To be most accurate, those aren't the payment processing fees either. They are the blended rate, which include interchange, the payment processor's cut, the assessment fee, etc.
Most people don't know what a blended rate even means, though, so why bother using that terminology when I'm trying to save some smallco engineers on HN a few points on their startup's margin?
Feel free to replace my use of interchange with 'blended rate' if that helps.
Fraud liability absorbed by a service provider isn't "zero fraud." It is: "you don't get charged directly for chargebacks and other financial penalties, but your brand is still at risk, plus you have no control over false positives."
True. But it's zero fraud from your perspective as a business.
You also have full control over false positives:
- First, we put txn's through several layers to ensure the highest rates of order approvals. If our algorithm is about to reject, it goes through a human review process to ensure we're approving as much as possible.
- If we reject, you have a force approve time window to approve transactions if you disagree with our decision. You have final decision-making. None of our merchants use this because they end up trusting us so much :-)
Our customers (some case studies here: https://bolt.com/case-studies) have switched from top-tier providers and seen substantial order approval lift.
Furthermore, we're also your payment processor. Typically fraud providers and payment processors are separate, so if fraud providers make a mistake, payment processors will slap the merchant on the wrist with what can ultimately be serious fines + more reserve requirements. We don't, because we're also your processor.
Sure, maybe you offer "zero fraud" from a chargebacks-line-item-on-the-balance-sheet perspective. The impacts of fraud on customers' perception of a company, and the effects those perceptions will have on the bottom line, however, can be significant. This is not say I assume your service is deficient in any way...the marketing is just a little snicker-inducing from someone like me who works in the field. The only sure way to have zero fraud is to turn off sales.
Final control over force-approving rejected transactions is a nice feature on its face. I understand why your merchants don't use it...they'd have to soak the expense of paying someone to monitor accepts and rejects in an attempt to optimize sales (which is what they are paying you to do).
If a merchant does not have full visibility into and control of their anti-fraud program (and the expertise to know what to do with it) approval/reject/false positive rates are always going to be in the hands of people who don't know their customers or business as well as the merchant does. That is why larger, mature businesses invest in anti-fraud people and technology. That's certainly a bridge too far for the typical small business, so services like Bolt can certainly deliver a ton of value. I just advise a merchant who thinks that just because they can't see fraud there isn't any impact to their business that they're missing a potentially crucial part of the picture.
It's not zero sum if you have overall greater precision. We believe we do and have proven it across dozens of case studies.
As we publish more, we hope to let data talk. If I were in your shoes, I'd be similarly skeptical. Most companies in the space overpromise and underdeliver.
I would argue it is zero sum ("you've got some fraud" vs "you have no fraud") if there is any great volume of transactions and what's being sold is valuable, and/or marketable at a black market price below retail, and/or offers fraudsters liquidity options. I am skeptical because an untrained system is going to make mistakes out of the gate, even if it's trained on oodles of transactions from other businesses. Anti-fraud isn't a one-size-fits-all game.
We've been processing orders for a year and a half in stealth with many clients. So we have a lot of data.
The key: everyone is focused on large data sets (breadth of data). We have some of that, but not nearly as much as large processors. We have, however, much more depth (sometimes 10X-20X as much). This allows us to achieve high accuracy in short amounts of time. Often times we'll lose money in the beginning to ensure high approval rates and, in essence, pay for learning data.
I think that's a bit of a reach. That malaise may have contributed to certain aspects of the conglomeration of groups/sounds that came to be called grunge, but let's not forget the vigorous marketing efforts around it at the time. Economically-speaking, the decline of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest may have as had as much or more to do with music-impacting unhappiness.
You're right; the shift away from old-growth timber logging, along with fisheries decline/regulation, all had significant impact as well. We were talking about major employers causing city-wide economic trouble, though. Not sure Weyerhaeuser was as significant an employer in Seattle.
Weyerhauser's HQ was a large property along I-5 between Auburn and Fife. Not really a Seattle phenomenon, especially the logging which happened in the peripheral counties. So i'll place a vote for the Boeing effect gestating the grunge era. It was poor, and it was grungy.
Interestingly, Weyerhauser has sold the old HQ and relocated to a downtown Seattle high rise.
I cook ~80% of my meals. Generally speaking I try to eat out infrequently, and when I do I seek out items I would not typically cook for myself (or lack the expertise and equipment to attempt).
1. I love cooking, especially for other people. It's also far less expensive for me to cook delicious, healthful food than it is to eat out constantly, even with time spent taken into consideration. Throw in a partner with special dietary needs and there is further reinforcement.
2. I do if I have a special event on the horizon (holiday, dinner party, that kind of thing) or I am going to pack food for travel. Otherwise I just make a mental plan based on what I have and what is available/in season.
3. I grill a lot of spice-rubbed meats, bake muffins and scones using almond and coconut flours, bake fish, roast vegetables, make slow cooker soups, and the list goes on. My girlfriend and I also make homemade yogurt using one of these (http://www.amazon.com/Yogourmet-104-Electric-Yogurt-Maker/dp...), cooking the yogurt for ~36 hours until it has a custard-like consistency. Delicious.
4. My girlfriend has to follow the FODMAP diet (basically eliminating all fermentable substances...of which there are so many) due to a medical condition. She used to follow something slightly less restrictive called the specific carbohydrate diet, and with selective exceptions (I don't have any medical restrictions) I still do. Think little to no processed foods, no refined sugars, no grains of any kind, no starchy vegetables - lots of greens and meat and cheese and homemade yogurt. I throw in rice and some other non-SCD carbohydrates (rice, etc.) so that I can participate in endurance sports.
5. I plan to make leftovers. I try to think of meals in three stages: their original composition, how they'll taste as leftovers, and how they could become an ingredient in a quick third dish (like an omelette).
Most countries in the Middle East have mandatory military service. If they get invaded by a foreign force, they can raise local militias very quickly from people who not only already own guns, but also have received significant training in their usage and can get organized quickly due to the time they spent in military.
In contrast, most Americans don't know how to hold a gun, much less fire one. And even those who are serious about guns have not actually been part of any military, or even a militia. Frankly, they would get mowed down by any sort of organized force in very quick order.
There are 11.6 million veterans below the age of 65, which is a fair amount of trained soldiers, though that doesn't say anything about sides.
Also, merely counting guns per capita tells you very little as some people have lots of guns. You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64.
This translates to ~ 80 million people of military age with access to firearms, and assuming that most veterans are in the households that have guns, up to an eighth of them trained to a high standard.
Now this, if it rose up and could be commanded as a single force, would be the largest military in the world, in terms of forces. However the only circumstance that I could see that even partially happening would be in response to an external military invasion.
What is far more likely a scenario if the US becomes unstable is a complicated civil war started by a state attempting to secede, the federal government reacting, then more states getting involved. In that case you never get one big force, just lots of smaller state forces with the military not wanting to get involved at all, but at most trying to act in a peacekeeping role and making sure that the big guns stay locked up.
One thing to keep an eye out for, as I have said elsewhere, is that the military equipment given out is partly going to pro-secessionists in local and state police forces and it may be worth considering that the police in Missouri may not be merely incompetent in the way they are currently reacting to events.
I am from the UK, and the fact that lines like, "You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64" are bandied round so readily is completely terrifying.
Have you thought about why you have this irrational fear or does the fact that it's commonly shared among your society lead you to believe its not irrational?
