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.
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
Re: UUID's, Jeff Atwood has a good post explaining their pros and cons: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/03/primary-keys-ids-ve....
> From my complete outsider point of view it feels like Balanced is full of slightly subpar copy ninjas.
I couldn't disagree more. Over the past couple of years, I've come to trust and admire the product as much as any other, including Stripe. These guys know what they're doing.
It's really unfortunate that we have a fractured payment processing market where overlapping them doesn't solve the problem. For example:
Square: Best in-person payment processor. Next day payments if taken before 5 PM PST. Does card-not-present transactions as well. For some insane reason, does not have web access or an API despite being around longer than Stripe and Balanced.
Stripe: Best integration with wp-commerce, third party plugins, etc. Excellent interface. Rapid prototyping and feature rollout. Cons: 7 day rolling payments are slower than Square, Balanced, and Paypal.
Balanced: Fastest payments. Terrible third-party support. Documentation not nearly as good as Stripe, interface is slightly confusing.
I use Stripe for my ecommerce business and Square for in-person transactions, but I desperately want to switch to Balanced because of cashflow improvements. But that's not going to happen until third-party plugin support is vastly improved (I've already opened tickets on this months ago in their tracker with no response). Or I'd switch to Square if they decided they wanted an additional $XXX million dollars in business and offered a web API (what is the reason for NOT having this).
Annoying, but considering where we were just a few years ago, I'll take it.
Calling Balanced a group of subpar copy ninjas is very ignorant. Dealing with payments, fraud, and banks is an extremely difficult. I rather Balanced tackle new problem in the payments like ACH debits than reinventing their documentation. Plus, they are a much smaller team than Stripe.
If a sector is already a polished like project management, then you can complain about how one company is not perfect enough with its smaller features.
(I don't work for either, but I use both apis extensively)