[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Google Pay suspended account and it affecte...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Tell HN: Google Pay suspended account and it affected Google Play
       dev account
        
       I have reached the end of my rope trying to get Google support to
       understand our issue.  We were using Azlo as our business bank
       account, but they got shutdown after being acquired. We switched to
       Mercury and got our account setup.  We had no issues getting Apple
       to add and verify our new bank account, and we are receiving
       payments as expected.  With Google, we were getting an "Unknown
       error" when trying to add our Mercury bank account. Their support
       initially said they had to escalate it, but it would take no longer
       than 7 days. We waited more than 7 days for a reply. The reply was
       for us to install the Google Pay app on our phone to add the bank
       account. The instructions were to try to send money to someone, and
       it would prompt to add a bank account.  I replied saying that it
       felt very weird to use a consumer facing app with our developer
       account, but did it. However, it still did not show up as a payout
       option in either Admob or Google Play developer console.  After
       more waiting, I asked for a status update, and was told this:
       "While investigating this issue, our specialist team discovered
       unusual activity on your Google Pay profile. So they temporarily
       suspended it for your security and canceled any pending
       transactions."  Fine, we can do that, but what they didn't say is
       that when they suspended the account all existing subscriptions
       would expire due to payment being declined. We found out when an
       end user contacted Google Play Support and was told there is an
       issue with the app developer's account (us).  My co-founder is
       based in Japan, and I'm in the US. We have a single account for the
       company, and he logged into it from Japan, which I guess triggered
       the "unusual activity".  Our users are angry at us for not
       accepting their payments and allowing them to use our service. This
       feels horrible because I understand the users' frustration, but
       there is nothing I can do until Google looks at our verification
       documents.
        
       Author : mathrawka
       Score  : 25 points
       Date   : 2021-04-23 19:04 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
       | geoelectric wrote:
       | If the idea was to get visibility, posting at noon on Friday may
       | not be the best time. This does sound really frustrating.
        
         | mathrawka wrote:
         | Unfortunately, this is when the gravity of the situation became
         | apparent to us. We thought verifying our Google Pay account
         | would be quick and not adversely affect anything outside of
         | Google Pay.
        
           | geoelectric wrote:
           | That seems like an entirely reasonable expectation to me.
           | Think this isn't the first horror story I've read on here,
           | though, where they interlinked the services such that
           | activity on something completely unrelated messed up
           | someone's business, or where a glitch for one service
           | invalidated another. They usually get reported as cleared up
           | in an update after support finally takes notice, but brand
           | damage is a thing and sounds like you're catching some.
           | 
           | What a way to kick off a weekend. Sorry to hear it.
        
       | mathrawka wrote:
       | For anyone reading this far, Mercury acknowledged that their
       | customers have had issues with adding Mercury bank accounts to
       | Google, but they do not have a workaround.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-04-23 23:02 UTC)