How to Read a Stripe Restriction Notice and Information Request

A restriction notice is a brief. Most people skim it for tone — panicked, or relieved that it “does not sound that bad” — and miss the four facts that decide the next fortnight. Who is restricted. Which capabilities. What is asked. When.

Print it or save a PDF. Then mark it up. The habit feels slow. It is faster than reconstructing the email from a group chat three weeks later, when the dashboard has changed and nobody agrees what was promised.

Mark the scope before the story

1. The legal entity and the Stripe account named. Groups with more than one account often answer for the wrong one, or assume a sister company was included when it was not.
2. The date and time, and any deadline. Diarise the deadline in the same terms Stripe used, not “sometime next week”.
3. The capability language. Payouts paused, charges disabled, both, or only a request with nothing turned off yet. Quote it. Do not paraphrase “frozen”.
4. The reason, if one is given. Sometimes it is specific (could not verify a director, website mismatch, unsupported business). Sometimes it is generic risk language. Copy the sentence anyway.
5. Every document or question in the list. Number them. An answer that covers five of seven is a miss.

What information requests usually mean

Identity and ownership requests mean Stripe cannot tie the account to real people it is allowed to know: directors, beneficial owners, and sometimes the person who opened the account. Send clear documents for those people. Do not send a different person’s passport because it scans better.

Business requests mean the trading story is incomplete or inconsistent. Typical gaps are a website that is a single page, a product description that does not match checkout, no visible way to contact the company, or fulfilment described as immediate when the terms say thirty days. The fix is to make the public story true and then describe that story. The fix is not a private PDF that contradicts the site.

• Bank requests are about the destination of payouts. The name on the bank account should match the entity Stripe is paying. A partner’s bank, dropped in to “keep cash moving”, is a change of who gets settlement. That is a different and larger question.
• Processing history requests are about whether the volume makes sense. Give the period, the processor, and the reason if a previous account was limited. Ranges are allowed when statements are still coming. Blank is not.
• Fulfilment requests are about undelivered orders. Tracking, service completion records, or a plain explanation of lead time belong here. A policy page nobody follows does not.

How to answer without creating a second file

Use the numbering from the notice. For each item: the fact, the document that shows it, and the date of that document. If you disagree with Stripe’s characterisation, say what is wrong and attach the record. Disagreement without a record reads as argument. A record you altered reads as something worse.

Keep cardholder data out of the reply. Stripe is not asking you to email full card numbers, CVCs or customers’ identity documents from their card files. If a spreadsheet export contains full PANs, it does not leave your machine in that form. Passwords, two-factor codes and secret API keys are never part of a legitimate information request from a processor, and they are never part of a RevRouters assessment.

After you send it

You wait. There is no published clock that this site will pretend to know. While you wait, do not change the bank account, the website’s legal name, or the product range in a way that makes your own answer false. If something material changes — a supplier fails, you stop selling a line, a director resigns — send a short correction. Silence plus a changed website is how reviews restart.

If you are also asking RevRouters whether a partnership could even be discussed, the same bundle is the start of that assessment: the notice, the capabilities, the deadline, the product, the fulfilment, the entity, and the history. Sending it is a request for a look. It is not acceptance, and it is not Stripe’s permission.