The rise of debanking! Silicon Valley payments firm Stripe axes dozens of risky accounts including those belonging to a boudoir photographer and a movie producer who sells vintage military uniforms

Silicon Valley darling Stripe is an online payments goliath and is used by businesses around the world to process credit and debit card transactions.

But today it became embroiled in a ‘debanking’ dispute after a host of entrepreneurs complained that their accounts were suddenly terminated without proper explanation.

A boudoir photographer, a military-themed goods seller and a British airgun accessories dealer are among his clients who have closed their accounts.

These owners told DailyMail.com they believe they were targeted because Stripe opposed the nature of their business transactions. It comes amid a growing debate about financial institutions withdrawing service from some customers.

“When they do that, they put my business and how I feed my family in tremendous jeopardy,” Luke Schuetzle said. The 36-year-old from Pierre, South Dakota runs a film production company and online store that sells military-themed items often featured in historical movies.

He suspects his account was terminated due to his sale of vintage ammo boxes and holsters.

“They never give a reason,” Schuetzle says. “They just have that power to say, ‘Sorry, you’re done.’

When contacted by DailyMail.com, Stripe declined to elaborate on why Schuetzle’s account was closed.

Stripe was founded in 2010 by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison. It processed $817 billion in transactions in 2022 and was valued at $50 billion in March.

The firm is known to process payments for OnlyFans, an online subscription platform service commonly used to upload adult material. In 2021, it banned sexually explicit videos on its website. Its chief executive at the time, Tim Stokely, claimed the decision was made to appease payment partners – of which he has several.

According to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by DailyMail.com, the Federal Trade Commission has received 1,591 complaints about Stripe since January 1, 2020.

A spokesperson for Stripe told DailyMail.com it would not discuss individual cases due to company policy, but ‘will continue to listen to feedback from our users’.

‘When we cannot support a business, we notify our users by email. If a user believes we’ve misunderstood or miscategorized their business and want us to review their account, they can complete a form,’ they said.

But other businesses also said no attempt was made to properly justify costly account closures, despite requests for more information and efforts to resolve the issue.

Stephanie Nivens (42) already has a photography business since about 2019 in Watertown, Tennessee. The Stripe account she used to process payments from clients was terminated in November.

“We cannot accept payments for pornography and adult content,” it wrote to her in an email seen by DailyMail.com.

Her specialty, boudoir photography, has long been a victim of Stripe, say those in her industry. Boudoir photography involves capturing erotic images of a person, usually a woman, in a bedroom or dressing room.

Numerous boudoir photographers told DailyMail.com that Stripe refused to support their businesses.

Usually the subject is in underwear and may be nude, but none of the photos on Nivens’ website have nipples or full nudity.

“It’s all about empowering women and letting them see a side of themselves that they’ve never really seen,” Nivens said. ‘They come in here and want to be able to see themselves in a new light. And they do, they walk out feeling more confident and happy.’

Nivens strongly rejected the classification of her work as pornography.

Stripe’s ‘Limited Businesses’ webpage states that it will not support businesses that deal in ‘pornography and other mature audience content (including literature, images and other media) depicting nudity or explicit sexual acts’.

But other, less controversial businesses also say they were brutally shut down by Stripe.

Nick Ahmann (44) is the CEO and founder of Iniseva software company in Malta that sells WordPress widgets for web developers.

He said Stripe reviewed and brought his business on board two years ago before abruptly dropping him in April — a move that cost him as much as $70,000 or $80,000 in annual revenue and more than a thousand customers.

“Transparency was always the issue,” he said. ‘They feel big, they are big, but they treat customers with extreme disrespect.’

Ahmann noted that all Stripe businesses on board are subject to an initial review. But it wasn’t until much later that he himself was suddenly kicked off the platform.

“It would have been much better if they had turned us down from the start because then we wouldn’t have implemented this solution, we wouldn’t have had the trouble we ended up in,” he said.

Ahmann’s losses were particularly severe because many of his customers paid him on a routine basis – say, every six months or a year.

When Stripe terminated its account, it not only stopped processing payments, it refused to transfer Inisev’s customer information to a new processor.

Military enthusiast Schuetzle said he feels like Stripe has the ability to simply wipe out a business.

“They decide, ‘We don’t want this to be a real business, and if we take away their ability to have sales, we can put them out of business,'” he said.

Martina Weimart, the CEO of the European Payments Initiative, which was formed by more than 30 banks and credit card processors to compete with the US-led payments industry, said Stripe could ultimately do as it pleased.

“It’s a free market, there’s no enforcement that you have to supply to a certain customer, but there’s also no enforcement to use certain suppliers,” she said.

Sometimes, after a lengthy appeals process, Stripe will reinstate business accounts after an additional review and invite them to continue using their service.

British estate retailer Alastair Muir has finally been allowed back on the platform after being suspended for selling legal airgun accessories, DailyMail.com reported earlier this month.