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WePay (YC S09) Launches WePay Clear, a Stripe Competitor with Fraud Protection

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1–10 of 28 posts

Re: WePay (YC S09) Launches WePay Clear, a Stripe Competitor with Fraud Protection

#3

I know they talk a lot about fraud here but I wonder if the brand issues are just as important.

WePay Connect has all the same fraud features as Clear, but for a lot of brands they want to be the consistent voice across their platform-and rightfully so. WePay Clear allows you to process payments without giving up any of your brand's experience.

Re: WePay (YC S09) Launches WePay Clear, a Stripe Competitor with Fraud Protection

#4

I know they talk a lot about fraud here but I wonder if the brand issues are just as important.

Bill from WePay here. You're absolutely right. "Freshbooks Payments" is way more compelling than "WePay account connected to Freshbooks". App developers historically have had to choose the latter in order to avoid fraud risk - something we are changing with WePay Clear.

Re: WePay (YC S09) Launches WePay Clear, a Stripe Competitor with Fraud Protection

#5
My understanding is that stripe has always done some level of fraud protection (e.g. Monitoring to ensure someone isn't incrementing through card numbers to find one that works)

This seems like a necessary component of any "effective acquiring bank"[1] because of where the liability falls. In the event of fraud, Stripe can get hosed and they need to protect themselves.

I imagine they wouldn't have taken the step of lowering their payout delay from 7 days to 2 days unless they were confident in their fraud detection abilities.

Can you elaborate on what about WePays fraud protection is better? Am I dead wrong?

Note: in no way affiliated with Stripe, just once considered starting something in this industry.

[1] I'm defining Stripe and WePay as "effective acquiring banks." I guess you can call them ISO's too. They're positioned somewhere in the web of words - but bottom line is that their the ones that find merchants that need to process cards.

Re: WePay (YC S09) Launches WePay Clear, a Stripe Competitor with Fraud Protection

#6

My understanding is that stripe has always done some level of fraud protection (e.g. Monitoring to ensure someone isn't incrementing through card numbers to find one that works) This seems like a necessary component of any "effective acquiring bank"[1] because of where the liability falls. In the event of fraud, Stripe can get hosed and they need to protect themselves. I imagine they wouldn't have taken the step of l…

First remember that WePay is for platform companies-ones that want to allow their users to take funds, not single merchant apps. So crowdfunding sites, marketplaces, and business tools like Freshbooks, ConstantContact, and InvoiceASAP. In a two-sided platform, there's a lot more chance of fraud because you have to worry about both the buyer and the seller.

Example: Crowdfunding Campaign. I start a campaign, charge a bunch of stolen cards, pull the money out, and disappear.

WePay uses a wide variety of machine learning, anomaly detection, social risk (through our proprietary Veda Risk Engine), and transaction analysis to stop fraudulent transactions from occurring on our partner platforms.

Re: WePay (YC S09) Launches WePay Clear, a Stripe Competitor with Fraud Protection

#7

My understanding is that stripe has always done some level of fraud protection (e.g. Monitoring to ensure someone isn't incrementing through card numbers to find one that works) This seems like a necessary component of any "effective acquiring bank"[1] because of where the liability falls. In the event of fraud, Stripe can get hosed and they need to protect themselves. I imagine they wouldn't have taken the step of l…

> My understanding is that stripe has always done some level of fraud protection (e.g. Monitoring to ensure someone isn't incrementing through card numbers to find one that works)

Yeah, for sure. We (Stripe) power many commerce platforms today[1], so we've been able to accumulate a decent amount of training data. It's probably also worth pointing out that our functionality for platforms like these protects the platform from risk losses, and has from the start. But, more competition is good for users, and congrats to WePay on the launch.

[1] Twitter, Facebook, Wave Accounting, Shopify, BigCommerce, Freshbooks, GoDaddy, Wufoo, and more.

Re: WePay (YC S09) Launches WePay Clear, a Stripe Competitor with Fraud Protection

#8
post #7

My understanding is that stripe has always done some level of fraud protection (e.g. Monitoring to ensure someone isn't incrementing through card numbers to find one that works) This seems like a necessary component of any "effective acquiring bank"[1] because of where the liability falls. In the event of fraud, Stripe can get hosed and they need to protect themselves. I imagine they wouldn't have taken the step of l…

> My understanding is that stripe has always done some level of fraud protection (e.g. Monitoring to ensure someone isn't incrementing through card numbers to find one that works) Yeah, for sure. We (Stripe) power many commerce platforms today[1], so we've been able to accumulate a decent amount of training data. It's probably also worth pointing out that our functionality for platforms like these protects the platfo…

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Re: WePay (YC S09) Launches WePay Clear, a Stripe Competitor with Fraud Protection

#9

My understanding is that stripe has always done some level of fraud protection (e.g. Monitoring to ensure someone isn't incrementing through card numbers to find one that works) This seems like a necessary component of any "effective acquiring bank"[1] because of where the liability falls. In the event of fraud, Stripe can get hosed and they need to protect themselves. I imagine they wouldn't have taken the step of l…

Bill from WePay here - thanks for asking.

The value proposition of WePay Clear isn't entirely captured in TechCrunch's choice of a headline, though they certainly have sensationalized it by drawing a Stripe comparison.

Yes, WePay Clear takes on fraud responsibility & shields the platform. (as does Stripe Connect)

However, WePay Clear does this in a whitelabel fashion, so that sellers on platforms do not need to create a WePay account.

In other words, it's not just fraud protection or whitelabel - it's whitelabel payments AND fraud protection.

Our launch partner in this is Freshbooks. Freshbooks currently offers several payment gateways/merchant accounts as an option to sellers like Authorize.net and Stripe. But their new primary "Freshbooks Payments" offering is built on WePay Clear. You can check out the experience here: http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/2014/10/01/introducing-paymen...

Re: WePay (YC S09) Launches WePay Clear, a Stripe Competitor with Fraud Protection

#10
Fraud protection is an odd marketing angle.

The merchant bank is the one that gets hosed due to fraud, so anti fraud technology helps Stripe, Paypal, WePay, etc. WePay is marketing that they are very good at not screwing themselves.

There are clients that care about anti-fraud, such as ecommerce companies that ship high value electronics, but WePay has no experience in this category.

The crowd funding space has fraud issues as it is a method for turning stolen cards into cash, but reversing a pledge is a lot easier than un-shipping an xbox.

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