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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
After reading Only the Paranoid Survive and High Output Management, I have a deep respect for Andy Grove and the work he did to make Intel an enduring company. He'll be missed.
As others have mentioned, dedicated IPs are anything but a panacea for deliverability. There is an incredible amount of care and planning that must be taken when using a dedicated IP. Shared IPs that are well managed (ie no spammers) are often better for low-volume senders because they don't require warm-ups, constant deliverability monitoring, etc.
Good feedback. Thanks! Agreed on the pricing model. We'd prefer to not have a bad pricing model be a reason you need to host yourself. Perhaps, it means some type of elastic pricing where you have a base plan and pay per additional attendee?
I believe the problem with WebEx and others is they have to know how many attendees you expect upfront so that they can put you on the right server. I think we can solve that.
Embedding on your events page is a great idea! We've talked about that. We've heard the reminder emails are notorious for not showing up in the inbox.