Use digital cash- no chargebacks, no middlemen.
The best option today if you don't want chargebacks is adopting Bitcoin for payments (like how Reddit did for Reddit Gold with Coinbase).
http://blog.coinbase.com/post/40131065845/hosted-payment-pag...
The best option today if you don't want chargebacks is adopting Bitcoin for payments (like how Reddit did for Reddit Gold with Coinbase).
http://blog.coinbase.com/post/40131065845/hosted-payment-pag...
My personal views are my own and NOT Balanced on this topic. I agree, I think bitcoin is a great solution -- for some things. More and more I feel that it's the right strategy going forward.
We actually have an open github issue to support it: https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues/204. You should take a look and read the comments there -- they're very interesting.
Something I'm trying to figure out though is something along the lines of this comment: https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues/204#issuecom.... How can we tackle on risk in a reasonable way?
Jon Matonis, CEO of Hushmail, wrote a pretty interesting article on Bitcoin for Forbes, where he mentions Balanced: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/11/26/payments-s... but he just didn't answer or ask the _right_ questions.
Another reason - there just hasn't been enough demand for it.
As this fraction increases, fraud is reduced further and further.
It would be interesting to have a payment platform that evaluates the trustworthiness of a customer right before payment (based on factors such as customer history, shipping address matching the billing address...), and force those deemed "risky" to pay in Bitcoins. It could even handle CC authorization failures: "credit card declined? No problem, pay in Bitcoins instead."
You not going to have a person not defraud you because you provided the option of Bitcoins. If you have transaction that you deem risky, require a bank transfer, that will make it easier for the criminals to go commit fraud somewhere else.
I doubt it. Most fraudsters are trying to convert someone else's credit into cash by buying goods they can sell. If you have a bitcoin, you pretty much already have cash - just use one of the exchanges.
I can't see how.
As a non-fraudster, I would use any available payment method, including bitcoins.
As a fraudster, I would never use bitcoins.
In theory, a bitcoin exchange should have a near-perfect defense against chargebacks for faulty or missing products or similar, by showing via the public block chain that they delivered the purchased product as requested. However, there's no defense against chargebacks claiming that the cardholder didn't make the purchase (stolen card number, etc).
Bank wire transfers, though, are unable to be reversed. Its a pity that most US banks charge for them.
1) They have to explain to the credit card chargeback authority what a bitcoin is and why the entry in the block chain means they actually sent the coins.
2) Nothing to stop the Bitcoin buyer from just saying "I didn't do it" (Which is 'friendly fraud' in the article).
From my experience, reversing a chargeback is only possible in a minimum of cases when sending physical items, and even harder for digital goods that you can't just send again (Bitcoins vs an Ebook).
Other than a few big names I have a lot less than absolute trust in online vendors, so I find the chargeback facility very reassuring