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Nothing is certain, except death and taxes .. and chargebacks

blog.balancedpayments.com

21–30 of 69 posts

Re: Nothing is certain, except death and taxes .. and chargebacks

#21
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if a bitcoin exchange accepted credit cards, they'd be on the hook for any chargebacks. Hence why most of the existing exchanges want a bank transfer instead. In theory, a bitcoin exchange should have a near-perfect defense against chargebacks for faulty or missing products or similar, by showing via the public block chain that they delivered the purchased product as requested. However, there's no defense agains…

What if the buyer does a reversal of the bank transfer -- usually possible up to 60 days afterward. (I swear I'm not trolling. I'm new to bitcoin exchanges)

ACH transfers are reversible and a few bitcoin exchanges have been bitten by them since most have/do take dwolla, which is a nice service for ACH transfers.

Bank wire transfers, though, are unable to be reversed. Its a pity that most US banks charge for them.

Re: Nothing is certain, except death and taxes .. and chargebacks

#22

I'm surprised the part on combatting friendly fraud (4.2) didn't include a part about contacting the customer directly, most likely via phone. If you are in an industry where this occurs more often, you might even want to invest in telephone authentication. While it won't stop the friendly fraud, it will be a deterrent. Anyways, contacting the customer can usually get things resolved as well, even if they went straig…

The best way to combat friendly fraud is extensive logging and 3DS.

Re: Nothing is certain, except death and taxes .. and chargebacks

#23

I'm surprised the part on combatting friendly fraud (4.2) didn't include a part about contacting the customer directly, most likely via phone. If you are in an industry where this occurs more often, you might even want to invest in telephone authentication. While it won't stop the friendly fraud, it will be a deterrent. Anyways, contacting the customer can usually get things resolved as well, even if they went straig…

(balanced employee) This is absolutely true, the additional snarl here is that Balanced works directly with the company/marketplace that the customer is interfacing with.

Our policy, as much as possible, is to defers to that company with regards to customer contact because we don't want to interfere with that customer relationship/experience. We support their customer support, we don't supplant it.

Re: Nothing is certain, except death and taxes .. and chargebacks

#25
post #21
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the buyer does a reversal of the bank transfer -- usually possible up to 60 days afterward. (I swear I'm not trolling. I'm new to bitcoin exchanges)

ACH transfers are reversible and a few bitcoin exchanges have been bitten by them since most have/do take dwolla, which is a nice service for ACH transfers. Bank wire transfers, though, are unable to be reversed. Its a pity that most US banks charge for them.

Yeah, the US banking system is pretty pitiful in general. We (Balanced) are trying to make it a little bit better by making ACH faster and easier to integrate, but we can't do much about reversals. [shameless plug] Example, checkout our ACH payouts feature: blog.balancedpayments.com/announcing-balanced-payouts/

Re: Nothing is certain, except death and taxes .. and chargebacks

#26
post #9

Use digital cash- no chargebacks, no middlemen. The best option today if you don't want chargebacks is adopting Bitcoin for payments (like how Reddit did for Reddit Gold with Coinbase). http://blog.coinbase.com/post/40131065845/hosted-payment-pag...

Realistically, the percentage of customers you lose by accepting Bitcoin is probably much higher than the cost of handling credit card fraud.

Re: Nothing is certain, except death and taxes .. and chargebacks

#27
post #6

It would be interesting to see how this compares to other merchants and/or other payment processors. Does anyone have another source?

(I wrote the post) I am not aware of any. That's actually one of the motivations to do this. Someone needs to start !

Re: Nothing is certain, except death and taxes .. and chargebacks

#28

I'm surprised the part on combatting friendly fraud (4.2) didn't include a part about contacting the customer directly, most likely via phone. If you are in an industry where this occurs more often, you might even want to invest in telephone authentication. While it won't stop the friendly fraud, it will be a deterrent. Anyways, contacting the customer can usually get things resolved as well, even if they went straig…

(balanced employee) You are 100% on the money. Customer support part of user experience is largely controlled by the marketplace. We would be happy to provide any guidance in this regard.

Re: Nothing is certain, except death and taxes .. and chargebacks

#29
post #26
post #9

Use digital cash- no chargebacks, no middlemen. The best option today if you don't want chargebacks is adopting Bitcoin for payments (like how Reddit did for Reddit Gold with Coinbase). http://blog.coinbase.com/post/40131065845/hosted-payment-pag...

Realistically, the percentage of customers you lose by accepting Bitcoin is probably much higher than the cost of handling credit card fraud.

Well, obviously, do accept Bitcoin in addition to credit cards, so no customers are lost, only gained.

Re: Nothing is certain, except death and taxes .. and chargebacks

#30
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if a bitcoin exchange accepted credit cards, they'd be on the hook for any chargebacks. Hence why most of the existing exchanges want a bank transfer instead. In theory, a bitcoin exchange should have a near-perfect defense against chargebacks for faulty or missing products or similar, by showing via the public block chain that they delivered the purchased product as requested. However, there's no defense agains…

What if the buyer does a reversal of the bank transfer -- usually possible up to 60 days afterward. (I swear I'm not trolling. I'm new to bitcoin exchanges)

Coinbase does ACH for Bitcoin, they usually hold the funds for 6 days to prevent fraud.
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