Before Chargeblast
We operate a TeleHealth business that allows consumers to connect with licensed healthcare professionals and access medical care, prescriptions, and supplements at an affordable cost. We sell a variety of products varying from weight loss and hair loss prevention treatment to birth control and sexual wellness medication. Our volume before Chargeblast was about 50,000 transactions per month - these range from one-time health-provider evaluation fees to monthly renewal subscriptions. Due to the nature of our vertical, we experienced a significant number of chargebacks - hovering around a 3.15% dispute rate. Eventually we were placed under the Visa Dispute Monitoring Program (VDMP), and received a 25% payout hold on our Stripe account.These penalties incurred even though we have a “no questions asked” refund policy, a support number in our billing descriptor, and a 24/7 live chat. While a majority of our disputes were under reason code “fraud”, it was clear that these disputes were strictly a result of friendly-fraud (customer abusing their bank).
Implementing Chargeblast
Implementing Chargeblast took us about 20 minutes. Our business operates at 80% gross margin, so we were comfortable refunding all transactions Chargeblast alerted as disputes, as we prioritized keeping our dispute rate as low as possible. Before Chargeblast, we would generally see about 100 Mastercard disputes per week. However, within 48 hours of enrollment, our Mastercard dispute volume dropped by 94% (totaling 5-6 disputes per week). A week later, after Visa enrollment was complete, we saw a 99% reduction in our Visa disputes the week they went live. In total, Chargeblast brought down our weekly dispute count from 200 to single digits.
Revenue Growth
After using Chargeblast for a month, our January dispute rate was 0.31%, down 90% from the previous month. The Chargeblast founders then provided us with a dedicated Stripe account executive, who helped remove the 25% hold on our account. Once we were fully enrolled in Visa, we were removed from the VDMP, and now have our dispute prevention process completely automated by Chargeblast. The results were incredible, and our team is still at a loss for words in how quickly Chargeblast’s solution worked.
An additional benefit of using Chargeblast was the ability to increase our revenue without the threat of taking on risky transactions. Our dispute management process before integrating Chargeblast required significant manual work. Since we were aware telemedicine was a risky vertical, we initially set up blocking rules using Stripe Radar; this blocked payments with risk scores of 60+ and assigned those with risk scores of 20+ to be reviewed by our risk team.
However, as we stepped back and looked at our Stripe dashboard, we realized a mind-boggling number of payments were being blocked. According to our Radar dashboard, we were sitting at a 4.6% block rate and had a 30% false-positive rate. Given our newly established, low dispute rate thanks to Chargeblast, we decided to ease our fraud blocking rules to allow for more risky payments to be processed.
By removing the blocks, we saw an overnight lift to our revenue of 3.10%. This immediately improved our CAC and gave us more confidence to lean into our aggressive marketing campaigns. Without Chargeblast, we wouldn’t have the ease of mind to take this transformative step for our business.
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