Professional esports platform start.gg has announced that it is ceasing the acceptance of card payments via Stripe due to the former’s recent change to its terms of service.
In an email shared by Esports Illustrated, start.gg notified users that Stripe has amended its “Prohibited and Restricted Businesses” guidelines, used to highlight all ventures that the company deems as “high-risk”,which now includes “games of skill including video game and mobile game tournaments/competitions, card games, board games with a monetary or material prize”.
This effectively bars Stripe from being used in professional esports events due to them being video game-based and often including monetary incentives for the winners.
In the email, start.gg has informed that cutting ties with Stripe will happen gradually, listing the changes and the dates about to be implemented as:
- Effective October 9th, Tournaments with paid events can no longer link Stripe accounts to their page.
- Effective October 9th, Tournaments with linked Stripe accounts cannot add any paid events.
- Effective November 1st, Stripe will be fully disabled on the platform to register for any tournament with paid events
As of now, start.gg is working to fully replace Stripe with PayPal as its new payments acceptance method, which could also be triggered across the rest of the industry as many esports organisations currently use Stripe for payments.
