[yholio]

From a business strategy perspective, it makes a lot of sense not to eat the credit card risk, otherwise you commit yourself to a very bad position: scammers will signup on your platform as both buyers and sellers and effectively launder stolen credit cards.

From a labor rights perspective, they are clearly not a small business that can take contractual risk, they are a de facto employee dependent on the revenue the Upwork platform generates. Withholding payment for work done is a major abuse.

Each side has their truth and I cannot see how it can be resolved in the general case without regulatory intervention in the area of platform labor.

[freemint]

> From a business strategy perspective, it makes a lot of sense not to eat the credit card risk, otherwise you commit yourself to a very bad position

Well yeah but if they don't they put their contractors in an even worse position because it's unlikely they can each build their own fraud detection infrastructure.