
Bolt: An End-To-End Payments Stack with Zero Fraud - kpaddie10
http://bolt.com
======
amcnett
Fraud liability absorbed by a service provider isn't "zero fraud." It is: "you
don't get charged directly for chargebacks and other financial penalties, but
your brand is still at risk, plus you have no control over false positives."

~~~
rbres
True. But it's zero fraud from your perspective as a business.

You also have full control over false positives: \- First, we put txn's
through several layers to ensure the highest rates of order approvals. If our
algorithm is about to reject, it goes through a human review process to ensure
we're approving as much as possible. \- If we reject, you have a force approve
time window to approve transactions if you disagree with our decision. You
have final decision-making. None of our merchants use this because they end up
trusting us so much :-)

Our customers (some case studies here: [https://bolt.com/case-
studies](https://bolt.com/case-studies)) have switched from top-tier providers
and seen substantial order approval lift.

Furthermore, we're also your payment processor. Typically fraud providers and
payment processors are separate, so if fraud providers make a mistake, payment
processors will slap the merchant on the wrist with what can ultimately be
serious fines + more reserve requirements. We don't, because we're also your
processor.

~~~
amcnett
Sure, maybe you offer "zero fraud" from a chargebacks-line-item-on-the-
balance-sheet perspective. The impacts of fraud on customers' perception of a
company, and the effects those perceptions will have on the bottom line,
however, can be significant. This is not say I assume your service is
deficient in any way...the marketing is just a little snicker-inducing from
someone like me who works in the field. The only sure way to have zero fraud
is to turn off sales.

Final control over force-approving rejected transactions is a nice feature on
its face. I understand why your merchants don't use it...they'd have to soak
the expense of paying someone to monitor accepts and rejects in an attempt to
optimize sales (which is what they are paying you to do).

If a merchant does not have full visibility into and control of their anti-
fraud program (and the expertise to know what to do with it)
approval/reject/false positive rates are always going to be in the hands of
people who don't know their customers or business as well as the merchant
does. That is why larger, mature businesses invest in anti-fraud people and
technology. That's certainly a bridge too far for the typical small business,
so services like Bolt can certainly deliver a ton of value. I just advise a
merchant who thinks that just because they can't see fraud there isn't any
impact to their business that they're missing a potentially crucial part of
the picture.

~~~
rbres
It's not zero sum if you have overall greater precision. We believe we do and
have proven it across dozens of case studies.

As we publish more, we hope to let data talk. If I were in your shoes, I'd be
similarly skeptical. Most companies in the space overpromise and underdeliver.

~~~
amcnett
I would argue it is zero sum ("you've got some fraud" vs "you have no fraud")
if there is any great volume of transactions and what's being sold is
valuable, and/or marketable at a black market price below retail, and/or
offers fraudsters liquidity options. I am skeptical because an untrained
system is going to make mistakes out of the gate, even if it's trained on
oodles of transactions from other businesses. Anti-fraud isn't a one-size-
fits-all game.

~~~
rbres
We've been processing orders for a year and a half in stealth with many
clients. So we have a lot of data.

The key: everyone is focused on large data sets (breadth of data). We have
some of that, but not nearly as much as large processors. We have, however,
much more depth (sometimes 10X-20X as much). This allows us to achieve high
accuracy in short amounts of time. Often times we'll lose money in the
beginning to ensure high approval rates and, in essence, pay for learning
data.

------
jpobst
"No more games. Save real money with Bolt's simple pricing."

Followed up with "Get a Quote" rather than displaying simple pricing...

~~~
grenoire
On the pricing page:

"Without proof of a lower rate, default processing is 2.9% + $0.30 for
VISA/Mastercard/ Discover, 3.5% + $0.30 for AMEX, and $20 for any chargeback
dispute not covered."

~~~
ABCLAW
Holy shit, those are titanic interchange fees.

~~~
rbres
That's the starting processing rate for any major processor:

\- [https://www.braintreepayments.com/braintree-
pricing](https://www.braintreepayments.com/braintree-pricing)

\- [https://stripe.com/us/pricing](https://stripe.com/us/pricing)

All of our clients (typically larger businesses) provide proof of lower rates
with their existing processors and get those rates 100% matched. We do not
negotiate processing, we just match the industry.

~~~
ABCLAW
No, it isn't? Those are the prices for two providers that aren't even close to
lowest-cost providers in the space. They compete on service, not price.

I can get .9 to 2.0% (depending on the industry of my business) off the shelf
from at least 6+ sources.

And that's before any interchange rebate programs, volume discounts, or
specially negotiated interchange waivers past a certain fee per quarter.

