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Comment by ianhawes | Hacker News Reader

Balanced Payments' implementation[0] recently went into private beta. Interesting to note that between Stripe and Balanced, their fees are typically the same, however an important difference here is that Balanced is charging $1.00 versus 25c at Stripe.

[0] https://www.balancedpayments.com/push-to-card

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Yeah, unfortunately, Balanced doesn't have the same warchest that Stripe does, as they've raised way more funding than we are, so we can't use any of that money to price stuff mega cheap.

There are also multiple ways to build this kind of feature. Balanced is doing it 'the right way,' but you can fake it till you make it, and hope that Visa/MC doesn't get mad at you before you build out the real implementation. That way is also cheaper...

As an example of the benefit of 'the right way,' Balanced will be immediate for a large percentage of cards, rather than the 1-2 days that this page claims.

What is "the right way", if you're allowed to disclose that? I remember that Square Cash was doing their transfer feature using refunds[1], is that the same way that Stripe is doing it?

[1]: http://jonbwhite.tumblr.com/post/66853226398/how-square-move...

"Unreferenced refunds" are the 'wrong way': the card networks don't like it for various reasons. ATM networks are starting to offer an API that just does this, which is the 'right way.' Visa OCT was mentioned elsewhere in this thread, for example. This means you have to integrate with a patchwork of different networks if you want to have good coverage.

I don't have any special insight into how Stripe is doing it, but the extremely low cost and the '1-2 days' sounds like unreferenced refunds. I could be wrong.

On a tangent: why does the wrong way cost less money than the right way? Is this a form of price fixing by the credit card companies? I'd imagine Visa could offer these at less money (or free) than MC but it sounds like that's not the case.

I don't have an enormous amount of insight into this, but what I can tell you is that in this industry, pricing is all about risk. The reason unreferenced refunds are cheap is because you're exploiting a loophole in the API, basically. The reason they don't like it is that it messes with fraud calculations, which messes with risk.

The 'right way' is basically a new product, in my understanding and so, like any product, they charge what the market will bear.

That post credits Square with the refund method, but actually they were not the first.

The first I know of is Giftly, a gifting startup (around 2010?). Maybe there are earlier examples.

> There are also multiple ways to build this kind of feature.

It sounds like both Balanced and Stripe will use them :-). But let's not turn this into a Balanced vs Stripe thread. It's not especially relevant for users and we'll stay out of the way when you guys have your public launch. Continued good luck!

> let's not turn this into a Balanced vs Stripe thread.

Hey, as I said below, I'm a Stripe customer: you guys are great. Frankly, I don't even see Stripe and Balanced as directly competing. Well, Balanced is deep in a vertical of one of your products. When I took the job at Balanced, I kept on selling my books through Stripe: you guys kick ass for that use case.

> we'll stay out of the way when you guys have your public launch.

That was gonna be today. ;) :(

Interesting this is a customer communication/acquisition channel for your business when many of us see it as a peer discussion forum. I hadn't really considered that before.

Oh, I think it is a peer discussion forum, first and foremost, and shouldn't be treated as a communication/acquisition channel -- which is why I think that having threads veer off into the competitive weeds does the forum a disservice. (As a reader, I find it kinda tedious when it happens in other threads.)

Do you think it's useful for peers who are building things to discuss the relative characteristics of their tools?

I think the bigger difference for most of us is that Stripe's implementation is actually available to all of us, vs. being in private beta. No sooner did I see this announcement than I forwarded it along to a friend who could use this functionality today in a service he's building.

You're right. See this comment for some insight on why Balanced is releasing to a private beta first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7785476

(Balanced co-founder)

Actually, I should amend this comment: I'm not even sure why there is a comparison being made here. The potential applications for Stripe are so, so broad, and when you check out the marketing site for the other, the messaging is so niche in comparison. Maybe I should have said the biggest difference between the two is that Stripe actually seems to be applicable to most types of businesses we're all building. Judging from the homepage with Balanced, it seems like all this payment infrastructure is very tightly coupled with a solution for a niche type of business. I'd expect that latter bit to just be a Stripe Connect SaaS app that plugs in on top of the broadly applicable payment infrastructure Stripe provides.

In what way is Balanced only for "a niche type of business"?

Sorry, I should have been more clear. Their slogan is "payments for marketplaces." That's a very specific type of business.

I generally refrain from the Balanced vs Stripe debates because I use and like them both, but this comment is unfair, so much so that if I didn't know any better, I'd guess it were from someone with an interest in Stripe.

I'm in the same boat as you: I was hesitant to actually comment at all earlier, but before I posted, I thought the comments on this thread and others were reading very much like they were being hijacked from being about Stripe's feature release to being all these "me too" comments from the co-founder and a developer at another payment processor. It didn't seem very classy to me at all, so I threw my two cents out there to provide what I thought was some balance to the discussion. I'm sorry if it reads unfair at all, it's just IMHO.

Can't tell if that was a little jab at the end there, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. :-) My preference for and interest in Stripe as the operator of a Stripe Connect service is clear to anyone who clicks on my profile. :-)

It's not entirely clear, unless you go to your website. I'm not saying that as an attack or an accusation, just pointing out that I didn't know until your comment just now that you did :)

Fixed. Thanks. :-)

Was not meant as a jab. It just felt like it had a bit of agenda (the comment). Thanks for clearing it up.

Something I did learn today is that what Balanced really excels at is making marketplaces easy. Stripe doesn't do this well at all...at least not yet. So I think that for now, there's room for both.

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