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Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal

money.cnn.com

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Re: Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal

#11

Post by taelor_rb »

Question:

So my adult (beer league) hockey team is trying to start a slush fund so that we can pay for things like new jerseys, water bottles, shared resources type stuff. We are looking at trying to get a group account for this, and WePay looks like its exactly what we need.

But the accounts we talk to say that we would have to pay taxes on this account, if its in a bank account. Would WePay be a way to get around paying these taxes? Does anyone else have any insight to how we could set this up?

Is this question way to off topic for Hacker News?

Re: Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal

#12

Post by danishkhan »

triii wrote: post #7
pg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the author means anti- in the sense it's used in anti-matter, not the sense it's used in anti-globalization.

When WePay & PayPal touch they'll annihilate eachother with a huge burst of energy? :) Too bad headlines need to be clickable rather than accurate.

The anti in anti-matter = of the same kind but situated opposite whereas anti-globalization = being against.

Re: Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal

#13

Post by bmac »

clistctrl wrote: post #6

The CEO was a speaker at this years startup bootcamp, it was an interesting talk. http://blog.wepay.com/2010/10/wepay-ceo-bill-clerico-at-star...

I second watching the WePay talk.

One of the best pieces of advice I heard at Startup bootcamp came from Bill Clerico (WePay CEO) when he described building software as a community process. It seemed like an elegant way to say users are what really matter and it applies equally well to commercial, open source and personal projects.

Re: Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal

#14

Post by pinksoda »

I really hope WePay destroys PayPal. They have screwed myself and my friends too many times.

The homepage layout is all wrong though. Poor element placement, messy typography, and the color scheme is off. It looks amateur and unpolished. All those SEO'd subpages are worthless if they don't convert.

Also:

- Upgrade to Nginx 0.7.67, there was a lot of bug fixes in 0.7.65 and 0.7.66.

- Limit the number of login attempts to prevent brute forcing.

- Don't show "That email address was not found" when someone tries to recover a password. You are giving out too much info, which can be used maliciously.

- Block scraper/vuln scanner/curl scripts by user-agent to keep away the script kiddies and botnets.

- Don't host your Javascript on Google. This gives hackers another possible point of entry. It's probably safe, but you're better off limiting points of entry.

- Use mod_rewrite as an additional layer of security. You'll need to slightly modify it to make it work with Nginx.

- Remove "access info anytime" and "post to my wall anytime" when signing up with Facebook.

- Limit SSH access by IP address.

Feel free to contact me if you need help.

Re: Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal

#15

Post by dbul »

Someone I know recently told me about her nightmare when she was collecting money for a class reunion via PayPal last month: she had to register as a non-profit, and PayPal wanted her water bill to prove that they were indeed a non-profit despite being recognized by the government as one. So much hassle; I wish I had known she was going to do that so I could have told her about WePay, especially with this kind of customer service:

  A call to WePay's customer service department quickly
  sorted out the problem. Plus, the company gave him $20
  for the inconvenience.

Re: Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal

#16

Post by seiji »

pinksoda wrote: post #14

I really hope WePay destroys PayPal. They have screwed myself and my friends too many times. The homepage layout is all wrong though. Poor element placement, messy typography, and the color scheme is off. It looks amateur and unpolished. All those SEO'd subpages are worthless if they don't convert. Also: - Upgrade to Nginx 0.7.67, there was a lot of bug fixes in 0.7.65 and 0.7.66. - Limit the number of login attempts…

Wow, "ssh wepay.com" works. Turn that off.

Once again, "cloud" doesn't mean "lol, we don't need to know about servers!"

Re: Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal

#17

Post by modoc »

seiji wrote: post #16
pinksoda wrote: post #14

I really hope WePay destroys PayPal. They have screwed myself and my friends too many times. The homepage layout is all wrong though. Poor element placement, messy typography, and the color scheme is off. It looks amateur and unpolished. All those SEO'd subpages are worthless if they don't convert. Also: - Upgrade to Nginx 0.7.67, there was a lot of bug fixes in 0.7.65 and 0.7.66. - Limit the number of login attempts…

Wow, "ssh wepay.com" works. Turn that off. Once again, "cloud" doesn't mean "lol, we don't need to know about servers!"

That's totally nutty. Not sure how they passed a PCI audit like that. In fact, I don't see that they are PCI certified on their site?

Re: Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal

#18

Post by iamdave »

jfager wrote: post #10

I have long wondered why Facebook doesn't do this. Group birthday gifts, wedding registries, basically any social scenario where money needs to change hands, it seems like FB would be so well positioned to take an honest buck from.

No.

Do you know why? Facebook acts as if it were completely incapable of knowing when far is too far. Whenever something new rolls out, it always comes off like outsourced peer-pressure. 'HEY LOOK AT WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING BUT YOU!!'

No thank you, sir.

Re: Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal

#19

Post by jfager »

iamdave wrote: post #18
jfager wrote: post #10

I have long wondered why Facebook doesn't do this. Group birthday gifts, wedding registries, basically any social scenario where money needs to change hands, it seems like FB would be so well positioned to take an honest buck from.

No. Do you know why? Facebook acts as if it were completely incapable of knowing when far is too far. Whenever something new rolls out, it always comes off like outsourced peer-pressure. 'HEY LOOK AT WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING BUT YOU!!' No thank you, sir.

The question of whether FB as it exists now would abuse such a system (yes, of course they would, they're awful) is separate from the question of whether or not said system would make business sense for a gigantic social network.

If FB were the kind of company that could figure out how to make money without ads or taxing 3rd party devs, maybe they'd also be the kind of company that would treat its users as customers rather than products. Hypotheticals all around.

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