Restricted and prohibited: what Stripe's category rules mean for you

Nobody reads the acceptable use policy before they build the product. You have an idea, you spend three weeks making it, you put it on sale, it works — and then a payout does not arrive, an email asks you to describe your business in more detail, and you are reading a list of restricted categories for the first time with money already taken from people who are expecting something. It is a horrible order to learn things in, and it is entirely avoidable by spending fifteen minutes with the rules before you spend three weeks with the product.

Why this lands on you personally

On some platforms you are a seller inside somebody else's merchant account, and the platform's compliance team is the one having the conversation with the processor. On store.fan the money goes straight into your own Stripe account with 0% platform fee, which is excellent for your margins and means you are the merchant. The upside is that nobody sits between you and your revenue. The corresponding responsibility is that Stripe's assessment is of you and your business, and it is yours to answer.

The rules also are not one global list. Card networks impose some of it, national regulators impose more, and Stripe applies different requirements in different countries. Something perfectly ordinary in one market needs a licence in another. This is why a definitive answer for your case can only come from Stripe's own restricted businesses documentation for your country, read today rather than remembered from a forum post.

The genuinely hard part is that the boundary is often about framing rather than substance. A course about spreadsheets is fine. The same course sold as a route to a specific monthly income is a different proposition to a risk team. You can be honest, well-meaning and still on the wrong side of a line you did not know was drawn there.

Where a review actually starts

Understanding who is assessing what makes the whole thing less frightening. Here is the difference between selling under someone else's account and selling under your own.

The categories creators actually run into

This is not the full list and it is not a substitute for reading Stripe's own, but these are the ones that catch people building perfectly sincere products. Check yourself against them before you build, not after.

• Adult content. Rules here are strict, vary by country and are treated seriously by the card networks. Assume it needs explicit clearance rather than assuming it is fine because the content is your own.
• Financial advice, signals and trading education. Regulated in many countries, and material that looks like personalised investment advice attracts scrutiny even when sold as education.
• Anything sold on an income promise. Products framed around guaranteed earnings, business opportunities or recruitment structures are a classic flashpoint, and the framing alone can be enough.
• Supplements, health products and medical claims. Selling a physical supplement raises licensing questions; claiming it treats a condition raises far larger ones.
• CBD, vapes, weapons and replicas. Country-by-country, and frequently a flat no regardless of local legality.
• Ticket resale and event brokering. Restricted in many markets, particularly where you are not the event organiser.
• Anything you do not have the rights to. Fonts, samples, templates, images and course material built on someone else's licence — an intellectual property complaint reaches your processor eventually.
• Long-dated presales and crowdfunding-shaped offers. Taking money now for something you will make in six months looks like risk to a processor, because if it never ships they wear the refunds.

The same course, two sales pages

A designer builds a ten-lesson course on running a freelance practice: pricing, contracts, chasing invoices. Version one of the sales page promises a route to £5,000 a month within ninety days, with a big number at the top. Version two describes the lessons, who the course suits, and what a student will be able to do afterwards. Identical video files, identical worksheets.

Version one reads, to a risk team, as an income opportunity — the category most closely associated with refunds and disputes. Version two reads as education. The second page is also more honest, because the designer has no idea what any individual student will earn, and it converts on specifics rather than on a number she cannot stand behind. The lesson generalises: describe what the product is and what it contains, not what the buyer's bank balance will look like. That habit keeps you out of both a compliance review and a refund queue.

The mistake most people make

They go quiet when the email arrives. A request for more information about your business feels accusatory, so it gets left for a few days while the dread builds, and the delay is what turns a routine question into a held balance. Answer the same day, in plain language, with the documents attached. Say what you sell, who buys it, how it is delivered and what your refund practice is — all things you can evidence from your product analytics and order history. Reviews are usually resolved by information, and information you supply promptly is worth more than an excellent argument sent a week late.

The rules are not there to thwart you, and most creators never brush against them. But they are worth an hour before the build rather than a fortnight after the launch, particularly if your idea sits anywhere near money, health or age-restricted material. Read Stripe's list for your country, describe your product plainly, and get on with making the thing. You can see what you can sell on the features overview, and the practical setup questions are answered in the FAQ.