Bullet-proof payment processors
Hongwei Tian, Stephen M. Gaffigan, Durlacher West, Damon McCoy · 2018
Abusively advertised online counterfeit luxury goods sales are a complex operation that requires accessible and reliable payment processing to transfer money from customer to merchant. Payment interventions have become one of many methods to combat this activity. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of an intervention in the face of bullet-proof payment processors and possibly lessening fines levied by Visa Asia against banks found underwriting accounts for merchants violating intellectual property. Our study includes measurements from 424 successful test counterfeit luxury goods purchases over two years and direct interactions with payment processors associated with our purchases. We find that our long-running payment intervention results in a test purchaser detection and evasion arms-race with the bullet-proof processors. We also find that only one bank, the Bank of China, continues on boarding a majority of counterfeit luxury goods merchants for the entire two year period.