[billclerico]

Bill from WePay here - thanks for asking.

The value proposition of WePay Clear isn't entirely captured in TechCrunch's choice of a headline, though they certainly have sensationalized it by drawing a Stripe comparison.

Yes, WePay Clear takes on fraud responsibility & shields the platform. (as does Stripe Connect)

However, WePay Clear does this in a whitelabel fashion, so that sellers on platforms do not need to create a WePay account.

In other words, it's not just fraud protection or whitelabel - it's whitelabel payments AND fraud protection.

Our launch partner in this is Freshbooks. Freshbooks currently offers several payment gateways/merchant accounts as an option to sellers like Authorize.net and Stripe. But their new primary "Freshbooks Payments" offering is built on WePay Clear. You can check out the experience here: http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/2014/10/01/introducing-paymen...

[gotothrowaway]

Thanks Bill.

Is there anything about the fraud protection that's particularly noteworthy?

I thought Stripe Marketplaces addresses this use case, but perhaps the liability still falls on me (the developer) with Marketplaces?

[billclerico]

Our VP of Risk, John Canfield, was a senior leader on eBay's Trust & Safety team for almost a decade. He did a great talk on Veda, our risk engine, at QCon - check it out here: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/big-data-payment-risk-man...

Re: Stripe Marketplaces, yes - that's my understanding based on my conversations with our customers.

[matthewarkin]

Stripe Marketplaces isn't actually a product, there are two products, Stripe Connect and then the Trasnfers API. In the Stripe Connect set up every vendor in the marketplace has their own Stripe account and then each vendor is responsible for things like chargebacks, disputes, etc. The marketplace is just authorized to initiate API calls on behalf of the vendor (so the marketplace can handle the disputes and refunds, but the money comes from the vendor).

With the Transfers API, the marketplace just ACHs funds from their Stripe account to the vendor's bank account, so the Marketplace has to handle all the liability.

[thedangler]

"so that sellers on platforms do not need to create a WePay account" So then how does the seller get the money? Confused.

[scottefein12]

The platform creates one on their behalf, it's transparent to them.