Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a Year

Re:Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a ... by icelancer on Thursday January 16, 2014 @06:46PM (#7073286)

As I continue to say in these threads (and it's been a long time), Balanced has terrible third-party support while Stripe dominates them.

We have this ridiculous non-overlapping issue with payment processors:

Balanced - Same day payouts (!) to WF, next-day to anyone else. ACH processing. Documentation isn't great. Third-party support is horrible. (Tickets are open on my [relatively popular] software of choice and have been for months; no timetable has been set.)

Stripe - Infinitely better documentation. Easier implementation. Outstanding third-party support. Crazy good APIs. Seven-day rolling payments (sigh).

Square - Next-day processing. Physical dongle. Easy to use web store. No APIs (for fuck's sake).

It's like each company looks at one another and figures out a way to best frustrate segments of the market, ensuring that no one provider can handle it all.

As for me, I put through low-mid six figures through Stripe and Square but I'd switch to Balanced if they would engender better support amongst third-party providers. Stripe has worked with me to cut payout speed, but it's not anywhere close to Square/Balanced. And if Square opened up their APIs, I'd leave everyone behind assuming third-party support was there.

Yeah, these guys are all better than Paypal/Authorize.net, but good god figure it out, please.

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Re:Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a ... by remear on Thursday January 16, 2014 @07:59PM (#7073611)

Hi! I work on the documentation for Balanced. I'd love to hear your feedback. What do you not like? What would you like to see us improve? What do you like about Stripe's docs? I'm currently working on updated documentation and welcome any feedback you have. https://docs.balancedpayments.com/1.1/overview/

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Re:Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a ... by zende on Thursday January 16, 2014 @07:39PM (#7073522)

(ceo of balanced)

> Tickets are open on my [relatively popular] software of choice and have been for months; no timetable has been set.)

I'm sorry to hear that. What software would you like to see Balanced support?

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Re:Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a ... by icelancer on Thursday January 16, 2014 @07:49PM (#7073569)

This was opened 11 months ago:

https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues/268

But it appears it was updated just yesterday by someone with WP experience, so maybe it will be done soon? Would love to test it out.

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Re:Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a ... by acchow on Thursday January 16, 2014 @08:32PM (#7073726)

Square has an API to access data:

https://connect.squareup.com

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Re:Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a ... by icelancer on Thursday January 16, 2014 @08:43PM (#7073765)

But not to charge cards.

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Re:Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a ... by loceng on Thursday January 16, 2014 @07:08PM (#7073385)

Stripe will have no motive to start doing same-day payments as long as they are dominating in different areas - the interest they collect on the money for those 7 days is quite valuable.

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Re:Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a ... by collision on Thursday January 16, 2014 @08:50PM (#7073791)

We don't collect interest on customer funds and -- if you run the numbers -- it wouldn't be of any significant value if we did.

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Re:Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a ... by zende on Thursday January 16, 2014 @09:56PM (#7074013)

I know the part about interest. You can't collect interest on money that's not actually your own, which is the same case with any payments company.

Out of curiosity, why don't you release the money faster?

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Re:Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a ... by uladzislau on Friday January 17, 2014 @12:56AM (#7074515)

Fraud protection, isn't it obvious?

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Re:Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a ... by jareau on Friday January 17, 2014 @02:43AM (#7074742)

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Re:Payments Startup Balanced (YC W11) Is Processing $370M a ... by loceng on Monday January 20, 2014 @01:33AM (#7087923)

Thanks for the response. Who collects it then? I can't imagine it stays idle..

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