Balanced payments is shutting down • Hacker News Board

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#121

Post by mintplant » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 11:45 PM UTC

tbrooks wrote: post #109

bkrausz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our bindings actually do support ACH debits. The "source" parameter is a universal param for any kind of incoming payment mechanism. See https://stripe.com/blog/unifying-payment-types-in-the-api for details. Specifically, for those in the ACH beta you can put a customer's bank account token in that field to charge their bank account.

Ahh, you're right. To make an ACH debit, you'd need to verify a bank account beforehand. And I don't think client libraries support a `bank account resource` w/o curling. Maybe I'm missing something.

If you don't get it working on Stripe, maybe you'll have better luck with WePay. They're a marketplace payments service like Balanced was, and they support ACH payments.

https://www.wepay.com/developer/facilitate_withdrawals/settl...

https://www.wepay.com/developer/facilitate_withdrawals/embed...

Disclaimer: I haven't actually used them myself. YMMV.

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#122

Post by chrischen » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 12:03 AM UTC

treeface wrote: post #108

santiagobasulto wrote: post #65

90 days doesn't seem enough time at all. We run a big system on balanced. We're fucked.

This is one of those moments where good programming architecture and integration testing becomes obviously useful. We have a payment gateway interface and the transition to Stripe will be relatively painless after accounting for some accounting differences in how fees are charged.

I agree, it really shouldn't be that painful, unless you hardcoded balanced API calls everywhere and have no abstractions at all.

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#123

Post by coconutrandom » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 12:07 AM UTC

mintplant wrote: post #121

tbrooks wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, you're right. To make an ACH debit, you'd need to verify a bank account beforehand. And I don't think client libraries support a `bank account resource` w/o curling. Maybe I'm missing something.

If you don't get it working on Stripe, maybe you'll have better luck with WePay. They're a marketplace payments service like Balanced was, and they support ACH payments. https://www.wepay.com/developer/facilitate_withdrawals/settl... https://www.wepay.com/developer/facilitate_withdrawals/embed... Disclaimer: I haven't actually used them myself. YMMV.

I have used them, stick with Stripe.

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#124

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 12:26 AM UTC

lbotos wrote: post #89

eviluncle wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to be as optimistic as you are about this act by balanced, but I can't help but suspect there was some kind of deal between the two companies. After all, this will bring new business to stripe...

Even if so, is Google above handing off their customers to a service that is similar?

[deleted]

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#125

Post by nodesocket » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 12:49 AM UTC

I'd argue the Balanced dashboard (Ember.js) is superior to the Stripe dashboard. Their technology, design, and engineers are exceptional, but just shows how important market, positioning, and being first is. The "startup game" is brutal. They had everything in place... YC company, top tier investors (Andreessen), great product... The market just overwhelmed them.

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#126

Post by payvy » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 1:34 AM UTC

billclerico wrote: post #111

One side note (from a cofounder of WePay here). WePay is 100% focused on serving the needs of two-sided platforms like marketplaces - and now we're the only company that can claim to do so. We're bummed to see Balanced go, as I think they have a great product - indicative of what a focus on the space can produce. But we're excited to carry the torch forward. We process billions annually and have crossed the scale cha…

What is your ACH pricing, you don't display it on your website.

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#127

Post by downandout » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 1:36 AM UTC

vampirechicken wrote: post #61

downandout wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get that to happen? There is nothing in the docs about it.

Probably by becoming a highly-trusted, low-risk customer. Payment balance float is all about holding some money in reserve in case of chargebacks. The better your stats are, the less money a processor will insist on holding in reserve.

Balanced did it by default.

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#128

Post by pbreit » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 1:42 AM UTC

mintplant wrote: post #121

tbrooks wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, you're right. To make an ACH debit, you'd need to verify a bank account beforehand. And I don't think client libraries support a `bank account resource` w/o curling. Maybe I'm missing something.

If you don't get it working on Stripe, maybe you'll have better luck with WePay. They're a marketplace payments service like Balanced was, and they support ACH payments. https://www.wepay.com/developer/facilitate_withdrawals/settl... https://www.wepay.com/developer/facilitate_withdrawals/embed... Disclaimer: I haven't actually used them myself. YMMV.

WePay doesn't do ACH debits AFAIK.

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#129

Post by frabcus » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 1:44 AM UTC

ZeroMinx wrote: post #107

Before this announcement, I'd never heard of Balanced. Reading comments, some people are saying it was a great service. But, it's shutting down, while services less great carry on. This is hard for dev people (like myself) to realize, but if you're looking for commercial success, marketing is generally worth more than the quality of your product.

Good marketing is part of a quality product.

A key stage is hearing about a product at all - it is completely useless if you never hear about it.

See my blog post "How to use time-travelling anthropologist pollsters to tell good from evil marketing": http://www.flourish.org/2013/04/how-to-use-time-travelling-a...

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#130

Post by ianhawes » Sat, Mar 14, 2015, 1:57 AM UTC

billclerico wrote: post #111

One side note (from a cofounder of WePay here). WePay is 100% focused on serving the needs of two-sided platforms like marketplaces - and now we're the only company that can claim to do so. We're bummed to see Balanced go, as I think they have a great product - indicative of what a focus on the space can produce. But we're excited to carry the torch forward. We process billions annually and have crossed the scale cha…

As a former customer of WePay, I'd like to warn everyone considering using WePay that their compliance department will shut you down multiple times, decline to specify why, then freeze all funds within your account. WePay is completely out of touch with their customers, and I would recommend Stripe over WePay any day.