Audit your planned Stripe Connect implementation against 15+ production gotchas before you ship. Built from real failure modes we've seen on production marketplaces — KYC by country, webhook coverage, dispute liability, idempotency. Get a health score and prioritized fix list.
We've shipped Stripe Connect on a vacation rental marketplace, a custom Rails commerce platform, and three smaller side projects. We'll review your specific setup — webhooks, KYC plan, dispute handling, idempotency — in a 30-minute call and tell you exactly what will break in production. Free.
This isn't theoretical — every rule in the validator comes from a specific failure mode we've watched marketplaces hit. The full list with explanations is in our Stripe Connect production gotchas post. Here's the short version:
account.updated — fires when Stripe disables/restricts a seller (KYC expiry, risk review, document issue). Without it: sellers run blind.payout.failed — fires when bank routing fails. Without it: sellers wait days for support tickets; trust collapses.payment_intent.succeeded — fires async after SCA/3DS completes. Without it: you lose orders that completed via push notification.If you want a full implementation review of your Stripe Connect code, our marketplace engineering team does production audits — we've done this for vacation rentals, services marketplaces, and ecommerce platforms. See our vacation rental case study for an end-to-end example.
Use Express when you want Stripe to handle KYC, disputes, tax forms, and the seller dashboard — which is most marketplaces under $1M/month GMV. Use Custom only when you have specific compliance, branding, or fee-structure requirements. Custom is more powerful but adds ~6 weeks of engineering. Our decision framework walks through this in depth.
Sellers get disabled or restricted by Stripe (for compliance reasons, document expiry, or risk review) without your platform knowing. They keep receiving orders, but payouts don't settle. Your support team finds out from angry sellers weeks later. This is the single most common Stripe Connect operational failure.
Not directly — Stripe doesn't support migrating account types. You can onboard new sellers as Express while letting existing Custom accounts run, but unifying is painful. Pick correctly the first time.
Indian sellers require PAN, GST registration, and bank account verification with documents Stripe needs to validate. On Custom you build this UI yourself; on Express, Stripe handles it. The same applies to Brazil, Mexico, and other emerging markets — KYC depth is the gating factor.
On destination charges, the platform owns the customer relationship and can respond to disputes. On direct charges, the seller's account is on the hook. On Custom, you're responsible for evidence collection. On Express, Stripe handles dispute response. The $15 dispute fee is non-refundable even if you win.
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