Stripe
Stripe closed our account with THB 661,975 in legitimate hotel accommodation payments on hold – has anyone in travel experienced this? I’m curious to hear from other merchants, particularly those working with hotel accommodation, travel or other businesses where individual card transactions can be relatively high. We are a legitimate registered Thai company and have been working with Stripe for years. Recently, three of our clients paid us through Stripe for genuine hotel accommodation bookings. The three transactions were: THB 143,843 THB 245,155 THB 272,977 **Total: THB 661,975** These are genuine clients and genuine hotel accommodation bookings. We have hotel reservations and confirmations, customer invoices and payment records, correspondence with the hotels, customer communications, pricing breakdowns and company documentation supporting every transaction. The clients successfully paid their cards and the transactions were processed by Stripe. Stripe then closed/restricted our account and the funds were not paid out to us. Stripe has now told us that the funds will be held **until December 8, 2026.** This is where the situation has become very difficult to understand. We cannot access the THB 661,975, but we also cannot refund the three transactions ourselves. We contacted Stripe repeatedly trying to understand how the clients could receive their money back. Stripe then instructed us that the clients should contact their own credit card issuers and request the funds back through them. The clients actually followed Stripe’s instructions and contacted their card companies. However, their card issuers are telling them that they cannot simply process a refund in this way and that the merchant/payment processor needs to deal with it. So we seem to be stuck in a loop: Stripe has the funds. We never received the funds. Stripe does not allow us to refund the transactions. Stripe tells the clients to contact their card issuers. The card issuers tell the clients they cannot process the refund this way. And Stripe intends to hold the funds until December 8. Meanwhile, the underlying hotel accommodation bookings are real, the clients have upcoming travel dates, and the hotels still need to be paid. This creates a significant cash-flow issue because our clients have already paid approximately THB 662K, but we may now have to use separate company funds to pay the hotels while their original payments remain inaccessible. We have told Stripe that we are completely willing to undergo the account review process again from the beginning if necessary. We are happy to provide KYC/KYB documentation again and let Stripe review the company, the customers, the invoices, the hotel bookings, the correspondence and each transaction individually. We are not asking Stripe to simply release funds without verification. **We are asking them to verify us.** If, after a proper manual review, Stripe decides that they no longer want to process payments for our company going forward, that's a separate commercial decision. What I’m struggling to understand is why legitimate customer payments for real hotel bookings need to remain inaccessible until December when we are ready to provide evidence for every transaction. What I’m trying to understand from other merchants is how you handled a situation like this. For those in travel/hospitality or anyone processing legitimate higher-value transactions: • Has Stripe ever closed your account while holding payments for confirmed future services? • Were you able to get the account reviewed again after an initial decision? • How did you reach an actual human/manual review team rather than going back and forth with standard Support? • What documentation did Stripe ask you for? • If Stripe disabled your ability to issue refunds, how were your customers eventually able to recover their money? • Did Stripe ultimately reinstate the account, refund the customers or release the balance? • How long did the process take? I understand that payment processors need risk controls, particularly for higher-value transactions. What I don’t understand is how a legitimate business and its customers are supposed to resolve the situation when the processor holds the funds, prevents the merchant from refunding them, and then directs the customers back to their card issuers. Would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has dealt with something similar, especially other businesses in travel or hospitality. **If anyone has successfully managed to get a second/manual review after an initial rejection, I would especially appreciate hearing exactly how you did it.** I’ll update this thread if/how the situation gets resolved.
