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Note to paid subscribers: Thank you for providing financial support for my research and writing work. For a couple of months, I’ve noticed some irregularities in the payment processing system that connects subscriber bank and credit card accounts, to Stripe (the payment processor for Substack subscriptions), to writer bank accounts. I’ve experienced these irregularities as a Substack subscriber providing financial support to other Substack writers, and also as a writer who earns income from reader support through the Substack platform. Some of the funds readers are trying to provide to support Substack writers’ work is getting through to the writers, and some of it is not. At a minimum, an agent with authority to block transactions is triggering ‘fraud detection’ and ‘insufficient funds’ protocols to block some transactions, when the payments are routine subscription payments that have successfully cleared for many previous months, and/or are payments for which the payer account has sufficient funds. I don’t know whether the agents engaged in this transaction-blocking activity work for Substack, Stripe, MasterCard, Visa, other financial services companies, or other entities (governmental or quasi-governmental). I also don’t know whether the funds whose transfer is blocked in this way are simply retained in the subscribers’ bank accounts, or if those funds are diverted to third parties who are neither the readers trying to provide financial support to Substack writers, nor the writers who earn income from reader support. When it happened to me as a subscriber, the transaction was blocked and a temporary hold was put on the account until I went to the bank and confirmed the transaction was legitimate and had successfully cleared every month for more than a year, at which point the bank teller lifted the hold and the next monthly payment went through. Due to the complexity of the transaction fee structures through which Substack, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard and other business entities take their cut for providing content-hosting, newsletter-distribution, and payment-processing services; the complexity of the financial reports made available by Stripe (batch processing, transaction timing, etc.); and my lack of forensic accounting skills, I don’t have a good way to track what’s happening to the money as it makes its way from individual subscriber accounts to writer accounts. The most likely explanation is that this is another example of the clunky, pre-CDBC social credit system, more subtle than simply kicking people off of payment platforms entirely and shutting down bank accounts. I lack time and interest to learn how to do forensic accounting, and I don’t have sufficient trust in any other digital payment processors to want to set up new accounts elsewhere, so I’m not planning to pursue the matter further. Some of the funds readers are trying to provide to support my work is getting through, and some of it is not. I’m grateful to earn any income at all from this work. I’m posting about it to let Bailiwick readers and paid subscribers know that it’s happening, so that if you want to look into what’s happening with your money for any of your paid Substack subscriptions, you can try to track things through your bank and credit card accounts and take whatever steps you think prudent to protect your financial property.
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