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The problem is that the payment processor has no capacity to really investigate fraud, so their main choice is between defaulting to enabling seller fraud or buyer fraud. This means it makes sense to use different payment processors with different defaults for different payment types, because some payment types have disproportionately more buyer fraud than seller fraud.

The problem for Patreon is that they're trying to provide something useful -- a service for transactions which are more likely to be dominated by buyer fraud -- but are stuck building it on top of credit card infrastructure that the law requires to default to defending against seller fraud. Then they get stuck in the middle, because buyers can still commit fraud by purchasing thousands of dollars worth of material and then disputing the charge with their credit card company after they already have it.

What's needed is a version of credit cards that themselves do what Patreon is trying to do (no chargebacks) with relatively low monthly charge limits (limiting the buyer's exposure to card theft risk), so that this use case can be met with a system that isn't a garbage fire.



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