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Comment by steveklabnik | Hacker News Reader

Sad to hear this news. I had a wonderful time at Balanced. Payments is a very, very hard space, business-wise. All my best to my former co-workers.

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ACH(Balanced) is unprofitable if it doesn't have massive volume (fixed$/trans) . CC(Stripe) is more profitable - %rates are toggled.

As a former employee, it would be bad form to respond to speculation by a 4 minute old HN account about the specifics here, so I will not.

I'm not sure why you say Balanced(ACH) and Stripe(CC) when both do both, though.

Profitable companies don't shut down. Also it's not unusual for ACH processor to shut down. it's difficult. they certainly lasted longer than the any startup in the "old boys" space. Stripe will ingest it, has the buffer for the bad margins and will crush the old boys space. this is a good thing. didn't mean to offend.

Doing both is not same as doing both well (what contributes most to gross margin or keeps the lights on)

Thanks, Steve! We miss having you around here :)

<3 <3 <3

I was gonna swing by the office when I'm in SF in a month or two, oh well :/

Why is it hard, specifically?

Getting a money transmitter license in virtually every state, many of them requiring six-figure surety bonds, is just one of the many hurdles before you can take your first customer. First you have to raise the cash, then you have to deal with at least this many government agencies:

https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/licenses

Tons of stuff. Random example: doing international payouts basically requires having a subsidiary in each country you want to pay out to, thanks to the credit card company agreements. This is a pretty high barrier to entry for anyone who wants to get started in the space.

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