Just to clear things up a little, once a payment is made, it will be held by Itch.io for 7 days, in case of a refund. After than, you can request a payout of that payment, and then it will go into review by the admins, which is where the fraud prevention review takes place. I have no visibility on how that review is handled behind the scenes, but I believe every payout is being approved manually by a person.
Yes, that’s the official line of how and what. But I would argue that both of those steps can be avoided, as I mentioned in the OP (refund by subtracting from future payouts, fraud seems to be duplicated by Payoneer?)
I’d like to know if itch has any plans to streamline the payout process.
Also not entirely sure what you mean by biased on Itch.io
Exactly what I mentioned in the OP:
it makes it sound like going with “Direct to you” is a complicated process fraught with danger, which is a bit of FUD as it actually just takes a few clicks (one to choose it, and one each for PayPal/Stripe)