~~~
rbres
And if you provide us a quote for that rate, we'll 100% match it. We can go as
low as anyone else, and are trying to avoid the insanity of negotiating
processing rates.

~~~
leesalminen
Good plan. This is exactly what we do. Keeps us out of the race to the bottom.

------
thruflo22
This looks like a really well positioned and differentiated entrance into the
payment provider market.

Eliminating fraudulent chargebacks addresses a serious pain point for a large
market segment. It’s an angle that allows it to answer the “why not just use
Stripe” from day one — which is a really hard question to answer with a just
launched service.

Congratulations.

~~~
rbres
Kind words are always appreciated :-)

------
brod
Since there's no demo's I had a look at a couple case studies..

[https://i.imgur.com/TBTF63h.png](https://i.imgur.com/TBTF63h.png)
[https://i.imgur.com/HP0DNNg.png](https://i.imgur.com/HP0DNNg.png)

It looks / feels like stripe but without the brand recognition, I'd hope it's
more cost effective than competitors but having to contact them for pricing
doesn't inspire confidence. I also don't see how this is any more frictionless
than competitors. On the flip side I'm a little blown away by how big the team
is and how many jobs they have listed considering it's only launched a couple
hours ago - whoever bank rolled this has a lot of faith. Congrats on the
launch either way.

~~~
rbres
Thanks brod!

Main differences:

\- Stripe = APIs to build your own payment stack.

\- Bolt = fully out of the box payments stack. Checkout that doesn't only do
payments but also shipping/tax/user-auth. Also w/ 100% fraud coverage.

Also to set the record a bit more clearly: we launched in stealth 1.5 years
ago, have been moving $100Ms, and have dozens of case studies.

Appreciate the kind words too!

~~~
SkyPuncher
Last I checked Stripe does all of this - or at least offers a very parallel
product.

------
lobo_tuerto
What countries are you supporting currently? Is Mexico in that list?

Didn't see a FAQ on the homepage, nor found the answer on a quick search, so
I'm asking here.

~~~
rbres
Good question. Definitely need to add to the site.

You can accept a credit card from anywhere in the world. We also support 50+
localized currencies.

However, we can only settle to a US/Canadian bank account. We can do an
instant transfer to an intl bank account, but some companies don't want funds
touching the US/Canada for tax reasons.

If you are ok with that on the settlement side, you're in good shape! Adding
more settlement countries and local acquiring is a top priority for the next
year.

------
StavrosK
Does anyone know how this guarantees exactly zero fraud? The page just tells
you to book a demo.

~~~
rbres
CEO of Bolt here. We'll be writing more about this in the future. In short,
our fraud detection is really really good (although not perfect). However, the
fraud that ends up making it through the pipeline is so minimal that we cover
it fully. So, for a small fee as an online business you never have to pay for
/ deal with fraudulent chargebacks again.

There are other companies that do this, but none of them also do payments.
They're kinda like rebate programs where you submit your fraud to them and
they pay it off like insurance. It's a lot of manual work, back-and-forth, and
they end up not doing a great job. So, this is a first for the industry.

Why is our fraud detection so much more accurate? We have access to the full
stack of data across checkout, payments, and the user's shopping experience,
collecting 200+ variables on every transaction. Most silo'd fraud providers
may end up getting 10-20 variables and have to make uniformed decisions,
resulting in $10's billions in false positives (good customers getting
rejected by fraud tools) in the US every year.

~~~
huhtenberg
Say, I got myself a credit card number of someone from Toronto, Canada and I
am checking out through your system using a botnet-based Toronto exit node.

Similar scenario, but this time I am an actual owner of that Canadian credit
card, but I'm using Tor (or VPN) with an exit in Romania.

Can you elaborate how your 200+ variables will be able to block first and
allow second purchase?

~~~
jebeng
I don't think this is the type of thing they can really elaborate on for
obvious reasons.

But the genuine holder is probably going to be blocked when they start
throwing flags like that, and that's probably just standard everywhere with
any type of automated fraud protection.

~~~
huhtenberg
Well, it's a pretty basic question.

In both cases the vast majority of their 200 variables will look the same. The
only differences will be in the IP and latency data and, possibly, the time
zone/locale information if a fraudster is not being careful.

Point being is that differentiating these two cases comes down to analyzing
just few bits of data, so I'm not sure why they are using "200 points" as a
selling point.

~~~
ficklepickle
I can't imagine many e-commerce checkouts work well through tor. I can barely
use google over tor without getting constant captchas.

I also wouldn't expect them to detail all their fraud prevention techniques in
a public forum.

