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This is one of the big casualties of the American credit card conglomerates' failure to focus on reducing fraud. They get paid regardless of whether a transact

This is one of the big casualties of the American credit card conglomerates' failure to focus on reducing fraud. They get paid regardless of whether a transaction is fraudulent or not, so they have no incentive to improve. The result is that this burden gets dropped on merchants, requiring both man-hours and cost, and it disproportionately affects smaller companies. It basically amounts to a tax by the merchant processors on small businesses, for no benefit to anyone but themselves. I've seen the discussions crop up on Hacker News before* of people starting commercial websites, getting hit with massive amounts of fraud, and either having to just shutdown completely or shell out more of their margin for a third party fraud prevention service. It's disgusting. From the consumer's perspective it is nice that credit cards are easy to use, and that we are protected from bad merchants, thieves, etc. But we're putting a strangle on small business with this system. There are better ways that would both reduce fraud overall, thus saving consumers money, and not disproportionately penalize small businesses. It wouldn't make credit cards any harder to use. On a tangent, Humble Bundle stopped accepting Bitcoin a year or two ago. Considering that Bitcoin can have a 0% fraud rate it makes it a somewhat odd move, especially since Humble Bundle is a really great target for fraud (the goods are easy to move). And no, I don't view Bitcoin as an ideal solution (as it exists today); it's on the opposite side of this problem, foisting fraud prevention onto the consumer. But from Humble Bundle's perspective (and any business, small or big) it is the perfect solution to preventing fraud. * The ones I'm recalling are even more sad. They were getting hit by fraudsters who were just using their site to test the cards, before moving on to the actual fraud target(s). The end result is the same, though.

Retric 10y ago
The fact they removed Bitcoin may suggest it's less useful than you might think. The reasons for this are complex, but sadly it's just worse than Credit cards for most merchants. What's annoying as a customer is many companies flag legitimate transactions, wait a few days to say so, and then handle it poorly after the fact.
- chrischen 10y ago
  Yes there's a small but significant percentage of transactions for my company that are flagged and completely withheld because of some non-related issue of fraud. For example they lost their card, or their card had some other fraud on it, or they mistakenly reported fraud. Despite not being our fault, the CC companies withhold the cash for months....
- divbit 10y ago
  >sadly it's just worse than Credit cards for most merchants. Don't most merchants just use something like a 'pay with bitpay / coinbase' which results in them directly getting cash? I can't imagine how that would be much worse?
  - wmf 10y ago
    It's worse if the Bitcoin payment never goes through or the customer abandons their cart due to Bitcoin's generally poor UX.
    - divbit 10y ago
      I would guess, just having it as an option in addition to credit cards, wouldn't make someone abandon their cart in the case of a poor UX (more likely abandon bitcoin)
    - voxic11 10y ago
      I really like bitcoins ux, it's really simple to take out your phone and scan a qr code. I've also made a large number of transactions and have never had one fail (some can take a while to get confirmed but every merchant I've used credits you as soon as they get the broadcast, not when it's actually confirmed.
      - swiley 10y ago
        This is my feeling exactly! Bitcoin ux (especially for online only stuff that doesn't actually need an address) is actually way nicer than typing in my credit card. This last time I tried to buy something with my credit card I accidentally mistyped the code on the back and they disabled it until I called the card issuer and gave them my SSN!
acbabis 10y ago
> They get paid regardless of whether a transaction is fraudulent or not, so they have no incentive to improve. It doesn't take away from your main point, but credit card companies do have some incentive to improve. They want the customer not to be inconvenienced by having to report fraud in the first place, and they want to avoid having those people call the support staff. That's why banks monitor your activity and automatically decline transactions that seem fishy.
- aianus 10y ago
  > That's why banks monitor your activity and automatically decline transactions that seem fishy. This practice is infuriating and does the opposite of encouraging me to call support less.
cooper12 10y ago
By the way the ones you are thinking about are Candy Japan: https://www.candyjapan.com/candy-japan-hit-with-credit-card-fraud https://www.candyjapan.com/candy-japan-hit-with-credit-card-....
- fpgaminer 10y ago
  Thank you, it was definitely the Candy Japan thread that I was thinking about. I believe this was the specific article: https://www.candyjapan.com/how-i-got-credit-card-fraud-somewhat-under-control https://www.candyjapan.com/how-i-got-credit-card-fraud-somew... (HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11431881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11431881). The associated comments have stories from other entrepreneurs bitten by this.
ThatPlayer 10y ago
>Humble Bundle stopped accepting Bitcoin a year or two ago It seems to be enabled on a individual bundle basis. While the main bundles going on right now are not accepting it, the two Book Bundles are accepting Bitcions. However it's always been the less noticeable button.
- fpgaminer 10y ago
  I meant in the store which added support maybe 3 or so years ago, and then dropped it a year or two ago. I used to prefer buying my games there, instead of on Steam, because of that as well as not having my games library locked to Steam. Nowadays I'll usually buy from GMG for the same reasons, though their store interface is much more confusing and conflated compared to Humble's.
mootothemax 10y ago
Bitcoin doesn't solve fraud; there's no way to prove that someone hasn't sent money to you. That is, you can prove ownership of a Bitcoin address, but you can't prove that you don't own an address.
jeff18 10y ago
Humble founder here. Bitcoin would be a great topic for another blog post, we have a really long love-hate relationship with it. Don't worry, Bitcoin support will hopefully return to our store and gaming bundles eventually. We know what we need to do to turn it back on (more or less, hook it into our SMS verification system) but we have many higher priority tasks work on. We are hiring if you know anyone: https://jobs.humblebundle.com/careers/ https://jobs.humblebundle.com/careers/ :) While bitcoin is great for preventing chargebacks, it is inherently anonymous. That is good for certain use cases, but when you are trying to enforce a strict per customer limit, it is a nightmare. We invested a lot of resources into doing what we can to combat it, but eventually we figured that we had more important things to do and had to tap out. Almost 100% of the bitcoin traffic was bad actors, and even so it was such a tiny fraction of our sales, like under 0.05%. There are a lot of diehard bitcoin users, like yourself, and I would love to support your preferred payment method again, but it is an incredible amount of work to do safely.
- akavel 10y ago
  Curious how do you know they were bad actors, given the anonymity? Were those some known stolen bitcoin wallets or something? Sorry if the answer is obvious, I'm not a bitcoin user.
  - nathancahill 10y ago
    Typically "bad actors" in this situation are bad in regards to the company, it's not a definition of their person or the source of their money (although those often coincide).
  - luchs 10y ago
    I'd guess that they track keys which appear on reseller sites. So the "bad actor" comes from later use, not from e.g. stolen Bitcoins.
  - jeff18 10y ago
    Good bitcoin purchases: $22 soandso@gmail.com [30 minutes later] $50 someone@real-company.com [30 minutes later] $15 person@real-company.com etc. Bad bitcoin purchases: $1.00 asdfklasdklfm1@yahoo.com [1 second later] $1.00 asdfklasdklfm2@yahoo.com [1 second later] $1.00 asdfklasdklfm3@yahoo.com [1 second later] $1.00 asdfklasdklfm4@yahoo.com [1 second later] $1.00 asdfklasdklfm5@yahoo.com [1 second later] etc. (queue removal of bitcoin)
gohrt 10y ago
> or shell out more of their margin for a third party fraud prevention service. It's disgusting. how is that meaningfully worse than your proposed solution, paying the CC processor for fraud-prevention?
- fpgaminer 10y ago
  Because, right off the bat, the CC processor can do a better job. They have more volume and resources, so their fraud prevention could be just as good if not better than the third party systems (note: _could_, assuming they actually put the necessary effort into it). More importantly, though, what I suggest is implementing actual security on credit cards. These fraud detection systems would be largely unnecessary if credit cards were secure. That's primarily what I suggest, and that would reduce fraud overall, thus reducing overall costs for everybody.
joshmn 10y ago
> people starting commercial websites GitHub had an issue with this IIRC.
Falcon9 10y ago
Huh. I actually used Bitcoin to buy Crashlands through the dev's Humble link since they said they get a larger cut there than through Steam, and I decided to cash out my Stellar (or whatever those morphed into recently) which worked out nicely for me. I guess they don't accept Bitcoin for some of their bundles which could then be resold on shady websites.

