HoneyLedger ‘Eliminating Chargeback Risks for Streamers’

Josh Mohland and his team have been responsible for some innovative digital currency solutions. Wow Such Business created dogetipbot, a project that allows users to send and receive Dogecoin to each other using just a few handy commands. Dogetipbot quickly spread beyond its home on reddit making its way to both Twitch.tv and Twitter. After entering these new territories, Mohland noticed fees in the embedded Twitch tipping service were limiting the potential of microtransactions.

“One of the things about traditional payment processing […] is the high transaction fees when it comes to smaller one or two dollar donations,”
— – Josh Mohland, CEO Wow Such Business, Inc.

While ChangeTip recently donated $10,000 to Twitch.tv in an effort to promote their new bitcoin tipping system, HoneyLedger is providing a fully-fledged payment processing platform – capable of handling many fiat and digital currencies.

Twitch.tv launched in 2011, and the platform quickly became the industry leader for live video game streaming. The runaway popularity of the site led to Amazon acquiring the site in August of 2014. With over 100 million viewers each month, the site is now ranked 4th in US internet traffic.

Wow Such Business named the new platform HoneyLedger, and is Beta testing with Twitch.tv. “We came in and decided to build something out that would actually be beneficial for both the viewer and the streamer.” Mohland explains.

“For every one dollar donation, a streamer usually sees about 66 cents after all the fees are taken into account. We want to bring that up to eighty-five or ninety cents on the dollar.”
— – Mohland

Joining HoneyLedger is simple and the website is easy to navigate, streamers can sign up and the service will create a landing page for them. Viewers are directed to the page, and can tip or donate to the streamer in a range of fiat and digital currencies. “When the transaction goes through and is verified, then we have a notification that pops up on the [streamers broadcast] that is highly customizable,” Mohland states.

Having good core principles is important for the foundation of a business. As well reducing fees for all parties involved in a tipping transaction, Mohland puts a focus on charity too. “We got our start with the Dogecoin community, and one cool thing about the Dogecoin community is that it’s very friendly, very generous, very welcoming, and very inviting,” he says.

“We want to keep that culture intact by making it very easy for people to get involved, and for people to jump in for new charitable opportunities that pop up.”
— – Mohland

The method Mohland has applied for reducing fees is a simple and smart use of cryptocurrency, “…you can do microtransactions, especially with Doge, of anywhere down to a fraction of a penny. It’s almost instantaneous and the fees are minimal. So bringing that into [the fiat currency realm] where we can start dealing with transactions that are a dollar or two dollars […] is something that we’re really interested in doing.”

“One and two dollar donations are really the bread and butter of a lot of these streamers, so the more money they can get in their pocket after you give them a dollar, the better.”
— – Mohland

The issue of fees isn’t the only problem streamers encounter on Twitch. “Some people like to test stolen credit cards on streamers, who then get hit with a chargeback after the fact,” says Mohland. Making donations, or tipping, to test a stolen credit card provides criminals with an easy way to vet stolen card details. The streamer then falls victim to the dreaded Credit Card chargeback. “The biggest thing – and this is really where we are putting a lot of our effort – is eliminating chargeback risks for streamers.” Mohland explains.

A chargeback is conducted by the issuing credit card company, and can happen anywhere up to 90 days after a fraudulent transaction occurs. Should a streamer fall victim to this, either weeks or months after the act is committed, the money will be debited from their PayPal account at no fault of their own. They can even lose additional money through the possibility of a chargeback fee being applied, adding further insult to injury.

“We’re working with a couple of emerging partners and a couple of fraud protection companies to really eliminate that risk so we can offer chargeback protection for all of our clients.”
— – Mohland

Though HoneyLedger is currently in Beta and only available on Twitch, expansion is already on Mohlands mind. “I think the hardest markets we are going to face are probably blogs and YouTube,” he says, citing the lack of reward for the tipper. “Having that reward where you get your fifteen seconds of fame or you get a shoutout – that’s proven to be a success.”

“It’s the same reason dogetipbot was successful on reddit; it was very visible, very public, and people could verify that the transaction took place.”
— – Mohland

Wow Such Business remains upbeat despite the potential challenges ahead. Mohland describes the hurdles to come with a very positive demeanor, “With each different service that we launch on we’re going to test the waters – see what’s gonna work, what’s gonna stick, what people like about it, what people don’t like about it. It’s going to be fun to try it out.”

After seeing the success of dogetipbot, I’m both excited and relieved to see Wow Such Business tackling payment processing on such a large scale. This is another innovative use of cryptocurrency which has the potential to draw in a new group of users who are unfamiliar. Streamers will also be incentivized to accept crypto, allowing them to get a larger portion of donations. It will certainly be interesting to see where HoneyLedger goes from here.