81–90 of 143 posts
Apart from Balanced Payments and Dwolla I don't think anyone gives a simple way (means using API) to send payouts. This could be huge!
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Stripe actually requires substantially less information -- just the recipient's name. Still, this isn't about Stripe vs Balanced -- we just built the API many of our users wanted. Hope you guys continue to do well!
Its nice to see that Stripe wishes competitors well when all Balanced tried to do was promote their brand.
Hint: It's Stripe.
I'm most interested in the inverse... allowing customers to send us cash directly from their bank accounts for $.25 per transfer (instead of the bullshit credit card company fees). I'm sure there's some serious fraud implications that Stripe would have to deal with to ensure validity, but is that coming?
(I work at Balanced) Balanced ( https://balancedpayments.com ) provides a payouts solution for marketplaces like redditgifts, Crowdtilt, Fancy, Artsy, Visual.ly, and many others. The differences with Stripe include the money being available for payout immediately (instead of 5 days), and the recipient will receive the money the next business day. Balanced has also performed a lot of work to verify merchants with as l…
As with all money transfer products, the technology to transfer funds to an individual is generally the fun/easy part. Wait until you find out about America's (and most other countries) wonderful anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing compliance laws that can land you in less-fun places like federal prison if you don't use this sort of webservice very, very carefully.
In the US, operating an unlicensed money transmitter is an offense that carries, if I recall properly, up to five years of federal prison time per count[1]. That is to say, if you create a service by which one party is able to send money to another third party, and operate that service without a license where one is required (and under that license adhere to capital, bonding and procedural compliance requirements), you are subject to federal criminal prosecution.
I'd be curious as to Stripe's and Balanced's interpretation of their obligations under these laws vis-a-vis their payout services.
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Its nice to see that Stripe wishes competitors well when all Balanced tried to do was promote their brand.
This statement fully captures the stark difference between Stripe and Balanced. Stripe is led by engineers who want to improve the payments infrastructure. Balanced is led by businesspeople who want to hit it big. Stripe just so happens to be a business as well. Nothing wrong with either, but that should point you toward which company has the developer's true interests at heart :) Hint: It's Stripe.
I think it's disingenuous to not suggest that Balanced doesn't 'have the developer's true interests at heart.' They've been really pushing the hypermedia API stuff, which is technologically exciting, as well as doing the whole 'open company' thing, which is taking the concept open source to interesting places.
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Interesting to see Balanced and Stripe competing. Is this going to be a growing trend in YC? I'm sure it's a hard problem to avoid.
Balanced has always inhabited a nebulous void of blatant-copying-with-one-novel-new-feature territory for me. It's clear they just copied (with permission? consent?) the public interface of Stripe. They tried to copy the documentation format (layout, style, presentation) too, but it came off kinda poorly (margins, people. margins). They have public test cards/accounts, but they fail to test correctly because they get…
It's really unfortunate that we have a fractured payment processing market where overlapping them doesn't solve the problem. For example:
Square: Best in-person payment processor. Next day payments if taken before 5 PM PST. Does card-not-present transactions as well. For some insane reason, does not have web access or an API despite being around longer than Stripe and Balanced.
Stripe: Best integration with wp-commerce, third party plugins, etc. Excellent interface. Rapid prototyping and feature rollout. Cons: 7 day rolling payments are slower than Square, Balanced, and Paypal.
Balanced: Fastest payments. Terrible third-party support. Documentation not nearly as good as Stripe, interface is slightly confusing.
I use Stripe for my ecommerce business and Square for in-person transactions, but I desperately want to switch to Balanced because of cashflow improvements. But that's not going to happen until third-party plugin support is vastly improved (I've already opened tickets on this months ago in their tracker with no response). Or I'd switch to Square if they decided they wanted an additional $XXX million dollars in business and offered a web API (what is the reason for NOT having this).
Annoying, but considering where we were just a few years ago, I'll take it.
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I originally thought the same too, but found that it is in Beta. http://blog.balancedpayments.com/balanced-payment-method-pay...
The Balanced Payouts service has been available for some time. Our ACH Debit (pay with bank account) is in Beta however.
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Its nice to see that Stripe wishes competitors well when all Balanced tried to do was promote their brand.
This statement fully captures the stark difference between Stripe and Balanced. Stripe is led by engineers who want to improve the payments infrastructure. Balanced is led by businesspeople who want to hit it big. Stripe just so happens to be a business as well. Nothing wrong with either, but that should point you toward which company has the developer's true interests at heart :) Hint: It's Stripe.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Balanced has always inhabited a nebulous void of blatant-copying-with-one-novel-new-feature territory for me. It's clear they just copied (with permission? consent?) the public interface of Stripe. They tried to copy the documentation format (layout, style, presentation) too, but it came off kinda poorly (margins, people. margins). They have public test cards/accounts, but they fail to test correctly because they get…
Balanced has a ridiculously huge advantage in the next-day payouts (same-day to WF bank accounts!), like Square offers. However, Stripe is far better supported by third-party clients for shopping carts. It's really unfortunate that we have a fractured payment processing market where overlapping them doesn't solve the problem. For example: Square: Best in-person payment processor. Next day payments if taken before 5 P…