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Trouble signing up for Stripe after joining Moonlight
Trouble signing up for Stripe after joining Moonlight

If Stripe says that your email is taken, check here

Philip Thomas avatar
Written by Philip Thomas
Updated over a week ago

Developers: If you are trying to sign up for a new Stripe account and you are receiving an error about your email already being taken, this article is for you. 

What happened
When you signed up for Moonlight, you probably set up payments through Stripe's Express product. It creates a limited Stripe account for you (called an "Express" account). All the Express account does is accept payments from Moonlight. 

ℹ️ You can access your Stripe Express account by logging into Moonlight and clicking "Payments" on the navigation.

The problem
From our users, we have learned that Stripe considers your email address "already claimed" if you have an Express account. So, if you go to sign up for a standard Stripe account, it will give you this error. 


Stripe workaround

From Stripe support:

> When it comes to Express accounts, there’s currently not a way to delete them or switch them to a Standard account. However there is a workaround for this.
> What we can do is change the email address linked to the Express account to an alias email address, which would free up their email address for a new Stripe account. This can also be done for the Standard account, too. We’d just need confirmation that the account owner is on board with this.

Solution

Please get in touch with Stripe support (support@stripe.com) and provide the following details:


---
I have a support request for the Stripe Connect team. I was referred by the support team at
MoonlightWork.com.

My email address in Stripe is currently associated with an Express account. I am trying to set up a Stripe Standard account, and cannot because the email is already associated with the Express account. 

I understand that the Stripe Express account cannot be converted or deleted. So, I request that you change my Express email from CURRENT_EMAIL to NEW_EMAIL. After that, I can sign up for a Stripe Standard account with the old email.
---

💡Tip: Use Gmail? You can add "+word" after your username in the email, and it will still deliver to your inbox. So, if your email address is "example@gmail.com", we suggest that you make the NEW_EMAIL above into "example+moonlight@gmail.com".

Done? Connect Moonlight to your new Stripe account!

Once you have resolved this issue, you will have a standard Stripe account. You can switch your Moonlight account to send payments to the Stripe account. To do this, visit this  and click "If you want to sign in to an existing Stripe account, click here":  https://www.moonlightwork.com/start/dev/stripe

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