Retric 10y ago

The fact they removed Bitcoin may suggest it's less useful than you might think. The reasons for this are complex, but sadly it's just worse than Credit cards for most merchants. What's annoying as a customer is many companies flag legitimate transactions, wait a few days to say so, and then handle it poorly after the fact.

chrischen 10y ago
Yes there's a small but significant percentage of transactions for my company that are flagged and completely withheld because of some non-related issue of fraud. For example they lost their card, or their card had some other fraud on it, or they mistakenly reported fraud. Despite not being our fault, the CC companies withhold the cash for months....
divbit 10y ago
>sadly it's just worse than Credit cards for most merchants. Don't most merchants just use something like a 'pay with bitpay / coinbase' which results in them directly getting cash? I can't imagine how that would be much worse?
- wmf 10y ago
  It's worse if the Bitcoin payment never goes through or the customer abandons their cart due to Bitcoin's generally poor UX.
  - divbit 10y ago
    I would guess, just having it as an option in addition to credit cards, wouldn't make someone abandon their cart in the case of a poor UX (more likely abandon bitcoin)
  - voxic11 10y ago
    I really like bitcoins ux, it's really simple to take out your phone and scan a qr code. I've also made a large number of transactions and have never had one fail (some can take a while to get confirmed but every merchant I've used credits you as soon as they get the broadcast, not when it's actually confirmed.
    - swiley 10y ago
      This is my feeling exactly! Bitcoin ux (especially for online only stuff that doesn't actually need an address) is actually way nicer than typing in my credit card. This last time I tried to buy something with my credit card I accidentally mistyped the code on the back and they disabled it until I called the card issuer and gave them my SSN!

