Recently Seth, aka Rumham, revealed some of the issues Supercell face in bringing in seemingly great ideas. The idea discussed in the example was gifting Pass Royale. He talked about two main issues, a responsibility to not encourage fraud, and also the preservation of the integrity of their game. I totally disagree with the first issue. It is not Supercell's job to police society. Frankly, they do not have the qualifications, and even if they did, there would still be criminals. Having a game where people can spend money via credit cards does not encourage fraud. It certainly is another avenue for the criminals to use, but it does not encourage it. It is akin to saying that parking your car in public encourages thieves to steal it. A thief intent on stealing a car will steal whichever car is available. Simply seeing your car does not make them think, "Oh, I might steal a car today". This misconception and false responsibility means that many are missing out on something great due to the actions of a few. It's a poor model for society because the "few" will always exist. I agree with the second point Seth raised. Supercell absolutely need to preserve the integrity of their game. I have been adamant about this in all my Twitter posts. Seth says that Supercell can remove items from an account which bought them via fraudulent means. He then talks about removing them from the account which received the gift. Here, his point is not clear. I cannot determine if he is saying it cannot be done. Assuming it CAN be done, what is the issue? Simply remove the items with a "Sorry, but these were bought by fraudulent means" note. The receiver can have no complaint. Finally, apply some common sense and crunch the numbers. Is it worth denying the community a fantastic tool to prevent a game corruption which, at best, could be calculated as negligible?
Are you familiar with the blackmarket tourney chests? You know, back when there were 250k-gem private tournaments that gives 15k cards? Supercell had to remove this amazing in-game feature precisely because it created a booming black markets. They sell the tourney slots for the first 30 places and made a huge profit (even if not using stolen credit cards).
It’s incredibly not hard to find 200 people to buy something that normally costs $5 for $3. There are websites that enable these types of things. Part of the reason that the illegal gems were so prevalent is precisely because there is a huge underground market for such transactions, often on very visible gaming market sites that mainly offer such services.
They often use the term “stolen credit cards” to describe all forms of financial frauds that happened because it is easier to explain to the uninitiated. My personal understanding is that there are some flaws / loopholes in App Stores / Google Player store in some countries that allowed for some fraudulent purchases without using valid credit cards — and criminals are using those kinds of bugs to exploit the system.