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Before anyone can pay you they need to know who you are for tax purposes. In the United States that is a W-9 for a US person and a W-8 for everybody else, and a missing one does not delay a payment — it triggers backup withholding, which takes a share of your money and sends it to the IRS.
The distinction is US tax residency, not where you happen to bank. Getting it wrong means the wrong withholding treatment and a correction that takes months.
Without a valid form on file, a payer is required to withhold a flat percentage of payments and remit it. You get it back eventually by filing a return; in the meantime it is working capital you no longer have, taken automatically, on every payment.
The name and taxpayer number on the form must match what the IRS holds. A mismatch produces a notice to the payer, who is then obliged to start withholding until it is fixed — so a typo has the same effect as no form at all.
The protocol records that a form is on file, its type, entity classification and the LAST FOUR DIGITS of the taxpayer number — never the whole number. A full SSN or EIN sitting in a database is a breach waiting for its disclosure letter, and it is not needed: Stripe collects the full number during payout onboarding, because Stripe is the party that issues the information return.