The latest articles on DEV Community by Mathew Bowyer (@mathew_bowyer_90eaab75203). https://dev.to/mathew_bowyer_90eaab75203 https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3926790%2F3b80bed2-b243-4715-87f5-7044663cec44.png https://dev.to/mathew_bowyer_90eaab75203 en Mathew Bowyer Tue, 12 May 2026 09:35:49 +0000 https://dev.to/mathew_bowyer_90eaab75203/meta-ads-absolutely-cooked-my-saas-with-fraud-3a03 https://dev.to/mathew_bowyer_90eaab75203/meta-ads-absolutely-cooked-my-saas-with-fraud-3a03 <p>Been working on an eSIM platform called Mesim for a while now and honestly one of the hardest parts hasn’t even been building the product…</p> <p>It’s been dealing with fraud.</p> <p>At the start I was running Meta ads and thought things were going crazy in a good way. Cheap conversions, heaps of signups, traffic looked solid etc.</p> <p>Then a few weeks later:</p> <ul> <li>chargebacks everywhere</li> <li>stolen cards</li> <li>fake names</li> <li>people smashing data instantly then disappearing</li> <li>random countries I wasn’t even targeting</li> </ul> <p>Because eSIMs are digital and activate instantly, fraudsters absolutely love them.</p> <p>You don’t really get a chance to stop it once the order goes through.</p> <p>I tried a bunch of the standard fraud tools but most seem more built for physical ecommerce stores. eSIM is different because there’s no shipping delay or anything to verify against.</p> <p>Ended up building a heap of custom stuff into the checkout flow:</p> <ul> <li>Stripe Identity verification</li> <li>VPN/proxy detection</li> <li>disposable email blocking</li> <li>risk scoring</li> <li>country mismatch checks</li> <li>velocity limits</li> <li>manual review on certain orders</li> </ul> <p>Biggest thing that helped was forcing some users through ID verification before they could activate.</p> <p>Conversion rate dropped a bit but the quality of customers became way better and chargebacks dropped hard.</p> <p>Honestly feels like nobody talks about this side of SaaS enough. Everyone posts revenue screenshots but not the part where fraud can completely destroy ad campaigns.</p> <p>Curious how other SaaS founders handle this especially if you’re selling digital products instantly.</p> <p>Also if anyone has good recommendations around:</p> <ul> <li>fraud prevention</li> <li>scaling Meta ads</li> <li>reducing chargebacks</li> <li>international traffic quality</li> </ul> <p>keen to hear them.</p> <p><a href="https://mesim.io" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://mesim.io</a></p>