Send payouts with Stripe

https://stripe.com/blog/send-payouts-with-stripe/

by pc • 13 years ago

315 137 13 years ago

How does this jive with laws around transmitting money?

pc5• 13 years ago

Tl;dr: we work with a bank to do this; we do lots of checks; and you're required to verify the identity of the recipients. See https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending-transfers#verifyin... for more info.

thinkcomp4• 13 years ago

Do the funds ever sit in your (Stripe's) account or is the ACH transfer direct from the card to the destination account?

hndl• 13 years ago

How does Stripe verify the business (which service do you leverage), besides matching against the OFAC blacklist?

driverdan• 13 years ago

"Stripe is not a bank or a money services business (“MSB”) and Stripe does not offer banking or MSB services as defined by the United States Department of Treasury."

danecjensen• 13 years ago

Can't I build a marketplace with stripe connect? How is this different?

pc5• 13 years ago

(I work at Stripe.)

With Stripe Connect, your users have to have Stripe accounts. This makes sense for, say, Squarespace, where their users are likely to want to manage the business themselves: logging in to their Stripe account, watching their analytics, providing refunds, handling customer service, etc.

This is designed for cases like paying Lyft drivers. The drivers don't really care about the internals; they just want money to appear in their bank account.

There's more at https://support.stripe.com/questions/stripe-connect-vs-sendi....

troyk5• 13 years ago

Each of your marketplace customers would need their own stripe account (we do this now). This would enable a single stripe account to be used for charging the cards, and your app controls the transfer of funds back to the marketplace vendors

patio11• 13 years ago

It supports substantially more complicated movements of money. Stripe Connect is basically "Bring your own Stripe account. We handle the API integration for you." This lets you do things like (hypothetical case for Airbnb-clone) "Pay the room lister 90% of the amount charged 5 days after the later of 'satisfactory feedback received from renter' or '10 days after checkout'. Then, pay us our 10% fee for enabling the transaction."

Bonus: with this, the lister doesn't need a Stripe account and will perceive all of their interactions with money being handled by you or their bank. This means you don't have to, as a part of making the sale to them to list their room, convince them "You should really open a Stripe account."

troyk5• 13 years ago

This is cool, but the money has to be charged via credit card first right? It would be nice to transfer money from the bank account linked to stripe to another account, and as a user of Stripe's connect API, it would be nice to enable this in our apps for our users.

Even cooler would be full blown ACH. We are working with ACH providers now and what a stark contrast to the beauty of stripe. All require some form of monthly fee, paper set-up forms with 1-2 week delays (vetting periods) and API's from the 90's

amfeng10• 13 years ago

(I work at Stripe.)

Right. Those are both things that are on our product roadmap. (:

troyk5• 13 years ago

Free hugs and kisses from me when you guys roll it out (really gets my cofounder motivated, so thought I'd try it here!)

JshWright3• 13 years ago

On an only moderately related note... here are two more things that I would love to see on the roadmap:

1) Better support for disputes in the API (right now to get all our disputes, we have to pull _all_ charges and walk them...)

2) The ability to generate test disputes. You guys provide an awesome test API, but there's no way to generate disputed charges in testing, so I can't test any of that functionality...

johne202• 13 years ago

I too would love to be able to accept ACH payments. Our customer base is currently organizations that are happy to pay via ACH, but CC is not usually good option. (B2B)

netvarun• 13 years ago

You could checkout Balanced Payments (https://balancedpayments.com/) - a YC company that does ACH.

troyk5• 13 years ago

Last time I checked they didn't do ACH, and were doing basically what stripe released today.

uptown• 13 years ago

I think Dwolla offers what you want, don't they?

dm8• 13 years ago

Apart from Balanced Payments and Dwolla I don't think anyone gives a simple way (means using API) to send payouts. This could be huge!

bob13579• 13 years ago

Balanced Payments only allows transfers to customers with Wells Fargo accounts, right? Does Stripe allow transfers to all banks?

sachinag• 13 years ago

Same day to Wells, next day to else, I believe.

ajsharp7• 13 years ago

You can transfer to any US bank account with Balanced. Wells Fargo accounts benefit from same day transfers, while all other accounts are next business day.

