You did right by your business and other customers.
The risk of supporting a single company who chose to participate in the illegal drug market (yes, Marijuana is illegal still under the Fed folks) far exceeds any potential benefits they could of brought.
Frankly, the article and title are written by someone who is upset they didn't understand the reality... It's rather unreasonable to blame Stripe here for their own ignorance.
> A few months ago we started using Stripe as they payment gateway for our marijuana regulatory compliance software
As far as the Fed is concerned, any support of the illegal drug trade industry is a Felony. Selling software that is targeted at helping manage, distribute, and facilitate the marijuana industry (which is illegal federally) is against the law.
As far as Stripe is concerned, they are regulated by the Fed and cannot afford to knowingly have illegal drug market customers sending money through their network.
> As far as the Fed is concerned, any support of the illegal drug trade industry is a Felony. Selling software that is targeted at helping manage, distribute, and facilitate the marijuana industry (which is illegal federally) is against the law.
As somebody with extensive experience in building and selling regulatory compliance software to the gambling industry, I can state beyond a shadow of a doubt that your argument is bullshit. Selling software that explains what is legal and what isn't legal in any specific jurisdiction isn't illegal at all, and doesn't do anything that facilitates the breaking of the law (actually, it is quite the opposite).
> As far as Stripe is concerned, they are regulated by the Fed and cannot afford to knowingly have illegal drug market customers sending money through their network.
> As far as the Fed is concerned, any support of the illegal drug trade industry is a Felony
The Feds. The Fed is mostly concerned with managing the money supply.
And that's not exactly true, even then (the laws are a lot more specific and complex, not everything that could be described that way is prohibited at all, and some of what is prohibited under federal law that way is not a felony.) But its a reasonable approximation.
> Selling software that is targeted at helping manage, distribute, and facilitate the marijuana industry (which is illegal federally) is against the law.
That's quite possibly true, and I can easily see other businesses not taking the risk of getting involved in case it is.
OTOH, if you are going to claim that it factually is, it wouldn't hurt to cite the specific law.
> As far as the Fed is concerned, any support of the illegal drug trade industry is a Felony.
Then there are literally 1000s of business owners in dozens of states in lighting, electrical, communications, real-estate, security, software, internet-service, legal, finance and investement industries committing felonies at this very moment.
Indeed there are. Many businesses are committing crimes without even realizing it, especially things like structuring. These crimes are often selectively enforced.
>> A few months ago we started using Stripe as they payment gateway for our marijuana regulatory compliance software
> As far as the Fed is concerned, any support of the illegal drug trade industry is a Felony.
Are you saying the seller has probably committed a felony by selling this software?
Because if true, I would think they would have been incredibly stupid to draw attention to their business on the HN front page, which they do not seem to be.
The risk of supporting a single company who chose to participate in the illegal drug market (yes, Marijuana is illegal still under the Fed folks) far exceeds any potential benefits they could of brought.
Frankly, the article and title are written by someone who is upset they didn't understand the reality... It's rather unreasonable to blame Stripe here for their own ignorance.