IMO this is a really interesting idea! Since they are also the payment
processor, they have access to more data for fraud prevention, so much so that
fraud "insurance" is basically baked into the rate.

Increased efficiency through data analysis, and they are passing the savings
on to yoooouuuu!

This could be a paradigm shift. Very cool. The docs look good, AND it works in
Canada!?! Thank you! Canada is rarely a priority for US fintec companies. Even
amazon DevPay doesn't work here last i checked. Sign me up!

------
Cyberdog
rbres, first off, thank you for sticking around and answering our occasionally
snarky questions.

Second, what is meant by "Amazon-like checkout?" If that "YOUR BRAND" thing on
the front page is a screenshot/representation of the service, it appears to be
an AJAXy overlay over the normal site similar to what one of PayPal's three
dozen or so integration methods does. I wouldn't qualify that as "Amazon-like"
since it doesn't well integrate with the rest of the site in terms of look and
feel.

~~~
rbres
Absolutely, more than happy to :-)

Amazon is currently able to invest $100M's and 100s of engineers into
perfecting the checkout experience. There are actually hundreds of things you
can do to optimize checkout. Here's one study: [https://baymard.com/checkout-
usability](https://baymard.com/checkout-usability)

We do all those things. We invest the engineering resources to perfect
checkout. So that you don't have to. Even our checkout today is not perfect,
but it's way better than the one's we replace. And will continue to improve
with every deploy.

Now that you say it, Amazon-like can be a bit confusing. Really it appeals to
our vision to help every online business compete with checkout by optimizing
their payments flows.

~~~
ovao
Is it correct, though, that the checkout experience for users is a
modal/overlay? And apart from the ability to display a custom logo, how
customizeable is the design? (custom fonts, CSS, etc.)

~~~
rbres
We'll be rolling out more customization features. Big priority. They are
sparse for now.

------
emarthinsen
So........ did you get a little design inspiration from Stripe's site? Maybe
changed that background to a dark color and toned down the nuance a bit?

~~~
rbres
Our old, hidden URL site, had the slanted style for the last 2+ years before
their redesign:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qM3lAjCdSuTPAU-R9S2THrD83Zd...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qM3lAjCdSuTPAU-R9S2THrD83ZdWjxQo/view?usp=sharing)

Is pretty consistent with our style today.

------
slap_shot
Judging from Crunchbase[0], it looks like this company did a pretty
interesting pivot:

"Bolt is an online payments platform which allows users to make payments
through digital currencies such as bitcoin.

Bolt wants to give e-commerce retailers a better shot at competing with
Amazon."

Can anybody at Bolt talk about that transition? Why is there less focus on
digital currencies? Any interesting success/failure stories of eccommerce
companies using digital currencies?

Always happy to hear about successful pivots.

[0]
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bolt-5](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bolt-5)

~~~
rbres
Big fans of crypto. I co-started the Stanford Bitcoin Group back in the day.
Dropped out of school to re-engineer online payments originally inspired by
crypto.

We realized crypto's shortcomings in mainstream payments (after a valiant year
long quest) when we also had an aha-moment about how to re-engineer
traditional online payments. Thus, the Bolt you see today.

News on crypto for online payments to come :-)

------
dawhizkid
Consumer identity fraud isn't the only type of fraud problem that needs to be
solved from the payment processor POV - there's also friendly fraud (when the
customer is actually the owner of the credit card but claims fraud anyway),
merchant fraud (merchants setting up bad sites and trying to steal funds), and
collusion between merchant and customer.

It seems like Bolt is focused on solving the consumer identity fraud problem
for merchants, but this biz models will 100% make them a huge target for
fraudulent merchants to collude with customers to steal funds.

I guess I don't see how even an additional low single digit % fee will make up
for false negatives. Assuming the company keeps .5% of the standard payment
processing fee + takes an additional ~3% in fees on top of that, a $1000 false
negative would require $1000/(.035) = ~$28.5k in additional processing volume
to breakeven. This doesn't even take into the account the fact Bolt will eat
the chargeback fee passed on from the network, so merchants with high
volume/low average order value (think digital goods) will be hugely expensive
for Bolt to service given they're making pennies per transaction but
potentially paying 10x+ that per chargeback.

~~~
rbres
Hey dawhizkid - totally right.

Some comments on that in this thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216682)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216936)

We vet our merchants before onboarding and make sure to work with high-
integrity companies. We monitor orders not just for identity fraud, but for
merchant / collusion fraud.

That being said, we can certainly make mistakes. We also end up in the red
some months with some clients. The good thing is that when we make a mistake,
we pay the cost, not the merchant (which is contrary to the current state of
the industry).

