[pyduan]

Oh, I completely agree -- I am well aware of this (in fact as you can guess we have a similar challenge problem with fraudulent even organizers). Which is why I precised I was talking about buyer fraud and not merchant fraud, and that one should only undertake risk if he has the capability to do so.

When you run a marketplace you are sensitive to risks both from the merchant and the buyer. The first kind would be what you are describing and you are right that Stripe Connect mitigates this. But the latter is not a threat to ignore either, especially with the increasing number of high profile credit card breaches. What happens is that fraudsters attack legitimate merchants by purchasing goods using stolen credentials and reselling them later for full profit.

I just saw your marketplace was a platform for photographers -- in this case you are right my point doesn't really apply to you, because photographs have little resell value so such platforms will indeed not be a big buyer fraud target. Hopefully though my advice will be relevant for other people. For some platforms losses due to buyer fraud are able to potentially dwarf those due to than merchant fraud, mostly because the latter tends to be much easier to detect: for a merchant, you have many data points to figure out if they're fraudulent; for a single purchase you only have one!