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Ask HN: How do you build a payments app like Venmo?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you build a payments app like Venmo?

#3
How much are you willing to spend per transaction? With Stripe or Braintree it’s trivial but expensive.

Are you targeting just the US market and dollars? Going directly with a bank is cheaper but more complex [1]. And unless you’re adding significant value you’ll probably need a money transmitter license in your state.

And if you’re planning on letting any asshole on the internet use this, you need an anti-fraud strategy because settlement times are measured in days and there are plenty of ways that money can be sent but never refunded.

Good luck!

[1] http://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-persp...

Re: Ask HN: How do you build a payments app like Venmo?

#4
post #3

How much are you willing to spend per transaction? With Stripe or Braintree it’s trivial but expensive. Are you targeting just the US market and dollars? Going directly with a bank is cheaper but more complex [1]. And unless you’re adding significant value you’ll probably need a money transmitter license in your state. And if you’re planning on letting any asshole on the internet use this, you need an anti-fraud stra…

Thanks for this. That link is extremely helpful and goes in depth to the ACH Networks from a developers perspective. Cheers!

Re: Ask HN: How do you build a payments app like Venmo?

#5
post #2

Any payments developers out there? What does it take to connect to different banking systems to transfer funds and how do you go about it?

Building from scratch or using an API?

You can use plaid.com for that. It also integrates with stripe.com pretty well too.

Re: Ask HN: How do you build a payments app like Venmo?

#7
post #2

Any payments developers out there? What does it take to connect to different banking systems to transfer funds and how do you go about it?

Building from scratch or using an API? You can use plaid.com for that. It also integrates with stripe.com pretty well too.

Ideally building from scratch because the platform relys on taking a small percentage of each transaction for revenue.

Re: Ask HN: How do you build a payments app like Venmo?

#9
post #2

Any payments developers out there? What does it take to connect to different banking systems to transfer funds and how do you go about it?

Building from scratch or using an API? You can use plaid.com for that. It also integrates with stripe.com pretty well too.

Plaid seems like an incredible company, going this route would save a huge amount of engineering initially, but would cut into revenues. I might explore this further. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: How do you build a payments app like Venmo?

#10
post #2

Any payments developers out there? What does it take to connect to different banking systems to transfer funds and how do you go about it?

If you're in the EU, read up on PSD2. It's opening up payments significantly.

US Based, but I read an article about it. Pretty interesting.
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