ajsharp7• 13 years ago

FWIW, I think Dwolla still requires the recipient to have a Dwolla account. Stripe and Balanced are white labeled products.

run4yourlives2• 13 years ago

Please bring this to Canadian Bank accounts. Please, please please. :-)

kareemm• 13 years ago

Ditto! I would implement this tomorrow if it was available on Canadian bank accounts.

lacero• 13 years ago

Interac.ca email money transfer

run4yourlives2• 13 years ago

If your financial institution does not yet offer the service, or if you don't bank online... You will be required to register and provide your banking information in order for the money to be deposited into your bank account. The deposit usually takes 4 - 6 business days to process and a $4.00 fee will be deducted from the deposit amount.

Not really compatible.

anderspetersson• 13 years ago

Really neat feature.

Is a rollout to scandinavia in the weeks, months or years-timeframe?

tyre• 13 years ago

How long does it take from the time I create the transfer to it hitting the user's bank account?

amfeng10• 13 years ago

It's next day, depending on what time you create the transfer.

https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending-transfers#transfer...

ISL• 13 years ago

$0.25/transfer, without a cap on the amount? Might expose Stripe to a lot of risk on large transfers?

Example: If something goes sideways on an $100k transfer, $0.25 is 0.0003% of the borked transaction....

jaredstenquist• 13 years ago

Since this feature is backed by a bank (FDIC backed bank no doubt) I assume it has the same protection as any other transfer and that the backing-bank is actually shouldering the risk.

jasonswett• 13 years ago

I assume the author of the announcement wrote the example code with the longshot hope that some Stripe users would say, "Hey, I guess I'll send Amber Feng three thousand bucks, just to see if this works." Takeaway point: always write code examples in such a way that a straight copy-and-paste might send you a lot of money.

naz• 13 years ago

It's in cents, so she'll only get $30. But it all adds up :)

amfeng10• 13 years ago

It's a test-mode API call, so I'm sadly not getting any money from this. (:

rebelidealist2• 13 years ago

From my understanding it takes 7 days for the funds charged with a credit card to be available? In this case, is there an api to show how much is actually available to payout to 3rd party?

amfeng10• 13 years ago

Yep! https://stripe.com/docs/api#balance

jonthepirate• 13 years ago

Sweet.. can't wait for full ACH! ... watch out Balanced.. they're on your tail!

zende7• 13 years ago

(I work at Balanced)

Balanced (https://balancedpayments.com) provides a payouts solution for marketplaces like redditgifts, Crowdtilt, Fancy, Artsy, Visual.ly, and many others.

The differences with Stripe include the money being available for payout immediately (instead of 5 days), and the recipient will receive the money the next business day. Balanced has also performed a lot of work to verify merchants with as little information as possible — name, dob, and address. Instead of SSN for an individual you only need to pass in the last four.

pc5• 13 years ago

Stripe actually requires substantially less information -- just the recipient's name.

Still, this isn't about Stripe vs Balanced -- we just built the API many of our users wanted. Hope you guys continue to do well!

zende7• 13 years ago

Balanced requires name, DOB, and address only to underwrite the recipient as a merchant to avoid the marketplace becoming an aggregator. It is still possible to make a next-day payout directly to a recipient without this information:

  curl https://api.balancedpayments.com/v1/credits \
      -u f97912a2cd8a11e2a411026ba7cd33d0: \
      -d "amount=10000" \
      -d "bank_account[name]=Johann Bernoulli" \
      -d "bank_account[routing_number]=121000358" \
      -d "bank_account[type]=checking" \
      -d "bank_account[account_number]=9900000001"

In that case you can also use Balanced only for payouts by funding your escrow with your own bank account. Stripe would require you to charge your own credit card to perform this service.

As you said, the main difference is about focus. Balanced has focused on supporting marketplaces from the beginning and continues to do so.

spoiledtechie• 13 years ago

Its nice to see that Stripe wishes competitors well when all Balanced tried to do was promote their brand.

meritt2• 13 years ago

You're posting on HN though. You cannot have a payment solutions post on HN without Balanced showing up and waving their arms all over the damn place. I understand this is a YC site but it's really annoying and distracting.

brackin• 13 years ago

Stripe is also starting to grow internationally which is one reason why I'd choose stripe.

yesimahuman• 13 years ago

Interesting to see Balanced and Stripe competing. Is this going to be a growing trend in YC? I'm sure it's a hard problem to avoid.

seiji2• 13 years ago

Balanced has always inhabited a nebulous void of blatant-copying-with-one-novel-new-feature territory for me.

