Large e-commerce businesses have systems in place to fight online fraud, but smaller sellers with their own storefronts don’t always have the same advantages. Today, e-commerce platform Shopify is aiming to change that with its rollout of Fraud Protect for Shopify Payments. The service is initially available in the U.S.
The company had announced its plans to introduce fraud protection earlier this year at its Unite conference in Toronto, where it also debuted marketing app Shopify Ping and support for sellers managing inventory across multiple stores, among other things.
The company’s goal with anti-fraud systems is to protect online sellers against fraudulent chargebacks.
Shopify says its experience in processing millions of orders across its platform has allowed it to develop fraud detection technology that has the ability to accurately determine which orders are considered fraudulent. Its algorithms will now analyze incoming orders and prompt the merchant to decide if an order should be set as “protected.” If a fraudulent chargeback on that protected order then occurs, Shopify says it will automatically reimburse the merchant.
Before, merchants would have to manually review orders for fraud, which could be difficult – especially for smaller sellers who don’t know what to look for.
However, Shopify says the system isn’t just for the mom-and-pop merchants – it can aid bigger businesses, too, as it means lower operating costs.
Often, if merchants can’t handle fraud detection in-house, they’ll work with a partner who specializes in this technology. For example, Shopify competitor Bigcommerce integrates with Signifyd, an automated fraud detection service which merchants can opt to use.
In Shopify’s case, it’s offering the technology directly to its merchant partners – meaning it’s managing the risk itself, and eating the loss involved with fraudulent transactions, as needed. That could be a big selling point in its favor when merchants are looking for a home to set up their online storefront.
“We talk to merchants every day and one of the recurring themes we often encounter is the amount of time and effort they put into preventing fraud, and the anxiety and turmoil they put up with when dealing with a chargeback on an order they’ve already shipped,” said Andre Lyver, Head of Financial Solutions at Shopify, in a statement. “With Fraud Protect, merchants will never have to think about fraud and chargebacks. They can fulfill all of their orders with peace of mind, knowing that Shopify has them covered if the order is fraudulent,” Lyver added.
The company says it’s rolling out Fraud Protect to a select group of U.S. merchants to start, who will be notified via email as well as with a notification within Shopify. It plans to expand the service to more merchants in the near future.
Source: TechCrunch
All those hours of Mario Kart and mobile gaming could finally pay off.
Source: CNET
Epic’s gotta do something with the money it’s printing through Fortnite purchases. Acquisitions appear to be at the top of that list, starting with Kamu, the Finnish startup behind Easy Anti-Cheat.
Epic has already deployed the anti-cheat software for its wildly popular sandbox survival game — it’s been a central piece of the gaming company’s strong anti-cheating stance. It is, as CEO Tim Sweeney puts it in the press release announcing the acquisition, “key to building a vibrant Fortnite multiplayer experience that’s fair for all players.”
Fortnite isn’t the only title currently leveraging Kamu’s best-known offering. The startup says Easy Anti-Cheat is currently used by north of 80 games, installed on 100 million PCs globally. Chances are pretty decent that if you’ve played a big name title in the past year, it’s already on your computer.
Kamu will continue to provide its service to non-Epic titles for the time being. Here’s Kamu CEO Simon Allaeys from the same release, “Joining the Epic family is not only a childhood dream come true, but a huge boost for our mission to help developers create beautiful gaming experiences. Battling cheating in games was just the start; today our products also help developers stay competitive by identifying player needs as quickly as they emerge.”
The acquisition also affords Epic the opportunity to set up shop in Kamu’s native Helsinki. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Source: TechCrunch
Australian owners reported problems on Sunday that could impact people globally.
Source: CNET
The Polk Command Bar obeys your voice commands and features a wireless subwoofer. Plus: Free pizza and cheap Halloween chocolate!
Source: CNET
The new accessibility feature is designed to assist those who are hard of hearing.
Source: CNET
Google is adding an interesting new feature to its Slides presentation tool today that allows you to enable real-time automated captions to your live presentations. That’s a great feature for those who are hard of hearing or deaf, as well as those who understand better when they can read instead of listen.
The new feature comes from the same accessibility team that previously introduced improved screen readers, Braille and screen magnifier support to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. The automated captioning project started at an internal hackathon and is now rolling out to all Slides users who use U.S. English as their default language and Chrome as their browser. Over time, Google plans to enable this feature for other languages, too.
To turn this feature on, you simply press the new ‘CC’ button on the Slides navigation box and then use your computer’s microphone like always.
While this is mostly an accessibility feature, it’s also a nice way of creating a written transcript of a presentation that can then be used for other purposes after the presentation is over.
It’s worth noting that Microsoft recently introduced similar caption/transcription support for live meetings in its Teams product. Both Google, AWS and Microsoft offer their speech-to-text technology as APIs for developers, too, and a number of developers are now starting to build similar features into their applications based on these services.
Source: TechCrunch
The 9th generation of Intel’s Core series helps firm up the foundation of the PC resurgence.
Source: Wired
The Model S and Model X are, according to NHTSA’s data, right behind the Model 3.
Source: CNET
Will we see the new Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL and much more? Signs point to yes.
Source: CNET