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This is the experience you get with traditional merchant accounts (what every business had before 3rd-party processors like Square and PayPal, and most large an
by dangrossman 13y ago
This is the experience you get with traditional merchant accounts (what every business had before 3rd-party processors like Square and PayPal, and most large and B&M businesses still use). You get chargebacks, you lose the money immediately, you often lose the disputes even if you shipped items, and if your CB rate is over 1% of your monthly volume for a few months, your account gets closed. Period. The only way to stay in business if you're a target for fraud is to become very good at screening orders, whether it's through systems or manual review, because nobody else is going to protect you.
This is the value of PayPal's Seller Protection Program, which people probably undervalue since they've never dealt with a real merchant account. If you sell with PayPal, and ship a tangible to the address on the buyer's PayPal account, and have proof of shipment, you have 100% liability protection. Someone charges back the payment, and it's PayPal's problem, not yours; even if they lose, you don't lose your money.
- ROFISH 13y agoPaypal's Seller Protection only works if the use has a Paypal account, and has a confirmed address. It doesn't work if you use Paypal Pro or the Paypal REST API to accept straight credit cards without an account.
- 300bps 13y agoI agree. The headline should have been, "Screwed by Thieves that used Fraudulent Credit Cards". It perhaps should have had a subtitle of, "My Education on Implementing Adequate Anti-Fraud Measures at my Company." I'm not sure I understand why he thinks Square screwed him.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoWell, he alleges that Square cancelled his account without notice, and describes how that affected his business because he had made efforts to drive customers to use the Square payment method. He also admits that he should have developed a more robust solution, but rationalizes that he stayed with Square due to good prior experience. Even if Square is perfectly in the right based on their user agreements they may be throwing good money away, and chasing off good customers. It's not hard to understand why a retail business owner would appreciate a little notice before an account cancellation.