It's clear they just copied (with permission? consent?) the public interface of Stripe. They tried to copy the documentation format (layout, style, presentation) too, but it came off kinda poorly (margins, people. margins). They have public test cards/accounts, but they fail to test correctly because they get "used" and can't have multiple actions performed against them. Then, there's the whole ID thing. Why the fuzzy heck would you use ugly, long, probably-going-to-run-off-my-screen URIs as IDs instead of short IDs? They advise you to never construct your own API endpoint URIs from shorter IDs, except that's exactly what they do all throughout their documentation.

But, Balanced lets you pay out next day and Stripe holds your funds for 7 days before allowing payment. So, Balanced wins on time-to-pay speed (and they have same-day transfers to Wells Fargo). Though, with Stripe I assume you could eventually have enough of a float in your account to pay out next-day under your own prior funds.

From my complete outsider point of view it feels like Balanced is full of slightly subpar copy ninjas. (obviously just on their API, documentation, and front-end presentation. Their backend could be amazing or it could be meter high jenga code.)

Disclaimer/Validator: I've written a tiny unofficial client for each each product/company. https://github.com/mattsta/stripe-erlang and https://github.com/mattsta/balanced-erlang

tpurves• 13 years ago

As with all money transfer products, the technology to transfer funds to an individual is generally the fun/easy part. Wait until you find out about America's (and most other countries) wonderful anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing compliance laws that can land you in less-fun places like federal prison if you don't use this sort of webservice very, very carefully.

legutierr• 13 years ago

Former licensed money transmitter executive here. As far as I am aware, as long as you are not "structuring" transfers (which means breaking payments up with the intent to hide their common origin and/or destination) and are not attempting to actually launder money, the real risk of federal prison time is born by the operator of an unlicensed money transmitter, not the user of such a service.

In the US, operating an unlicensed money transmitter is an offense that carries, if I recall properly, up to five years of federal prison time per count[1]. That is to say, if you create a service by which one party is able to send money to another third party, and operate that service without a license where one is required (and under that license adhere to capital, bonding and procedural compliance requirements), you are subject to federal criminal prosecution.

I'd be curious as to Stripe's and Balanced's interpretation of their obligations under these laws vis-a-vis their payout services.

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1960

bpatrianakos• 13 years ago

Balanced is now being heavily discussed. Mission accomplished I suppose.

nhangen• 13 years ago

How does this comment not get flagged for removal? Might as well talk about how your best friend gets paid 5k/month working from home for only a few hours/week.

thedangler• 13 years ago

Can't wait for Canada to get this.

fudged71• 13 years ago

Seconded. I will use this immediately.

samwillis• 13 years ago

Any chance of this coming to the UK? Loving the UK Beta for cc payments!

daveoh• 13 years ago

The uk beta is awesome! I would love to know when we can send money to UK and other EU accounts. Any stripe employees care to comment on any potential roll out roadmap outside of the US?

zbush• 13 years ago

Now that payment processors like Stripe and Balanced are providing very similar services, what serves to differentiate them? As each of these companies release features, they become closer and closer to converging to the exact same product. I'm seeing the same fees, the same abilities to payout, the same ability to act as a marketplace, with only a few very minor differences. Why should someone pick Stripe over Balanced, or vice versa?

ryanmerket2• 13 years ago

Support and transparency.

nairteashop• 13 years ago

I think you should pick based on your primary use case, i.e. whether you are a merchant (stripe) or a marketplace (balanced).

IMO in a couple of years the offerings from these two companies will be so close that this distinction won't matter, but for now they are converging in from different directions so you should choose appropriately.

(I feel this is a lot like Box vs. Dropbox. One started from the team/enterprise side, and the other from the personal/consumer side, but now Box offers free 5GB for personal use, Dropbox offers dropbox for teams etc. A couple of years back, it mattered which one you picked depending on your use case, but these days not so much.)

ehdeelee• 13 years ago

She went to my school Berkeley!

mtgx• 13 years ago

When is there going to be a serious Paypal alternative that works pretty much everywhere, internationally?

jedberg• 13 years ago

Not for a long long time. The reason Paypal doesn't work everywhere is because of crazy laws, not technology.

