To clarify: Stripe underwrites you as the merchant. Balanced lets the API user underwrite anyone (yourself or someone else) as a merchant, allowing for example the operation of a marketplace, where each merchant has their own merchant account. Balanced allows you to underwrite an arbitrary number of merchants programmatically via API. Correct me if I am wrong, and I am sure pc will do if this is the case, but Stripe does not offer this functionality.
(I work at Stripe.) When you create a seller via the API, both Stripe and Balanced do the exact same thing: verify the identity of seller. You can run a marketplace on either.
I'm sorry, I can't see any mention of a seller resource at https://stripe.com/docs/api, nor does the Ruby library seem to implement it. Is it called something other than Seller?
I am very curious about this as well.
Hm? We absolutely do perform the underwriting ourselves.