Stripe helps protect merchants from fraudulent transactions, elevated chargeback rates, and dispute fees by leveraging information collected across our services to detect and block risky transactions. We use both machine learning to detect and block high risk transactions and also use rules to block International Bank Account Numbers (IBAN) based on certain activity.

See How Radar prevents ACH and SEPA Direct Debit payment fraud.

How does Stripe handle suspicious IBANs?

We treat IBANs with more than 3 consecutive disputes or with specific error codes to mitigate fraud risk

If an IBAN has disputed payments 3 times in a row regardless of reason code or at least one dispute for specific reason codes, then we will suspend the IBAN for 90 days, and during this suspension period, future payments using such IBANs will be blocked.

The specific reason codes are:

• RC01 - Bank identifier incorrect, i.e. invalid BIC
• AC04 - Account closed
• AG02 - Invalid bank operation code
• AC01 - Incorrect account number
• BE05 - Unrecognised initiating party
• SL01 - Specific service offered by debtor agent
• RR02 - Missing debtor name or address

You can find the full list of dispute reason codes on the European Payments Council website.

What will the user see when a payment gets blocked?

When the payment gets blocked you’ll see the error message:

The payment is blocked due to a high likelihood of chargeback.

Why does Stripe block these IBANs?

We have observed that future attempts after these reason codes or attempts that had previous consecutive failures will likely fail again. Blocking such attempts helps improve the chargeback rate and protects your from dispute fees.