Challenge

RVshare pairs RV owners and renters so more people can experience the freedom of RV travel. RVshare previously partnered with a small payments provider but realised it was lacking in crucial services, including PCI compliance and fast payouts processing. As demand for RVs surged in 2020, fraud mitigation became more critical as the company verified new RV renters and owners. “Our previous payments platform had limited operations and support,” says Melissa Fortenberry, VP of Product, at RVshare. “RVshare was growing quickly, and we needed a payment provider not only with superior payments functionality, but also a partner that understood our needs and nuances as a marketplace business.”

Solution

After analysing leading global payment platforms, RVshare chose Stripe. It uses Stripe Connect to easily manage RV owner payouts, as well as Radar for fraud prevention. RVshare’s transition to Stripe took less than 3 months because Stripe’s platform was the best suited to handle marketplace complexities, such as security deposits, reservation changes and cancellations, and fees for damages or overages. “The Stripe team was incredibly knowledgeable. The entire onboarding process made us so happy we chose Stripe because we really felt like the team cared about us,” Fortenberry says.

Results

In summer 2020, RVshare bookings tripled. Because RVshare had a reliable payments platform, it was able to deliver a best-in-class experience for both renters and owners. “We grew extremely fast, and our previous manual efforts would have never been able to scale. We wouldn’t have sustained that acceleration without Stripe,” says Melissa Fortenberry, VP of Product at RVshare.

With Stripe’s support, RVshare experienced numerous benefits that include:

2.55% increase in conversion with payment optimizations

Stripe’s payment optimisation features help to maximize acceptance rates. If a payment is declined, for example, Adaptive Acceptance retries the charge in real time by using machine learning to identify the best routing and messaging combinations. Additionally, Stripe's Card Account Updater intelligently updates the credentials of saved cards that have expired or been replaced.

Significant reduction in manual fraud mitigation and assurance of PCI and KYC compliance

RVshare relies on Stripe Radar to detect and block fraud, using machine learning-based fraud protection refined from data across millions of companies. Before Stripe, the RVshare Finance team had to manually dig through the data to flag risky charges.

With this built-in support for identity verification and security standards, Stripe also alleviates the burden of meeting KYC and PCI requirements. “We previously had to do KYC checks in house, which would require our finance team to review an owner’s account before we paid them out,” Fortenberry explains. “This created an internal backlog and delayed owner payouts. Now Stripe automates all of that and takes the work off of our shoulders so we can pay our owners faster.”