How Can Authors Block Payments from Specific Countries

For VAT and duty purposes, or other business reasons, sometimes authors decide it is best to limit their paid subscribers to specific countries. 

Note: This only applies to authors on the direct to reader integration through Ream. For authors on the Ream-managed option, Ream is responsible for handling your VAT and Sales Tax. 

Here’s how authors can do this in a few simple steps:

1. Enter your Stripe account dashboard. https://dashboard.stripe.com/dashboard

2. Click payments

3. Then click on fraud & risk from the left-hand side --> rules.

You will then need to upgrade to Radar for Fraud Teams to be able to add custom rules to your Stripe account. More information can be found here: https://stripe.com/radar/pricing

Example Rules for Blocking Payments:

This is an example rule for blocking payments from a specific country: 

In this example rule, you would block payments from readers in the United States.

NOTE: To block payments from countries, you must enter their two-letter code into the rule.

For a full list of countries and their two-letter codes, visit here: https://www.iban.com/country-codes

You can also choose to block payments from countries that are NOT a specified country.

In this example, if a reader is NOT located in Australia, then their payment will be blocked.

You can also choose to block payments from multiple countries using OR between each clause.

In this example, card countries are blocked if payments are from UK, BM, or CN:

In this example, card countries are blocked if payments are NOT from CA, DE, or US:

NOTE: For a full list of rules that you can add to help you manage and control payments, check out Stripe’s rules reference guide: https://stripe.com/docs/radar/rules/reference

We recommend authors ensure they added their rules correctly by closely monitoring their dashboard after they implement new rules to see if the desired countries are blocked. 

Rules can be edited at any time in the Stripe Dashboard.

It’s especially important to be careful with how rules are used.

You don’t want to block payments on accident from a country that you meant to accept payments from.

If you have any questions, please contact our Support Team at support@reamstories.com.