An Open Letter to Stripe

I'm writing to share a challenge we've encountered with Stripe that has deeply impacted our business (my wife's fitness studio), in the hopes that this feedback might lead to improvements.

We've had a strong relationship with Stripe , participating in the fabulous Stripe Capital program, successfully receiving and paying off five loans. This program has been a crucial support for her business, and we've always been in good standing.

However, we recently migrated to a new SaaS gym/studio management platform. This platform requires a dedicated custom Stripe connection, and we were informed by their representatives that we needed to create a new Stripe account to integrate with their system.

Despite our concerns about losing continuity with the Capital program, we were reassured that the transition would be smooth. Unfortunately, the reality has been quite the opposite. The new account does not support the Capital program, and we've been "locked out" of the benefits that we've come to rely on.

We were further informed that we would need to build nine months of history with the new account before becoming eligible for any new loans. Your reps encouraged us to continue processing through our account to become eligible once again. However, this recommendation to continue processing through our original Stripe account is unhelpful, as we're required to use the new account to work with the SaaS platform.

This situation has caused significant frustration and stress. We had grown to depend on the regularity of the loan offers we received through Stripe Capital, and now we’re back to square one, all due to a migration to a platform that assured us they worked with Stripe and that they worked with the Capital program only to discover they aren’t equipped to support us in this way.

It seems there’s a disconnect between Stripe’s Capital team and the teams driving these dedicated integrations with SaaS platforms. The detrimental impact on businesses like ours, who have built strong relationships with Stripe, hasn’t been fully considered.

I urge Stripe to take a closer look at this issue, to foster better communication between teams, and to consider the real impact on loyal businesses when promoting these SaaS integrations. Our relationship with Stripe is invaluable, and we don’t want to lose that. We're finding fewer and fewer platforms that are allowing direct connections with users' existing Stripe accounts and more and more that are requiring a new, custom-integrated, Stripe account to be created. How does this help us, the small business, who came to appreciate and rely on the partnership we built with Stripe directly?

Thank you for taking the time to listen. I hope this feedback can help bridge the gap and improve the experience for other businesses facing similar challenges.