Quote from: lyno on April 17, 2013, 12:03:52 AM

Quote from: Epicurus on April 16, 2013, 09:21:22 PM

you have protection against shady merchants by initiating chargebacks.

The opposite is true also. As a former affiliate I experienced things like 3 month chargebacks (and even heard of 5 month charged back) or that customers charging back immediately after they got refunded. As far as I know the CC companies allow only a 1.5% chargeback rate or hefty fines apply. Not to mention that the CC system is insecure by design and it is the merchant who has to take the risk.

I hear you. I've got one company that I own that's been accepting credit cards since 1997, and for virtual stuff rather than physical stuff, so there is no protection against chargebacks like you have with point-of-sale purchases or sign-on-delivery. I almost got blacklisted in 2001 after our gateway screwed up and submitted 16 transactions for every one it was supposed to. Nothing makes me angrier than getting a chargeback 6 months later (6 months is generally the limit) when I am positive the person doing the chargeback authorized the transactions and just wants a refund. It sucks, and we're just out the money when that happens. That's just part of the cost of doing business, along with fraud prevention generally.

But here's the thing: Of course it's the merchant that takes the risk. The merchant needs the money of those customers a lot more than the customers needs that merchant. I run an online games business, for instance, and if I don't make it easy and safe for a customer to spend money, many of them won't. There are plenty of other online games for them to go play. They don't need me as much as I need them. There's almost no business in the world that isn't in that position barring true monopolies or in certain edge cases like so-called 'food deserts' where there's only a single small food store serving a poor area.