Balanced payments is shutting down • Hacker News Board

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#91

Post by bkrausz » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:36 PM UTC

bbissoon wrote: post #58

During the migration, is our information ported over to Stripe or is it replicated? I want to start the migration but it doesn't specify whether or not it will cause Balanced users to lose access to the API all together.

Information will be replicated, including newly added information. You can click the migrate button, integrate over the next 90 days, and switch over to Stripe with no discrepancy in information.

Balanced's meta fields will contain the Stripe IDs they were ported to, so you can migrate over to new objects incrementally.

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#92

Post by bkrausz » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:37 PM UTC

dblock wrote: post #57

We are very sad to see Balanced go at https://www.artsy.net - we were an early and loyal customer. Balanced has been very good to us throughout the years. Thank you. We've actually had some support for Stripe too for a small service, an experiment, but were going to delete it and continue using Balanced 100% of the time.

I'd love to hear why you were going to stop your Stripe usage. Totally understand if it was for the sake of consolidation, but if there were product needs that we weren't hitting it'd be great to know :).

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#93

Post by tbrooks » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:38 PM UTC

bkrausz wrote: post #90

tbrooks wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pc, it appears that the Stripe client libraries do not support Balanced-like features. i.e. ACH debits, marketplaces, etc. Migrating over to Stripe sounds great, but having these libraries updated with the proper endpoints seems like a must.

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.

Will I have the ability to debit ACH w/o verification?

(I currently have this ability with Balanced. Also have very low fraud, chargeback, etc.)

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#94

Post by zrail » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:39 PM UTC

Not sure how I feel about this. Balanced has, until recently, seemed like the more flexible, DIY option in the payments space. Their API had some pretty neat features that I hope Stripe picks up at some point.

If you're looking to migrate a Rails app to Stripe, I wrote a short book that may help you out.

https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com/

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#95

Post by Flipperbw » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:39 PM UTC

ewang1 wrote: post #16

The inability to transfer funds into Stripe makes it hard to use it as a payouts mechanism like you can with Balanced.

Is there any good replacement besides PayPal?

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#96

Post by bkrausz » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:39 PM UTC

dirtyaura wrote: post #52

bkrausz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With our Transfers API[1] you can send funds to recipients in the US without requiring them to sign up for a Stripe account. [1] https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending-transfers

What are the reasons that you don't support Transfer API in Europe? We would need that but are forced to operate with a different model on a top of Braintree at the moment.

There are a lot of reasons, but the short answer is we're aware of the demand. Stay tuned :).

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#97

Post by dang » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:40 PM UTC

1viquas1 wrote: post #64

Wonder why I don't see "YC XX" after the company name like we usually see in other recruit or fund raising posts from YC backed company.

That tag is for launches and major third-party articles, not for posts by the companies themselves.

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#98

Post by rl3 » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:41 PM UTC

https://github.com/balanced/www.balancedpayments.com/commits...

Even in death, Balanced's radical commitment to transparency lives on.

I'm not aware of any other companies with similar traction that have literally put their main website on GitHub.

What a sad day.

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#99

Post by pnathan » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:42 PM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #62

I never used Balanced, but I want to really commend this announcement. It is the first announcement of such a kind that comes with a well-considered and already provided migration plan for customers to ensure no loss of service. That's a great standard to work to... leave yourself enough runway to look after your customers. The Balanced team should feel incredibly proud of managing such a co-ordinated shut down whils…

Yes, they should! This is a very mature and responsible shutdown (I'd also expect it to be mature and responsible, since payments are Very Important, but, on the other hand...).

+1 to the Balanced executives for being mature.

Re: Balanced payments is shutting down

#100

Post by Flipperbw » Fri, Mar 13, 2015, 10:44 PM UTC

bkrausz wrote: post #92

dblock wrote: post #57

We are very sad to see Balanced go at https://www.artsy.net - we were an early and loyal customer. Balanced has been very good to us throughout the years. Thank you. We've actually had some support for Stripe too for a small service, an experiment, but were going to delete it and continue using Balanced 100% of the time.

I'd love to hear why you were going to stop your Stripe usage. Totally understand if it was for the sake of consolidation, but if there were product needs that we weren't hitting it'd be great to know :).

Lack of prefunding and escrow was/is a huge one for us.