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Comment by coderintherye | Hacker News Reader

As a business owner dealing with credit card fraud, yes this is a real problem that the processors currently don't solve and existing solutions are hit or miss.

That said, I don't see you addressing the key issue, what is the drop-off rate of legitimate purchasers from having to jump through this hoop to get verified? If it negatively affects conversion rate too strongly then the loss outweighs the benefit. It may make more sense in high-value transactions such as with Fetch than in general ecommerce?

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Not that it's interesting for americans, but I have stopped buying anything handled by Digital River because of their great fraud detection. As in, the card that is good enough for Amazon, Apple, Blizzard etc is not good enough for them.

Careful that you don't end up in the same bucket.

> Show HN: UPUP Simple Credit Card Verification to Reduce Fraud

Not to mention their horrible management of physical goods as well. A lot of vendors like HTC have had serious issues with with product sales, returns etc.

If it's Digital River, I look for alternatives or don't buy. Glad to seem i'm not alone.

Hey there, I am another team member at UpUp. Thanks for your comment and questions! Negatively affecting conversion was a major concern for us. Our experience thus far is that there has been no drop off for legitimate customers. We’ve found that customers understand that fraud is a genuine concern for all businesses, and that verification is also for consumer protection. Additionally, we are sending the verification after the customer has checked out (typically when the order is held due to a fraud flag).

It is true that the higher the value of the transaction the more important it is. We tried to be thoughtful about balancing security vs friction.

as an aside, i get a little weary of "corporate support voice" as you exhibit here, when representing a company, including the initial "thanks!" and "restating the problem" multiple times so the customer feels (accurately) heard. you could have just said,

"We haven't seen drop offs in conversion so far, mainly because we verify after checkout, not before.", which answers the question more directly and succinctly.

no offense to you of course. it's better to get an overly verbose, but still informative, response than none. and the product looks genuinely useful to online businesses.

Fair point. We genuinely appreciate the comments and find a lot of value in the feedback.

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

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