acbabis 10y ago

> They get paid regardless of whether a transaction is fraudulent or not, so they have no incentive to improve. It doesn't take away from your main point, but credit card companies do have some incentive to improve. They want the customer not to be inconvenienced by having to report fraud in the first place, and they want to avoid having those people call the support staff. That's why banks monitor your activity and automatically decline transactions that seem fishy.

aianus 10y ago
> That's why banks monitor your activity and automatically decline transactions that seem fishy. This practice is infuriating and does the opposite of encouraging me to call support less.

cooper12 10y ago

By the way the ones you are thinking about are Candy Japan: https://www.candyjapan.com/candy-japan-hit-with-credit-card-fraud https://www.candyjapan.com/candy-japan-hit-with-credit-card-....

fpgaminer 10y ago
Thank you, it was definitely the Candy Japan thread that I was thinking about. I believe this was the specific article: https://www.candyjapan.com/how-i-got-credit-card-fraud-somewhat-under-control https://www.candyjapan.com/how-i-got-credit-card-fraud-somew... (HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11431881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11431881). The associated comments have stories from other entrepreneurs bitten by this.

ThatPlayer 10y ago

>Humble Bundle stopped accepting Bitcoin a year or two ago It seems to be enabled on a individual bundle basis. While the main bundles going on right now are not accepting it, the two Book Bundles are accepting Bitcions. However it's always been the less noticeable button.

fpgaminer 10y ago
I meant in the store which added support maybe 3 or so years ago, and then dropped it a year or two ago. I used to prefer buying my games there, instead of on Steam, because of that as well as not having my games library locked to Steam. Nowadays I'll usually buy from GMG for the same reasons, though their store interface is much more confusing and conflated compared to Humble's.

mootothemax 10y ago

Bitcoin doesn't solve fraud; there's no way to prove that someone hasn't sent money to you. That is, you can prove ownership of a Bitcoin address, but you can't prove that you don't own an address.

jeff18 10y ago

Humble founder here. Bitcoin would be a great topic for another blog post, we have a really long love-hate relationship with it. Don't worry, Bitcoin support will hopefully return to our store and gaming bundles eventually. We know what we need to do to turn it back on (more or less, hook it into our SMS verification system) but we have many higher priority tasks work on. We are hiring if you know anyone: https://jobs.humblebundle.com/careers/ https://jobs.humblebundle.com/careers/ :) While bitcoin is great for preventing chargebacks, it is inherently anonymous. That is good for certain use cases, but when you are trying to enforce a strict per customer limit, it is a nightmare. We invested a lot of resources into doing what we can to combat it, but eventually we figured that we had more important things to do and had to tap out. Almost 100% of the bitcoin traffic was bad actors, and even so it was such a tiny fraction of our sales, like under 0.05%. There are a lot of diehard bitcoin users, like yourself, and I would love to support your preferred payment method again, but it is an incredible amount of work to do safely.

akavel 10y ago
Curious how do you know they were bad actors, given the anonymity? Were those some known stolen bitcoin wallets or something? Sorry if the answer is obvious, I'm not a bitcoin user.
- nathancahill 10y ago
  Typically "bad actors" in this situation are bad in regards to the company, it's not a definition of their person or the source of their money (although those often coincide).
- luchs 10y ago
  I'd guess that they track keys which appear on reseller sites. So the "bad actor" comes from later use, not from e.g. stolen Bitcoins.
- jeff18 10y ago
  Good bitcoin purchases: $22 soandso@gmail.com [30 minutes later] $50 someone@real-company.com [30 minutes later] $15 person@real-company.com etc. Bad bitcoin purchases: $1.00 asdfklasdklfm1@yahoo.com [1 second later] $1.00 asdfklasdklfm2@yahoo.com [1 second later] $1.00 asdfklasdklfm3@yahoo.com [1 second later] $1.00 asdfklasdklfm4@yahoo.com [1 second later] $1.00 asdfklasdklfm5@yahoo.com [1 second later] etc. (queue removal of bitcoin)

gohrt 10y ago

> or shell out more of their margin for a third party fraud prevention service. It's disgusting. how is that meaningfully worse than your proposed solution, paying the CC processor for fraud-prevention?

fpgaminer 10y ago
Because, right off the bat, the CC processor can do a better job. They have more volume and resources, so their fraud prevention could be just as good if not better than the third party systems (note: _could_, assuming they actually put the necessary effort into it). More importantly, though, what I suggest is implementing actual security on credit cards. These fraud detection systems would be largely unnecessary if credit cards were secure. That's primarily what I suggest, and that would reduce fraud overall, thus reducing overall costs for everybody.

joshmn 10y ago

> people starting commercial websites GitHub had an issue with this IIRC.

Falcon9 10y ago

Huh. I actually used Bitcoin to buy Crashlands through the dev's Humble link since they said they get a larger cut there than through Steam, and I decided to cash out my Stellar (or whatever those morphed into recently) which worked out nicely for me. I guess they don't accept Bitcoin for some of their bundles which could then be resold on shady websites.