no worries, programmed customer support is a little niggle of mine†, so i'm a little sensitive to it. =)
it can trigger defensiveness, disdain, or even mischievous inquest rather than the desired complicity. being straightforward is a simpler and safer strategy.
† such programming is indicative of coercive business processes, which typically extends to communication with customers to avoid liability due to that coerciveness
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Chargeback protection is nice in that you can somewhat set it and forget it. But, there are a few drawbacks including having a tax on every purchase. (0.4% - 1.0% of gross revenue adds up!) Chargeback protection also acts as insurance, and the insurance issuer can decline to offer chargeback protection for suspicious transactions, which leaves you on the hook for the risk with that transaction if you accept it.
Where UpUp slots in is for those transactions in the gray zone. Declining a customer's purchase "because our payment processor said you are risky" isn't the best look.
Also, in many cases, such as rental, the value of the transaction is much smaller than the amount of the risk from the transaction.
Hope that helps provides some context on the different use cases as we see them.
I don't believe we necessarily complete with MaxMind. MaxMind helps determine transactions that may be fraudulent. I've used the product in the past and found it helpful. Sift is another good option.
UpUp provides you with method to provide your customers that lets them prove they are not fraudulent. In turns, this lets you feel correct about denying a transaction or sleep better at night when you have approved a transaction that is questionable.
Our recommendation is that most businesses should be prepared to offer a few options for payment or identity verification. In your case, your family member may have been better suited doing something like a drivers license verification or a knowledge-based identification.
You're welcome. I been toying around with doing a virtual world, but still far away from doing the economy related stuff. One of my concerns is some teenager might steal their parents credit card and rack up charges, maybe multiple ones. and from my understanding chargebacks are about 30 bucks each. Then I think offering game tokens or gift cards, criminals buy a bunch of gift cards to resell with stolen cards. Then worried about trolls, I was thinking of the idea of charging people to signup but some friends thought that'd hinder growth... Tricky stuff to think about, but can't monetize it yet without the other stuff working yet anyways. Even heard of criminals using charities donation forms to try and verify cards too, pretty shameful since in a way they are stealing from the children or people with cancer the charity is trying to help out since other funds would have to help cover the chargebacks.
Hey! Thanks for the comment and support. Glad to provide any motivation. Building is part of the fun :-) Best of luck with your project, and reach out if we can be of any help.
We're working on the API, but decided to launch before it was ready for public consumption. Would be great to learn about your use case and give you access. Could you reach out contact @ upupapp.io?
Thanks for your comment/question. 3D secure is helpful and would be redundant. We found that 3D secure support is a bit nebulous across platforms and also dependent upon the implementation. (Javascript vs API vs your ecommerce platform.)
UpUp also lets ecommerce teams verify customers without requiring their engineering teams to immediately implement 3D secure.
We do expect we'll end up using 3D secure as part of our flow in the future.
Thanks for the question! I'm also on the team that worked on UpUp. Yes, we built the product with the idea of integrating with multiple platforms and processors. We also plan to launch an API soon to enable verifications to be triggered by other services.
Is there a specific platform you are using that you'd like to see us add next?
Not in particular, but the biggest processors are obviously Stripe (which you already have), Square, PayPal Payments Pro or Payflow Pro, Cybersource/Authorize.net. For ecommerce platforms, Shopify, Bigcommerce and 3dCart are the heavyweights.
Thank you :-) That's helpful feedback, and we genuinely appreciate your support. Feel free to reach out to us contact @ upupapp.io if you'd like to chat more. Would be great to hear more about your experience in this area.
Thank you for sharing this. The insights and details you share here will help many future founders.
I'm sorry things didn't end up in the exact way your team may have hoped. I hope you can take pride in everything you accomplished. I wish you all the best!
Fetch | Full Stack Engineer | Atlanta | Onsite | Full-time
Fetch is a YC and VC-backed transportation startup that provides an automated, self-service marketplace for renting trucks. We recently launched in several new cities and are seeking to add another engineer to our team.
We're hiring a full-stack developer to help us launch new version of our web app, a new native mobile app and integrations with our vehicle hardware. (+ helping us define a software development process.)
Some of the tools we use include:
Python
AngularJS
PostgreSQL
C++
Bootstrap
GIT
This is a great opportunity for someone that wants to be involved in an early-stage company and also get experience with software and hardware.
This seems like the most thoughtful response. Salary cuts and freezes, while painful and unfortunate, do happen.
If you're financially stable, enjoying your time and continuing to learn, stick around. It may be an informative experience for the future. Plus, you may have opportunities to take on new projects if other employees leave.
In the background, it can't hurt to sharpen your resume and start talking to friends about their companies in the event that you do have to depart SoundCloud.
