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Bolt: An End-To-End Payments Stack with Zero Fraud

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Re: Bolt: An End-To-End Payments Stack with Zero Fraud

#61

Post by flaviuspopan »

rbres wrote: post #37
skrebbel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marginally related question: I just read https://bolt.com/team and how do you build such a large company before even launching? I mean, you have a fulltime recruiter on payroll. If you started in 2014 and stayed stealth for 4 years, how on earth did you manage to raise the funds needed to a) survive and b) have such a large team? Note: I mean this entirely unskeptically. I wonder how you pulled this off and I think i…

Good question. It was actually pretty insane. In payments, the MVP bar is high and we built like 4 companies in one (payment processor, fraud detection co, checkout platform, + more). So we had to raise a bunch, hire world-class people, and write code for a couple years before launch, all the while convincing investors that we weren't going to be another stealth-disaster-company. We then landed close to 100 customers…

This is way more interesting than the actual product, I can't wait to read the post!

Re: Bolt: An End-To-End Payments Stack with Zero Fraud

#62

Post by rbres »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #54

So my question would be how many legitimate customers do they reject as fraud (false positives) in order to eliminate false negatives? :)

It's pretty insane.

Empirically, you'd rather let several fraudsters through in order to not trap a good customer (because of their customer lifetime value, brand value, etc).

However, the industry does the opposite. They'll reject 3 good customers to catch 1 fraudster. It's really bad.

Every switch to Bolt has seen a 1%-20% lift in order approval rates (while guaranteeing zero fraud) because of our unique data engine and data visibility. Huge reason why companies are switching to Bolt.

Re: Bolt: An End-To-End Payments Stack with Zero Fraud

#63

Post by kodablah »

flaviuspopan wrote: post #61
rbres wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. It was actually pretty insane. In payments, the MVP bar is high and we built like 4 companies in one (payment processor, fraud detection co, checkout platform, + more). So we had to raise a bunch, hire world-class people, and write code for a couple years before launch, all the while convincing investors that we weren't going to be another stealth-disaster-company. We then landed close to 100 customers…

This is way more interesting than the actual product, I can't wait to read the post!

Likewise. I hope the reason for remaining in "stealth" is detailed.

Re: Bolt: An End-To-End Payments Stack with Zero Fraud

#64

Post by rbres »

Cyberdog wrote: post #42

rbres, first off, thank you for sticking around and answering our occasionally snarky questions. Second, what is meant by "Amazon-like checkout?" If that "YOUR BRAND" thing on the front page is a screenshot/representation of the service, it appears to be an AJAXy overlay over the normal site similar to what one of PayPal's three dozen or so integration methods does. I wouldn't qualify that as "Amazon-like" since it d…

Absolutely, more than happy to :-)

Amazon is currently able to invest $100M's and 100s of engineers into perfecting the checkout experience. There are actually hundreds of things you can do to optimize checkout. Here's one study: https://baymard.com/checkout-usability

We do all those things. We invest the engineering resources to perfect checkout. So that you don't have to. Even our checkout today is not perfect, but it's way better than the one's we replace. And will continue to improve with every deploy.

Now that you say it, Amazon-like can be a bit confusing. Really it appeals to our vision to help every online business compete with checkout by optimizing their payments flows.

Re: Bolt: An End-To-End Payments Stack with Zero Fraud

#65

Post by ABCLAW »

Cyberdog wrote: post #46
ABCLAW wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't? Those are the prices for two providers that aren't even close to lowest-cost providers in the space. They compete on service, not price. I can get .9 to 2.0% (depending on the industry of my business) off the shelf from at least 6+ sources. And that's before any interchange rebate programs, volume discounts, or specially negotiated interchange waivers past a certain fee per quarter.

So your complaint is that a payment processor competing on service, not price, is priced similarly to other processors competing on service?

I didn't start with a complaint, just an observation.

The CEO made it clear those rates are essentially a tax paid by unsavvy engineers that haven't shopped for rates because they aren't actually interested in setting competitive rates.

The real market rate for interchange is FAR lower than those described here, and from the replies you'll see that even here on HN there are a lot of tech smart, finance dumb engineers that didn't know that they're throwing away a big chunk of their revenue by taking the shelf rate for payment processing.

Re: Bolt: An End-To-End Payments Stack with Zero Fraud

#66

Post by bckygldstn »

the-dude wrote: post #51
rbres wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the starting processing rate for any major processor: - https://www.braintreepayments.com/braintree-pricing - https://stripe.com/us/pricing All of our clients (typically larger businesses) provide proof of lower rates with their existing processors and get those rates 100% matched. We do not negotiate processing, we just match the industry.

https://stripe.com/blog/pricing-update-for-europe edit: 1.4% + €0.25

Why are both stripe and braintree so much cheaper in Europe?

Re: Bolt: An End-To-End Payments Stack with Zero Fraud

#67

Post by ABCLAW »

rbres wrote: post #44
ABCLAW wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't? Those are the prices for two providers that aren't even close to lowest-cost providers in the space. They compete on service, not price. I can get .9 to 2.0% (depending on the industry of my business) off the shelf from at least 6+ sources. And that's before any interchange rebate programs, volume discounts, or specially negotiated interchange waivers past a certain fee per quarter.

And if you provide us a quote for that rate, we'll 100% match it. We can go as low as anyone else, and are trying to avoid the insanity of negotiating processing rates.

Cool, thanks for the reply. That makes more sense.

How much volume do you guys handle?

Re: Bolt: An End-To-End Payments Stack with Zero Fraud

#68

Post by rbres »

huhtenberg wrote: post #40
rbres wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEO of Bolt here. We'll be writing more about this in the future. In short, our fraud detection is really really good (although not perfect). However, the fraud that ends up making it through the pipeline is so minimal that we cover it fully. So, for a small fee as an online business you never have to pay for / deal with fraudulent chargebacks again. There are other companies that do this, but none of them also do pa…

Say, I got myself a credit card number of someone from Toronto, Canada and I am checking out through your system using a botnet-based Toronto exit node. Similar scenario, but this time I am an actual owner of that Canadian credit card, but I'm using Tor (or VPN) with an exit in Romania. Can you elaborate how your 200+ variables will be able to block first and allow second purchase?

Most fraud detection systems rely on blocking rules. So they'd detect a VPN/Tor and combined with an international order, it'd be an almost guaranteed block.

We'd factor this in, and it may be negative, but if the other 198 variables match up, you'll be in good shape with Bolt given your purchase behavior, on-page event patters, order details, and many other factors that are much better predictors of fraud than VPN/Country/etc.

Re: Bolt: An End-To-End Payments Stack with Zero Fraud

#70

Post by sli »

kodablah wrote: post #7

Why do companies choose not to be 100% transparent? Any time I have to contact a company to see more or a demo or, even worse, see pricing, I close the page and make a mental note to never work with them in any capacity. I feel this type of boycotting is the only way to change the practice. I mean, you even hide your docs behind a password? How terrible. What are you keeping so secret? Does this translate to your oth…

Currently stuck in this hell with a client, who needs a particular integration, but the company who wrote the program they need integration with refuses to give up any documentation.

Soooo we're just winging it at the moment, because it's their job to provide it to us (as agreed upon). I'm pretty sure they aren't going to get that integration.

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