsive and helpful that I'm surprised they haven't sorted this out yet. It looks like they've even popped up in this thread, so I hope and suspect that will happen soon.
With the AWS credits and how generally easy it was, I would definitely recommend it to others who are looking.
If you are doing purely consulting you probably don't need Stripe Atlas, as the Stripe integration and AWS credits likely won't help you. But if you are doing consulting, I also recommend turning your consulting expertise into a SaaS somehow :)
With one saving grace, they are known to be highly tolerant of unusual situations. Might help if you are running a weird startup.
In terms of what you're discussing though, I agree. Faced those same two issues.
What I did:
1. Keep utilizing my other stripe account(s). I have multiple web fronts, and each has it's own stripe account. No issue there, actually zero funds go through the Stripe Atlas account. All the accounts are merged through one login, which is easy enough to see.
2. Closed the SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) account month two of the company. Opened an account with Capital One Spark Business, no minimum fees and the customer service has been good. Moved all my stripe accounts to dump into that account.
Honestly, Stripe should really partner with a better bank.
All Stripe does is provide an easy way to setup the C-Corp and help with some information. You're still in charge of your business. I did enjoy the suggestions and reminders from Stripe Atlas regarding filings.
Actually I use Capital One Spark Business for my other business. They're great but unfortunately not taking any new customers right now.
SVB sucks, true. But $300/yr for a bank account should not be a deal breaker. You'll pay way more than this just to operate the corporation and stay alive.
I think I pay around $800/yr just to keep the corporation running (almost non-existent accounting, filing fees and franchise taxes to Delaware). And now that I'm a C Corp I have payroll taxes in addition to salary (~$2k/mo). As always, be sure you really need a corporation before you create one. Most of the tax benefits you get with a corporation (e.g. write-offs), you get as a sole proprietor too.
Atlas also made filing 2017 taxes trivial, I never even spoke to an accountant, it was a very smooth process.
The trouble is Stripe Atlas has not really been working with me and adding an extra layer of complication. Support team is responsive but issues remain with the product.
https://bit.ly/2HhbXjZ -> https://gist.github.com/mikob/3cd3d141c60596ee50c0ab2603b5bd...
This kind of thing is best sent to us at hn@ycombinator.com. Random-access mentions in the threads get random access by us, meaning we don't see most of them.
I use Stripe Atlas. I agree that the SVB minimum checking account fee is quite high. So I will look to move to Azlo. If Stripe tells me I can't do that, I'll start asking customers to wire my payments to the bank directly.
I think that I am happy with Stripe handling the paperwork and basic payments for me (and to compensate them for that), but I'd always want my freedom to run things without extraneous terms.
Another question: I also think that SVB sucks but is there a better alternative to it? I've heard of Azlo, but their services offering is not as broad as SVB's (e.g. no international transfers)?
I found the customer support incredible helpful. Whenever I had questions, I would always get a response within 24 hours. Even more so, I had times when I would get follow ups to on-going issues, making me feel like their customer support process was really solid.
I originally signed up as a C-Corp, but realized I wanted to change to an LLC before the process was completed. The support staff helped me and got me on the way very quickly.
I didn't have any issues with my banking partner. I was actually able to get my Azlo account started even before my incorporation documents for an EIN number were completed, which was very helpful.
I'm not saying all of this other than because I strongly feel Atlas is a very good product. Similar to OP, I have incorporated before, and personally it was a total mess. The first time, I registered a Delaware C-Corp through another legal service I wont name, and found myself paying various costs to a Registered Agent, which was misleadingly introduced. Atlas does a much better job explaining the financial requirements around taxes, which I also didn't have properly explained the first time.
Overall, I would strongly recommend Atlas - especially if you can get a discount through some startup program.
However, now that it's long behind me, I do feel it makes things easier for tracking tax implications of stuff. The work I did testing things before incorporation is all sole-proprietor schedule C, whereas the stuff after incorporation is not. I imagine this is why Stripe has this rule, but it would have been nice if they'd just said so up front.
So far their support has been very responsive and helpful, and even managed to hook up a referral code to a friend's account AND to a separate account of mine that is processing payments via Stripe Connect.
I'm sorry you had a bad time, but just wanted to provide a counterpoint here.
Since you'll eventually have to understand all the legal aspects of operating a business, you might as well start off that way.
I would definitely do it again through Atlas and I've told others to do the same.
As a foreign founder. I personally went through the Stripe Atlas last month, no regrets at all. The whole process took longer than I expected but it's not their problems (passport name, pic issues...), and I have to say they have pretty solid customer service. Every time I have any issues, they replied my email within 12 hours.
Erm, I wouldn't take a cent from a customer without being a proper company. Lack of legal protections, unnecessary tax complications etc.
>Third problem, want to switch to Azlo bank so that at least you don't have to pay monthly fees? That's great except Azlo will tell you that you need to talk to Stripe to do that,
Um, I'm not sure why you you thought Stripe or Azlo should do this for you, a random company can't close your company's bank account for you and open another account at another bank for your company. You open an account with Azlo, make the minimum deposit. Transfer the rest of the money from SVB and ask SVB to close the account, fill out any necessary paperwork.
As far as banks in general, you can go to any bank of your choosing "I'd like to open a small business account" or "I'd like to open a business account" and they'll say "Great, sit right down! Do you have your..." and rattle off a list of paperwork and identification you need. Small business accounts rarely have minimum balance requirements or monthly fees either.
I'd like to switch to a different bank in the future, but I'm not a US citizen and I'm living in a foreign country, so the $25/mo fee isn't too bad.
As an SVB customer:
- Their UK experience, was, until recently, not updayted since about 2002. 8 point font, the entire width of the page, totally separate from the rest of their banking
- They want things confirmed on 'company letterhead'
- They have four different versions of 'balance' which makes things super confusing
- No 'find as you type' search for transactions
- No analytics
- Their mobile app is incredible limited
- They alerted me to a 700 USD fraudulent card charge, which, after I spent a week investigating, turned out to be a 7 USD card charge
The people are great, but SVB sound like a new generation business bank, but they're really not. Pick Starling or Monzo or anyone else.
It simplifies stripe account migration (and also multi currency pricing).
It's free for now. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I built it.
SVB is ok - the fee is annoying and their UI kind of sucks, but I haven't switched yet.
