Flurly has been shut down by Stripe
Hi Flurly users,
I have bad news which unfortunately has consequences for each of you. This morning I received the following email from Stripe:
What does this mean for you?
- Flurly's Stripe account has been disabled. This means that buyers who use Flurly’s digital marketplace cannot pay you.
- If you get payouts through Paypal or Payoneer, Stripe has frozen your balance. This means the portion of payouts you expect from these providers is now frozen.
[NB: If you use Stripe Connect directly, your payouts should happen as expected.]
- Flurly is no longer a viable digital marketplace. It is in your best interest to find an alternative provider.
What happened?
Flurly is a platform similar to Gumroad - it allows users to sell digital products. Users can come to the site, upload a digital file, and put a paywall in front of it.
When I first built it, it was structured in a way such that the customer payments came into the Flurly Stripe account and was subsequently paid out to sellers via Stripe Connect, Paypal or Payoneer.
Over time, this set up proved risky with legal liabilities. So last year I migrated to Stripe Connect’s direct charges model where customer payments would go directly into sellers' Stripe accounts. This meant all new sellers had to have a Stripe account.
However, there were still legacy sellers that depended on Flurly for their living. Thus I "grandfathered" in these accounts and let them keep using the old Flurly system.
A few days ago, I received the following email from Stripe:
They suspected one of these legacy accounts for illegal transactions. The underlying product for the site is the following https://www.newsawp.com/. I gave them all the information they wanted about the site.
A few days later, I received the email this post started with. I don’t really know what happened. My guess is that that site served as a front for something else that was illegal and against the Stripe and Flurly terms of service.
What’s next?
Flurly is entirely built on top of Stripe. Their move has effectively disabled the entire platform.
I will fight to get the Flurly account unfrozen and get all the money back into your hands.
I am very sorry that this has happened and that there are such consequences for you. Each of you took a chance on me and Flurly and I really appreciate that. I'm sorry to have let you down.
If any of you have any questions, please email me at hi@flurly.com.