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I have a major frustration with payment providers — even contemporary players like Stripe — that can't offer a 3rd party payments system. That is, anything rese
by peteforde 14y ago
I have a major frustration with payment providers — even contemporary players like Stripe — that can't offer a 3rd party payments system. That is, anything resembling a "marketplace" where you sell things on behalf of someone else, take a cut and pass on the rest to the content creator requires the integrator to come up with a half-assed payout pipeline. This often results in sending cheques and/or making PayPal payments.
My dream would be a product offering that offered pass-through payment processing, so my vendors have an account and give my store a key. Payments go directly to the vendor, and a pre-negotiated amount or percentage is automatically collected and sent to me. Both me and the vendor pay the same processing rate.
I have several concepts I'd love to build and launch, but all of them fall down because I can't easily justify a 2x2.9% transaction fee.
- Breefield 14y agoHere you go :) http://balancedpayments.com http://balancedpayments.com
- peteforde 14y agoThanks for the link! I didn't specify that it would have to work outside of the US, which is my mistake. That said, I had no idea this existed and it's definitely on my radar now. Thank you again.
- 18pfsmt 14y agoHave you thought about forming a US corporation (C Corp or LLC)? Yes, you would have to pay some taxes, but you could choose a low/ no tax burden state like Delaware or Wyoming. Assign a local agent, with physical/ mailing address, and open a US business banking account is pretty much all there is to it (not all). I've actually considered offering this as a service, but convincing myself there is an actual need has been difficult.
- peteforde 14y agoIf you can reduce the act of registering a Delaware C Corp and opening a US bank account to entering my billing details, you'll have my business.
- Breefield 14y agoI understand Balanced is trying very hard to get into CA as well, so they may be a viable solution for you soon.
- someone13 14y agoActually, you can do this with Stripe Connect [1]. The end-user signs up with a Stripe account, you get an OAuth key, and can make charges on their account. You can also collect fees on top of any payments [2]. [1]: https://stripe.com/docs/connect https://stripe.com/docs/connect [2]: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/collecting-fees https://stripe.com/docs/connect/collecting-fees
- peteforde 14y agoThank you so much! I don't know how I missed that.
- dangrossman 14y agoI think both Amazon Flexible Payments and PayPal Adaptive Payments support everything you're asking for. They're separate products from Amazon Simple Payments and PayPal Website Standard / PayPal Pro which, as you know, can't be used for that kind of business.
- peteforde 14y agoSadly, Amazon doesn't support Canadians yet. I have a personal policy: I will never build a business that relies on a PayPal product. I've read too many horror stories about frozen accounts where people were punished for being successful to risk my client's money with them.
- OafTobark 14y agoI've been on the receiving end of it so believe me when I say it royally sucks