Stripe Connect: Customer Statement Descriptors

[Chris Alton]

Hi Remi, 

Our business allows individuals to market services to their customers via our marketplace website. 

We are using the 'Separate Charges & Transfers' model with the 'on_behalf_of' attribute. Each customer payment is therefore linked to the associated seller 'Connected Account'. 

I've been trialling live customer payments in Dec 2020/Jan 2021. 

In December I purchased a product from a seller - when I looked at my credit card statement in my app I saw the name of the 'Connected Account' (in this case, Christopher Alton) but no other identifying information (i.e. support number, support address). This is what I expected to see and is good!

I purchased another product from the same seller account via the same customer account in January 2021. When I looked at my credit card statement a lot more information was provided (phone number of associated 'Connected Account' and postcode of associated 'Connected Account' (partially blanked out here for privacy):

There has been no configuration change from our side between these transactions.

We DO NOT want to provide the 'Customer' with the phone number nor address of the 'Connected Account' we are charging 'on_behalf_of'. We either want to show the platform support details or nothing at all (as per in the first transaction from December).

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The following Stripe Support Page states that if the 'Connected Account' we're charging 'on_behalf_of' does not supply a support address or contact number the platform's information will be used:

https://stripe.com/docs/connect/statement-descriptors

We are using 'EXPRESS ONBOARDING' and giving our sellers access to the 'Express Dashboard' - they have no way of adjusting/changing/disabling their support details. 

Our sellers will be registering for their 'Connected Accounts' using their personal phone numbers and home addresses. This information should not therefore be shown to customers as 'support address' / 'support phone number'. 

Please can you advise on how to prevent this?

Thanks

Chris

[Remi J.]

Hello Chris,

When you use `on_behalf_of` in the API for a payment, this shifts multiple things in the way the payment is made. For example the transaction uses local rails which means that a US platform with a connected account in France can have the transaction appear locally in Europe instead of coming from the US. It also means that we support the local currencies that French accounts support, instead of having to convert everything to USD first and then back to EUR for example.

Similarly, the transaction sent to the card network is made on behalf of the connected account and not on behalf of the platform. This means the connected account's details are being sent in the transaction. With `on_behalf_of`, the business that the customer is transacting with is the connected account and not the platform itself.

In your situation, if you want all personal information from the connected account to be hidden from end-customers, it is likely that you don't want to use `on_behalf_of` as a feature and instead settle as the platform itself. It would be as easy as removing the `on_behalf_of` parameter, but it can have a large impact on your business itself.

The fact that it behaved differently in December versus January can come from multiple root causes such as whether the account had enough information provided at the time of the first transaction for example. My recommendation here would be to talk to our support team directly about your business model and what you are trying to solve and they will be best equipped to help you approach this properly. You can contact them here: https://support.stripe.com/contact

Best,

Remi

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[Chris Alton]

Thanks for your response Remi, appreciated as always. 

As you say, the benefits of using 'on_behalf_of' are significant from a currency management perspective. As a result we really want to keep using it. 

Is the default 'Support Phone Number' and 'Support Address' the information provided by the 'Connected Account' owner during the 'Express Onboarding'?

Can the 'Connected Account' owner change the 'Support Phone Number' and 'Support Address' that is displayed to their customer via the customer bank statement?

I'll raise with Stripe Support too but find your feedback is always much more comprehensive and quicker to understand!

Thanks again for your help,

Chris

[Remi J.]

Hello,

This specific information is not collected during Connect Onboarding for an Express account but we have multiple layers of fallback logic for determining what is the best value to use for each one.

It's unfortunately not possible to control this on your end and force the platform's details in the transaction in your case. That's why I recommend working with our support team directly instead as they can help you more directly by gathering info about your business and platform account. They can also triple check the behaviour if you provide specific example transaction ids (ch_12345) and compare the behaviour from December and January. Make sure to reply to the ongoing thread you already have with them and provide those ids which will be really helpful in debugging this.

Best,

Remi

[Chris Alton]

Thanks Remi, 

I raised a ticket with Stripe Support on the 6th. I'm awaiting a response from the team at the moment. 

The concern here is data privacy. 

When the 'Connected Account' applicant signs up (via Express Onboarding) they are given no indication that the information they provide (sensitive personal data) may be displayed to customers as 'Support Address' and 'Support Phone Number'.

The fields are titled 'Home Address' and 'Phone Number' during onboarding:

This information should never be displayed to a customer without the express permission of the 'Connected Account' owner. I've reviewed the 'Connected Account Terms' in detail and there is no mention of this type of information being shared (even we as the Platform owner cannot see this data in our administrator dashboard when viewing a 'Connected Account'). 

In addition, the 'Connected Account' owner cannot change/provide an alternative address/phone number. 

Could you discuss this internally as it feels like a fairly significant data protection issue - I'd appreciate your help as I'm yet to hear anything back from Support. 

Thanks

Chris

[Remi J.]

Hey Chris,

Thanks for the update. At this point though, I'd recommend keeping this off of the api-discuss list since it's not really the right usage of the list. The behaviour is expected behaviour here as the connected account is the "merchant of record" in your flow and there are rules around which pieces of information have to be shared with the banks during a payment.

I will flag your ask internally though.

Best,

Remi