We have made reasonable profit per client even with our costs, but the real
winners are our clients driving millions in newfound revenue.

~~~
dawhizkid
What's the source of truth for deciding whether it was friendly fraud or not?
Is it the chargeback reason code?

As far I know there isn't a specific reason code for "friendly fraud" (i.e.
banks are passing along chargebacks telling you as a merchant that they think
it's not actual fraud) and more often than not, especially having worked on
this problem at scale in the past, friendly fraud chargebacks just come back
with a "this is fraud" reason code.

~~~
AdieuToLogic
In my "prior life", I can say that processors provide generic reason codes in
order to mask how the determination was reached. The idea being that it helps
mitigate forms of phishing attacks.

------
IshKebab
So it's not really zero fraud, Bolt just covers the cost of fraud.

~~~
goldenkey
See the fine print too. They have tiered service. I don't know why they are
advertising their super plan on the front page as if its their whole
offering...

"If you have Bolt's fraud indemnification, Bolt will fully cover the costs of
and manage fraud-related chargebacks. But, you will still be responsible for
Merchant-related chargebacks (damaged goods, goods not received, unhappy
customers, etc.)"

"If you do not have Bolt's fraud indemnification, we will contact you via
Email to inform you of the chargeback. Your merchant account will be charged
that full order amount plus a $20 processing fee. Then, we will request the
appropriate information to help you fight the chargeback with the card
network. If you win the dispute, you will receive the full order amount
credited back."

[https://docs.bolt.com/docs/risk-fraud-and-order-
review](https://docs.bolt.com/docs/risk-fraud-and-order-review)

~~~
rbres
We recently rolled all clients to the full offering. A couple legacy clients
don't have the 100% fraud coverage, thus keeping it in the terms. But if you
sign up with Bolt from this point forward, it bakes in the 100% fraud
indemnification. Will probably even take that out of the terms soon.

~~~
tyfon
So what percent of the transaction number is flagged as fraud, and how many is
actual fraud? Losing a customer that is not fraudulent due to aggressive
filtering is almost as bad as having a fraudulent one.

~~~
rbres
Good question. Addressed that here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216455)

Our top focus is order approval lift. Zero fraud is cool and all (and makes
for a good posting title) but is really just an assurance that you should be
comfortable as we start to approve way more orders.

------
w0rd-driven
I have intermittent issues scrolling the fullstack job post
([https://bolt.com/jobs/fullstack-engineer](https://bolt.com/jobs/fullstack-
engineer)) in Chrome for iOS. Requesting the desktop site seemed to fix it. I
was also able to get it working by randomly clicking the other postings and
coming back. If I wasn't eating lunch I'd try to debug it better but it's
easily possible this is only affecting my phone.

~~~
rbres
Looking into this thanks.

------
falcolas
Am I reading the "acceptable user policy"[0] correctly in noting that any of
the adult entertainment industries and those currently operating in the
unknown at Patreon (Stripe), would likely not be welcome at Bolt either?

[0] [https://bolt.com/acceptable-use](https://bolt.com/acceptable-use)

~~~
rbres
Nothing in adult for now. I'm not sure what "those currently operating in the
unknown" means.

Hoping to expand to more business categories as we grow.

------
mcntsh
Our team did a pretty significant integration with Bolt last year.

Their platform is solid and was straight forward to integrate with. Their
development team was also extremely helpful and helped us through the process
at every step we needed them. They really did go above and beyond for us.

------
Redoubts
Are there any industries this product wont be working with (for example, adult
video sites)?

~~~
rbres
Here's a list: [https://bolt.com/acceptable-use](https://bolt.com/acceptable-
use)

We hope to shorten the list as time goes on.

------
mholt
Was your domain recovered from a phishing site? It's blocked at my university.

~~~
rbres
Bolt.com has a huge history, including video-sharing that may have gotten it
on those types of lists several years back.

We've had it for close to 3 years though.

~~~
mholt
Thanks. I'm willing to bet my school's IT dept hasn't updated any of their
network software in like 5 years, so that's not surprising. It's specifically
tagged as phishing.

Side-note: The link on HN goes to plain HTTP, hopefully you have HTTPS all set
up!

~~~
rbres
Makes sense.

And yea thanks, the site auto-redirects to HTTPS.

------
RageOn
I'm so excited to see Bolt redefine the payment space! If they can
successfully defeat fraud, make it easier for customers to pay, AND integrate
other payment methods, etc. - then this will be a BIG win!

------
leesalminen
I confused this for CardConnect’s Bolt P2PE product [0], which is also in the
payments space.

