Melissa O’Malley, Director Global Merchant & Cross-Border Trade Initiatives, PayPal

Please see this post on our new PayPal Stories site.

 

As Father’s Day approaches, shoppers everywhere are in the midst of finding the perfect way to say thanks to dad. And with the ability to score amazing deals on unique products with the click of a mouse, or a touch on your tablet, it’s easier than ever to “think beyond the tie.”

 

For the rock star dad, The Music Zoo offers an impressive array of both new and pre-owned guitars, basses, and other music equipment. The NY-based business was founded by seasoned guitar player Tommy Colletti in 1994 as a brick-and-mortar operation. As his business grew, Colletti decided to start selling his wares online. His sales skyrocketed once he started to accept PayPal– and The Music Zoo became one of the country’s top destinations for guitar enthusiasts. Today, PayPal processes 80 percent of the store’s sales, either online for credit card and PayPal transactions, or through the PayPal Virtual Terminal for phone orders.

 

Colletti loves how PayPal gives his business quick access to funds stating: “With our old processor, the money would reach our bank account 3 to 5 days later. With PayPal, we charge the customer and we almost can usually see the money the next morning. That quick access to our cash has been a huge help.” In addition to employing PayPal for payments processing, The Music Zoo offers PayPal Credit. Shoppers can finance purchases of $99 or more through the service, without payments or interest if the balance is paid in full within six months.*

 

Today, The Music Zoo is a $10 million, 20-employee small business specializing in professional, customized guitars. But Colletti isn’t resting on his laurels. He’s looking forward to growing the store’s mobile sales capabilities and building a new site with PayPal business partner, Shopify. Through it all, The Music Zoo remains an exclusive destination for lovers of high-end and custom guitars – and PayPal is a cornerstone of its online sales. Looking back, Colletti says, “The confidence consumers have in PayPal affects our business in every way. PayPal has been, hands down, the best choice for us. It’s just a great business relationship.”

 

*PayPal Credit (formerly Bill Me Later®) is subject to consumer credit approval, as determined by the lender, Comenity Capital Bank. Applicable for qualifying purchases of $99 or more if paid in full within 6 months. Customers check out with PayPal and use PayPal Credit.

 

 

 

 

Original author: PayPal-Forward

Hui Wang, Sr. Director, Global Risk Sciences, PayPal

Please see this post on our new PayPal Stories site.

 

Helping to protect our customers is one of our top priorities. And in rare instances, when fraud occurs, we have an industry leading team of fraud management experts in place. To help protect against fraudulent transactions, we have Purchase and Seller protections for eligible purchases.

 

Our loss rate, our expenses due to fraudulent activity compared to our revenue as a whole, is one of the lowest in the industry, at 0.32% or approximately one third of 1%. A key reason why we’ve been so successful is because of the holistic approach we take when it comes to security and fraud prevention. At the core of these efforts is our Enterprise Fraud Management System (EFM).

 

In 2009, our global risk management organization embarked on a journey to build a complete Enterprise Fraud Management System in-house. Now complete, this EFM system allows us to work with vast amounts of rich data to help keep fraud at some of the lowest levels and our customers transactions secure.

 

A lot went into building the best EFM system to do so. There were some key considerations we kept top-of-mind to keep our customers secure, and based on our experiences, we wanted to share some key learnings.

 

Keep it Simple. With isolation comes innovation. Isolate problems and make sure to solve one at a time. When building our systems, we made sure to not get caught up focusing on the perfect final product. We started with one area, and made it work end-to-end before working on other challenges. Building systems one stack at a time, allows you to easily identify problems, and nip them in the bud.

 

Test and Learn. At PayPal, we have to make our risk decisions in milliseconds. To create a system that accurate, it takes a lot of testing and learning. We are constantly layering on enormous amounts of data, to create the best system. We detect suspicious behavior using thousands of characteristics, but are still able to correlate whole events in seconds, as compared to hours for the rest of industry.

 

Strike a Balance. The best enterprise fraud management solution balances analytical and engineering knowledge. Cross-functional teams are imperative. Our teams are comprised of data scientists, engineers, project managers and business minds. When building your system, you cannot sacrifice systems or data scientists. It takes everyone to find the best solution.

 

Don’t Underestimate Intelligence. PayPal can detect suspicious behavior using thousands of characteristics – device type, dollar amount and much more. But we don’t just rely on the data – we have developed our own unique ways of using a human detective-like approach to help identify even the most hidden nuances. Combining advanced machine learning and data mining with a human oversight and approach, will be more successful than just trying to tackle the data alone.

 

Never Stay Still. It is important to keep an open mind for new generations. Always be listening, and be prepared for the next challenge. We like to call it futureproofing. PayPal has a team dedicated to developing innovative risk techniques for technologies that are three to five years from becoming mainstream – for example we developed algorithms for mobile approximately five years ago, and are now better positioned to help protect consumers from fraud attempts on mobile platforms.

 

At PayPal, we believe every transaction tells a story – which is unique from the way most companies evaluate transactions. These stories guide us on our journey to the next generation of enterprise fraud management. We have already started looking ahead, and make it a best practice to stay one step ahead – instead of constantly trying to catch up.

 

With our systems, we are able to grow and evolve, changing risk rules and models to better protect our customers now and in the future.

Original author: PayPal-Forward

John Lunn, Senior Global Director, Braintree and PayPal Developer and Startup Relations

Please see this post on our new PayPal Stories site.

 

 

This past weekend, we hosted our seventh BattleHack of 2015, and for the first time, in Tokyo. We kicked off with a keynote address by Yukihiro Matsumoto, founder of the Ruby programming language, to inspire our hackers with his story of Ruby’s development from its early days to the present.

 

With more than 40 teams battling at Osaki Bright Core Hall, I was very impressed by the sheer talent of the developers. To keep up their energy, we treated our participants to ramen burgers, Guzman y Gomez burritos, live chef prepared sushi and sashimi, craft beers and the ultimate Japanese summer treat – kakigori, shaved ice with syrup, mochi and adzuki beans.

 

In the end, we crowned Team Talk’n’Pick – Daniel Perez, Michi Kanda, Hironori Inagaki and Yuya Soneoka – the winners who all took home a “battle axe” trophy and a paid-trip to PayPal headquarters this November to compete in the BattleHack World Finals for USD$100,000 and the title of, “Ultimate Hacker for Good.”

 

Ken Nishimura, Editor of TechCrunch Japan; Akira Matsuda, Founder of Asakusa.rb; Hiro Maeda, Angel Investor of BEENOS and I had a hard time selecting a winner, but Team Talk’n’Pick’s video editing system proved to have the best integration. By tracking audio input fluctuations and extracting the most important segments in a video, the app automatically selects the best parts of a video and combines the preferred clips into a highlight reel. And, in order to accept payments, the team integrated Braintree’s v.zero SDK.

 

Team Talk’n’Pick will go on to represent Japan at the BattleHack World Finals this November as they compete against 13 other teams from around the world for the grand prize. I’m excited to see what they will build at the World Finals, but first, on to find their competition in Berlin next weekend.

 

To find out more about BattleHack, please visit https://2015.battlehack.org.

Original author: PayPal-Forward