Stripe Connect Express

Date: 5 April 2026

Duration: Approximately 5 hours from first report to fix resolution, with incident closed following multiple tests and no further issues reported for a minimum of 1 hour following the fix

Severity: Minor - no financial impact, no data loss, no payout disruption

Summary

Shortly after 2pm CEST, a user reported that their Stripe Connect Express account had been created with Spain set as the account country. Investigation confirmed that the country parameter was not being passed from the artist's account during Stripe Connect onboarding, causing Stripe to default all new Connect Express accounts to Spain regardless of the artist's actual location.

The issue was identified, investigated, and resolved on the same day. A country selector was added to profile settings and a Reset & Reconnect option was introduced to the payouts modal, allowing affected artists to delete their country-locked Stripe Connect profile and create a new one using their correct country.

Impact

Artists who completed Stripe Connect onboarding during the affected window had their Connect Express account created with Spain as the default country. As Stripe Connect requires completion before music uploads are permitted, affected artists were temporarily unable to upload music until they used the Reset & Reconnect flow to recreate their payout account.

It is important to note that this issue had no bearing on the ability to receive payouts. Stripe Connect does not require the account country to match the country of the connected bank account. No earnings were at risk and no financial data was affected.

Timeline

Root Cause

The Stripe Connect Express onboarding flow was not receiving the country parameter from the artist's account at the point of initialising the Connect session. With no country passed, Stripe defaulted the Express account to Spain - the country associated with the first-created platform account. This meant every artist who completed Stripe Connect onboarding during this window had their Express account created under the Spain jurisdiction regardless of their actual location.

Resolution

Two changes were deployed to resolve the issue:

Country selector in profile settings

Artists can now set their country directly within their WAVjunkie profile settings. This value is passed to Stripe Connect during onboarding to ensure the Express account is created under the correct country.

Reset & Reconnect in payouts modal

A Reset & Reconnect button was added to the payouts section. This allows any artist whose Stripe Connect account was created with an incorrect country to delete that account and initiate a fresh onboarding using the correct country from their profile settings.

What Was Not Affected

• No artist earnings were at risk at any point
• No financial data was compromised or incorrectly stored
• Payout functionality is unaffected - Stripe Connect does not require account country to match bank account country
• No listener purchases or downloads were disrupted
• No personal data was exposed

Preventative Actions

• Country parameter is now explicitly passed at every point of Stripe Connect initialisation
• The Reset & Reconnect flow remains available in the payouts modal as a permanent recovery option for any future onboarding issues
• Stripe Connect onboarding will be included in pre-launch integration testing for all future platform updates that touch the payments flow

We want to thank the artist who identified and reported this issue. Their prompt report allowed us to investigate and resolve it quickly. This is exactly the kind of community that makes WAVjunkie better.