[https://cardconnect.com/bolt](https://cardconnect.com/bolt)

------
jccooper
Looks nice, but "get a quote" == "close tab".

~~~
rbres
On the pricing page? What exactly happens when you click it?

~~~
jccooper
I don't mean technically. I mean that's my behavior. If there were at least a
"starts at" I would know whether it's a complete waste of time. When there's
not, I assume it is.

------
rbres
Here's why we exist: [https://bolt.com/case-studies](https://bolt.com/case-
studies)

------
jrochkind1
So my question would be how many legitimate customers do they reject as fraud
(false positives) in order to eliminate false negatives? :)

~~~
rbres
It's pretty insane.

Empirically, you'd rather let several fraudsters through in order to not trap
a good customer (because of their customer lifetime value, brand value, etc).

However, the industry does the opposite. They'll reject 3 good customers to
catch 1 fraudster. It's really bad.

Every switch to Bolt has seen a 1%-20% lift in order approval rates (while
guaranteeing zero fraud) because of our unique data engine and data
visibility. Huge reason why companies are switching to Bolt.

~~~
jrochkind1
So you're saying despite having better fraud detection, your false positive
rates (orders that would have been non-fraudulent but rejected anyway) are
_also_ lower than the competition?

This is definitely something you might want to put in your marketting, but
also back up in some way.

As a general rule, I'm going to assume any reduction in false negatives has
some increase in false positives. If the general rule is not true in your
case, I'm going to need to be convinced. :)

~~~
rbres
Here are some case studies to prove it: [https://bolt.com/case-
studies](https://bolt.com/case-studies)

Many of our clients switched from top-tier fraud detection providers and saw
significant lift in order approvals with Bolt.

More case studies on the way.

------
throwawaylalala
Wow, wish I could comment on my experience with them, but I think there was a
NDA (and I dont have the contract at my fingertips).

------
WTFWORLD
Bolt using Vantiv for their Payment Processing. They are part of Vantiv Payfac
Program. I found it from my Friend.

------
thefounder
How could they provide no fraudulent charge back? It's up to the bank and Visa
not to the payment processor

~~~
rbres
We pay the cost on behalf of the merchant.

------
maslam
Spelling error in video is a big red flag for me. "Expidited" should be
"expedited".

------
Advaith
I've been following bolt since the past few years, congratulations on the
official launch!

~~~
rbres
Many thanks!!

------
cjbarber
Excited to see this launch. The Zero Fraud guarantee is particularly
excellent!

------
hdubugras
A friend of mine uses them and he says they increased his revenue by 40%!

------
kodablah
Why do companies choose not to be 100% transparent? Any time I have to contact
a company to see more or a demo or, even worse, see pricing, I close the page
and make a mental note to never work with them in any capacity. I feel this
type of boycotting is the only way to change the practice.

I mean, you even hide your docs behind a password? How terrible. What are you
keeping so secret? Does this translate to your other business practices?
Mental note made.

~~~
rbres
Just launched a couple hours ago. Thanks for the find, and I agree fully with
the sentiment.

Docs are now fully public: [https://docs.bolt.com/](https://docs.bolt.com/)

Pricing varies depending on volume, risk, and a number of different factors
given the complexity of payments (and that we're taking on full liability).
But after a short call we provide a very simple flat rate with no BS. As much
as we'd like to do one price, given the nature of our product, it's just not
viable at this time.

~~~
sprite
If you can't provide specific pricing maybe give a few sample pricings with
different scenarios so people can at least ballpark it before requesting a
quote?

~~~
rbres
Sure.

Our fee ranges anywhere from a fraction of a percent to a couple percentage
points. Companies selling $100k diamond jewelry (of which we have several) vs
companies selling $100 bikes have different levels of risk.

Most importantly, we typically charge 1/10 the revenue we generate for our
clients: [https://bolt.com/case-studies](https://bolt.com/case-studies).
Everyone who's signed up is 10X ROI positive. For a small single digit percent
they're making double digit percent more money.

On top of the Bolt Fee, we match processing, and that's about it.

~~~
tlb
Does that mean you charge 0.10 * (new_revenue - revenue_before_bolt) in
addition to the fees? For a company that keeps growing, that would
asymptotically approach 10%.

~~~
rbres
We cap it at low absolute single digit percentages. Business capture way more
upside than we do.

------
mamcx
Available outside US? Where?

~~~
rbres
You can accept credit cards anywhere in the world, in 50+ different
currencies.

However, for now, settlement only to a US or Canadian bank account. We can do
an instant transfer from a US/Canadian bank to an intlt account, but if you
want to avoid US taxes and settle directly to an international bank, we do not
support that. Our team is hard at work to support it in the next year.

