Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SVB's programmatic payment systems are back online

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 67 posts

Re: SVB's programmatic payment systems are back online

#51

Post by chatmasta »

londont wrote: post #48
chatmasta wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great to hear from you! Thanks for the information. I'm a bit confused though. We have an ACH auto-pay schedule configured to take payment tonight (for payday on Wednesday). I thought ACH from SVB is still working. Is Gusto choosing not to process those payments? And if so, do you plan to eventually resume processing ACH payments from SVB? Since the ACH payment is scheduled for tonight, we were planning on seeing if…

Thanks for the reply. That's right, if you use SVB you have the fund payroll through a wire transfer. The wire can come from any account (including an SVB account). ACH won't work.

Thanks. It would be nice if the dashboard reflected that instead of showing the ACH payment as scheduled for tonight, but of course I understand we're all working with little time or information. Also maybe you could update your FAQ to explain that Gusto will not attempt to process any ACH payments from SVB, despite them operating normally from the SVB side. At the moment the document only implies this and you need to read between the lines to understand why a wire is necessary.

I also agree with the other commenter downthread that this is adding an unnecessary layer of complexity, but I understand why you might be doing it to avoid overdrawing an account that has been emptied. Still, I'm not sure this default opt-out is the best solution - maybe it would be better to ask those who did move money out of SVB to cancel their ACH schedule, rather than unilaterally ceasing ACH processing and asking those who didn't move money out of SVB to change their method of payment.

Re: SVB's programmatic payment systems are back online

#52

Post by altdataseller »

ChickenNugger wrote: post #50
kentonv wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because (apparently; I'm just reading from their web site) they deposit your funds into 12 separate accounts at 12 separate FDIC banks so you are insured up to $3M and a single-bank failure can at worst take 1/12 of your deposits. Seems like services like this should be more popular.

Am I the only one wondering why they're allowed to circumvent the $250K cap like this? Presumably there's a cap for a reason, and presumably it's to protect ordinary Americans who rarely have $250K in assets, and not rich people who can literally afford to lose that much and still be rich.

Based on the description of what they do, how is that circumventing? You can do the same thing they're doing by depositing into multiple banks too. The only difference is that Mercury is the custodian, and doing it for you

Re: SVB's programmatic payment systems are back online

#53

Post by dougSF70 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #47
dougSF70 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going to run payroll from my personal checking account because gusto wants a different bank to SVB. I will then wire funds from SVB to my personal account. Then I will find a new business banking provider.

> gusto wants a different bank to SVB. Why the hell would they want a different bank than the one being run by the US government ? The whole point of the herculean effort of a all-deposits-protected federal takeover is to prevent disruption of this kind by providing the firmest possible guarantees.

EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: SVB's programmatic payment systems are back online

#54

Post by ladon86 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #16
ladon86 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not urgent. With the government guaranteeing deposits, SVB might be the safest bank in America (at least for this week). I agree with others that you should be diversifying over the medium/long term, but I wouldn’t be racing to do that today.

> SVB might be the safest bank in America Except for that you can't log into their website, they don't pick up their phones or answer their emails, etc.

Website is a bit flakey under load, but that's going so subside after today.

I would recommend not YOLOing your money into multiple accounts today - rushed decisions are what got us here. If your immediate payroll issue is sorted, spend today and tomorrow working on a diversification and treasury plan with your team, then execute that over the next week or two. At this point, poorly configured wire transfers and scams are much more of a risk than your SVB balance going away.

Re: SVB's programmatic payment systems are back online

#55

Post by piperswe »

ChickenNugger wrote: post #50
kentonv wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because (apparently; I'm just reading from their web site) they deposit your funds into 12 separate accounts at 12 separate FDIC banks so you are insured up to $3M and a single-bank failure can at worst take 1/12 of your deposits. Seems like services like this should be more popular.

Am I the only one wondering why they're allowed to circumvent the $250K cap like this? Presumably there's a cap for a reason, and presumably it's to protect ordinary Americans who rarely have $250K in assets, and not rich people who can literally afford to lose that much and still be rich.

It's not circumventing the cap. If one bank fails, there's only a $250k insured loss, which is exactly the FDIC's goal with the cap

Re: SVB's programmatic payment systems are back online

#56

Post by londont »

chatmasta wrote: post #51
londont wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply. That's right, if you use SVB you have the fund payroll through a wire transfer. The wire can come from any account (including an SVB account). ACH won't work.

Thanks. It would be nice if the dashboard reflected that instead of showing the ACH payment as scheduled for tonight, but of course I understand we're all working with little time or information. Also maybe you could update your FAQ to explain that Gusto will not attempt to process any ACH payments from SVB, despite them operating normally from the SVB side. At the moment the document only implies this and you need t…

Good feedback. Working on clarifying how we message this. Thank you!

Re: SVB's programmatic payment systems are back online

#57

Post by kyawzazaw »

tempsy wrote: post #17
churchill wrote: post #13

I wonder why no one has said it yet but Mercury will come out the biggest winner from this mess. I can't estimate how the traffic from SVB > Mercury has been but I saw a post by Arc.tech saying they'd received hundreds of millions in deposits between 8 - 10 March. Given Mercury was a more popular contender, I'm going to bet they had an inflow of basically double-digit billions.

Why would anyone go from midsized public bank to opaque neobank if they're now spooked about bank solvency issues? The logical move is to go bigger eg JPM.

Doesn't this lead to concentration of asssets into bigger banks?

Re: SVB's programmatic payment systems are back online

#58

Post by chatmasta »

londont wrote: post #56
chatmasta wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. It would be nice if the dashboard reflected that instead of showing the ACH payment as scheduled for tonight, but of course I understand we're all working with little time or information. Also maybe you could update your FAQ to explain that Gusto will not attempt to process any ACH payments from SVB, despite them operating normally from the SVB side. At the moment the document only implies this and you need t…

Good feedback. Working on clarifying how we message this. Thank you!

Thanks for your responsiveness. We'll try initiating the wire, although we aren't able to log into SVB at all right now (503 errors and redirects back to login screen). I sure wish we could use ACH, since I assume it'd be more reliable for Gusto to download some ACH transactions from an SFTP server once, rather than sending every customer to SVB to attempt a wire transfer...

Re: SVB's programmatic payment systems are back online

#59

Post by kentonv »

ChickenNugger wrote: post #50
kentonv wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because (apparently; I'm just reading from their web site) they deposit your funds into 12 separate accounts at 12 separate FDIC banks so you are insured up to $3M and a single-bank failure can at worst take 1/12 of your deposits. Seems like services like this should be more popular.

Am I the only one wondering why they're allowed to circumvent the $250K cap like this? Presumably there's a cap for a reason, and presumably it's to protect ordinary Americans who rarely have $250K in assets, and not rich people who can literally afford to lose that much and still be rich.

No, this is exactly what's supposed to happen. The FDIC wants large depositors to spread their deposits over many banks as this reduces overall risk. The limit is not about protecting "ordinary Americans" over "rich people".

Re: SVB's programmatic payment systems are back online

#60

Post by Cryptokey199512 »

churchill wrote: post #13

I wonder why no one has said it yet but Mercury will come out the biggest winner from this mess. I can't estimate how the traffic from SVB > Mercury has been but I saw a post by Arc.tech saying they'd received hundreds of millions in deposits between 8 - 10 March. Given Mercury was a more popular contender, I'm going to bet they had an inflow of basically double-digit billions.

[dead]
Post reply on HN