And Paypal can afford many more hours of lawyering than most startups.

conductr• 13 years ago

What does the payee see? My business name, stripe's name, etc

amfeng10• 13 years ago

Your business name, along with the transfer statement descriptor you specify (though this varies by bank).

silverbax882• 13 years ago

I just used Stripe for one of my major annual events. I used PayPal the first two years, and all I can say is Stripe is far superior to PayPal. I do wish the dashboard was a little more configurable, but that's minor. Everything else is so much better.

Pros: + auto deposit into the back account without having to make requests

+ easy refund process

+ easy charge identification process

Cons:

- a few customers like using PayPal, so there's that. We dropped PayPal entirely from the online sign up and payment so for the users who wanted PayPal we had to send them our PayPal address. Not entirely smooth or professional, but that's not Stripe's fault, it's the reality of having an entrenched payment processor.

- the dashboard displays total volume, and that's it. Would like this to be configurable. Showing total volume since day 1 is pretty useless, especially since it does not appear to remove refunds.

amfeng10• 13 years ago

Which parts of the dashboard in particular? Would love to hear your feedback at amber@stripe.com!

silverbax882• 13 years ago

I don't have much to complain about, but I will gather my thoughts and shoot them over. Really a huge fan of the product, though.

randall3• 13 years ago

I'm most interested in the inverse... allowing customers to send us cash directly from their bank accounts for $.25 per transfer (instead of the bullshit credit card company fees). I'm sure there's some serious fraud implications that Stripe would have to deal with to ensure validity, but is that coming?

amfeng10• 13 years ago

Yep -- this is something we're really interested in doing as well.

arvinds2• 13 years ago

How soon do you estimate having international bank transfers?

LukeHoersten• 13 years ago

It may be limiting to call the API object "Recipient" then. It precludes a bidirectional ACH object. Maybe "Bank Account" or something would have been more future proof.

ajsharp7• 13 years ago

FWIW, Balanced has this functionality: https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#crea...

jonpaul• 13 years ago

I thought ACH debits were in beta? Are they out of beta now?

randall3• 13 years ago

Network effects. :) I'm not going to swap stripe for balanced at this point, but would happily offer customers the ability to pay with a bank account if they prefer.

LogicX• 13 years ago

You want to look at dwolla or venmo - which do banks transfers for payments with very low fees.

Disclosure, referral links:

http://lx.tc/dwolla http://lx.tc/venmo

azharcs• 13 years ago

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ROFISH• 13 years ago

Just to be clear, this requires a balance in your Stripe account? What if you do not have a balance? How does this affect the currently (already very slow) 7 day payout? If an account is balance holding, and then you withdraw to your own bank account, does that mean the 7 days starts then? What if you do not have enough balance?

losvedir• 13 years ago

Congrats on the launch!

My startup was in the private beta for this and is in the process of switching to Stripe for ACH payouts from our previous provider bill.com. The folks at Stripe are super friendly and helpful. Two thumbs up! :)

zrail• 13 years ago

This sounds pretty awesome, I can't wait to try it out.

FYI I'm working on a guide to integrating Stripe with Rails[1] and I'll definitely be covering this, as well as Stripe Connect.

[1] http://www.petekeen.com/mastering-modern-payments

niico• 13 years ago

Does the font rendering look bad to all of us? http://cl.ly/image/0S3B0H241w01

amfeng10• 13 years ago

Hm, that's interesting.

What OS/browser are you on? (Feel free to email me at amber@stripe.com as well.)

thedogeye• 13 years ago

Can Stripe now be used to accept ACH payments as well as send them?

dblock• 13 years ago

It's ridiculously hard to launch a new marketplace. I think it's awesome that we have more API choices.

My next big problem is taxes. I wish one of these two could make it a no-brainer for the same market-place scenario (eg. selling a work from a South African gallery to a customer in France via a U.S. based marketplace).

As a footnote, I am a very happy Balanced customer @ http://artsy.net.

LemonSX• 13 years ago

Keep up the great work, I absolutely love you guys!

Send payouts with Stripe

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