Ask HN: Method to send and receive payments to/from users

6 points·blcArmadillo··4 comments

What payment services allow you to send users money in addition to receiving money? So far I've run across Amazon's Flexible Payments Service however I'm not crazy about it requiring users to have an Amazon account. It would be great if there was something like Stripe that also let users setup direct deposits etc. Any suggestions?

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I could not agree more with this. I feel like this is a huge business opportunity, to have a stripe-like api that lets you add bank accounts and do transfers that way.

I know that Venmo (http://venmo.com) just switched over to paying and receiving payments directly through bank accounts, but I assume they have painstakingly crafted the ability to do this from scratch. It's worth looking into - they have done a great job of it and it has to be possible, but there isn't a public api we can use.

If anyone has a solution, I would be stoked. If not, this is territory that is waiting to be tacked by stripe or another ambitious startup.

PayPal is the obvious option. 232 million accounts and all that, with the option to withdraw by ACH, check or free debit card. There's even no fees if the recipient only has a personal account. You can use Mass Payment to do payouts in bulk. Lots of companies that run affiliate programs pay out commissions through PayPal using Mass Payment.

I don't usually recommend it, but this seems like a good use-case for Dwolla as well.

Yeah. I was kinda hoping to avoid PayPal just because of all the negative press you hear about them but it looks like they might be my only option at the moment.

I believe WePay offers this.

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