Challenge
Fraud was costly and time-consuming
Excellent customer experience is a key differentiator for iwantmyname, which seeks to make the process of purchasing a domain name simple, clear, and transparent. However, fraud was putting a strain on the business’ mission. Not only were they losing money to fraud and chargebacks, but their highly time-consuming fraud prevention practices were negatively affecting the user experience and causing them to miss out on some legitimate sales.
Before they implemented Sift, detecting fraud was a 100% manual effort. In the early days of the company, two of the co-founders checked every single transaction for suspicious signals, then—once they began identifying sources of the highest levels of fraud—they had little choice but to block all users from those countries from making purchases.
Those country-based blacklists hurt iwantmyname’s business in two major ways. First, the company missed out on revenue from legitimate customers who resided in those countries. Second, existing customers who were traveling in those blacklisted countries faced extra hassle with their accounts, which reflected negatively on iwantmyname’s brand. Even worse, the team as a whole spent as much as 30% of their time on managing the burden of fraud—time that the company felt would be much better spent on delighting good customers and positively growing the business.