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Send money to debit cards
- dcc1 12y ago"Just like sending funds to bank accounts, a transfer to a debit card costs 25¢ and will arrive in the card’s bank account in 1-2 business days. As always, you’ll need to verify your recipient’s identity. While we can only support U.S. Visa and MasterCard debit cards at the moment, we’re actively working to bring our transfers API to our users in other countries." .... uhm or just use bitcoin ...
- pc 12y agoRight now, most of our marketplaces' sellers seem to prefer using their regular bank accounts rather than Bitcoin. But if/when the Bitcoin revolution happens, we'll enthusiastically support that too. (We're running a Bitcoin acceptance beta right now: https://stripe.com/bitcoin https://stripe.com/bitcoin)
- tomblomfield 12y agoSure, if most of your users are part of the <0.01% of the world who has a bitcoin wallet. For the rest of us, this could be pretty interesting.
- bnzelener 12y agoIt's tough to use Bitcoin seriously on a day to day basis when the value fluctuates so much. Yes, there are security advantages and there's less transactional friction. But that friction has a value, and it's way overshadowed by the volatility of the currency (today).
- vidarh 12y agoIn Europe at least I'd expect it to be a total non-starter. For starters, there's a ton of alternatives, but more importantly giving out the debit card number is high risk - much worse even than handing out your credit card details (getting charges dropped / charged back is much more effort with a debit card) - whereas giving out your bank account details is not (if bank lets anyone do anything other than depositing money in your account with just your account details, the liability is entirely on them). And for most transfers within the EU, you can do an online electronic transfer and get the money to the recipient in <2 hours - very often in less than 10 minutes.
- tjmc 12y agoSame in Australia. It always amazes me how archaic the US banking system is - particularly the continued use of checks. When my wife (then girlfriend) saw that I owned a check book here in Oz she burst out laughing and called me an old man. That was a decade ago.
- bnzelener 12y agoI read that Square Cash uses a credit card refund protocol to send money to debit cards so quickly. Is this the same mechanism?
- timdorr 12y agoGiven that Stripe charges the same fee as an ACH transfer, it sounds like Visa/MC has given them some sort of API to convert a debit card number to ABA routing/account numbers.
- steveklabnik 12y agoThis is not true.
- boling11 12y agoThere's no way to map debit card numbers to routing/account numbers (afaik). They're probably using the ATM network primarily and another method if it's not supported.
- jareau 12y ago(I'm a co-founder of Balanced, a payments company also building push to card (p2c) functionality [1]) > There's no way to map debit card numbers to routing/account numbers (afaik). You're correct. > They're probably using the ATM network primarily and another method if it's not supported. Based on the settlement times advertised, it looks like Stripe is simply performing "unreferenced refunds" to debit cards, rather than using the various ATM networks to push funds out to cards. If they were using the ATM networks, you could expect sub-10 min settlement times. [1] https://www.balancedpayments.com/push-to-card https://www.balancedpayments.com/push-to-card
- mentat 12y agoSub-10 min settlement times for what sorts of messages? You're seeing 220s land in that amount of time?
- sturgill 12y agoI was excited when I read about this when Balanced launched their beta of this same feature, and I'm equally as excited to read about it WRT Stripe. The competition in this space has provided some wonderful innovations in a very short period of time. I had to do some integration with Authorize.net some months ago and had terrible flashbacks to the late 90's / early 00's when they were the only real player in the game for self-hosted checkouts. Reading Authorize.net documentation does not invoke happy feelings.
- erichurkman 12y agoOne of the worst parts of the Authorize.net (and similar) era was not their terrible documentation, it was all of the half-complete library implementations. Most only implemented the small subset of Authorize.net API calls that the engineer required and nothing more. Thus most shops had to roll their own, or fork and add to another library and there was no coherency between libraries. Now APIs are being treated as first class citizens, rather than an afterthought, and libraries are released alongside product launches rather than being tacked on a decade later. So much better.
- steveklabnik 12y ago> The competition in this space has provided some wonderful innovations in a very short period of time. This is absolutely true! Let's do a feature comparison of when Balanced and Stripe have launched some new features: Balanced Stripe MP payments 11/16/12 2/24/14 ACH Payouts 2/14/13 6/24/13 Push to Card 1/24/14 5/22/14 Bitcoin 2/20/14 3/27/14 ACH Debits 2/28/13 (in private beta) metadata 11/16/12 10/30/13 auth/capture 11/16/12 6/20/13 same-day payouts 2/25/13 (2 day payouts in private beta) Dynamic Soft Descriptor 11/16/12 3/14/14 Everyone wins. It's tough because we (I've actually just left Balanced, and, in the interest of full disclosure, have been a Stripe customer for a few years) are so open, our roadmap is basically public. Today is the day we originally said we'd launch production push to card, not beta, so it's fun to see Stripe launch this feature today.
- johne20 12y agoIs there a transaction/monthly dollar limit to the amount you can send this way?
- steveklabnik 12y agoI don't know why you were downvoted, this is a good question. Have an upvote.
- hazelcough 12y agoThere isn't! Though as with any type of money-moving, you'll need to consider tax implications :(.
- johne20 12y agoDo you work for Stripe? edit: nvm, I see you do by following your profile to github. Thanks for answer!
- Consultant32452 12y agoCan I send money from my credit card to my debit card? Because that's how you get frequent flier miles. Lots and lots of frequent flier miles.
- nlh 12y agoI presume with Stripe you can only send from your Stripe balance, which certainly can be funded with credit cards (yours or others), but you'll pay the 2.9% + transaction fee on the "inbound" (CC) side, which (I think?) would cost more than the miles. In that scenario you could skip the debit card part entirely and just charge your own credit card and have the money go to your bank account. The miles hounds have throught through these scenarios pretty thoroughly :)
- jamesbrownuhh 12y agoOne major bank set up an online payment service in the UK about ten years ago which allowed you to load money, fee-free, from a credit card, and then pay other people. Of course, said money, once loaded, could also be withdrawn back to your bank account, but why would anyone do that? WHILE airmiles < MAXINT do { load, withdraw, pay card bill } Round and round the money goes. :) Obviously the fee-free aspect was unusual, perhaps an oversight but more likely an attempt to get some critical mass in the online payments market which, at the time, was primarily only PayPal and a UK outfit called "NoChex" (which of course DID charge a fee.) Eventually a loading fee did arrive, and a little later on, the service closed up shop entirely.
- Luc 12y agoDo all European bank cards have the associated bank account number printed on them? Mine has, the full IBAN.
- ChrisH91 12y agoIt seems that way. My UK bank card has the sort code and account number printed on it
- ollebro 12y agoYep, I though all cards around the world had that. But it seems to me that buying stuff with a debit card isn't that common in USA.
- zacinbusiness 12y agoU.S. cards just have the card number, which of course is separate from the account number, and then there's the "security code" on the back, which is typically a 3 or 4 digit number. But there is no other account information printed on the card. Also, I found out when I began working for international clients, the U.S. doesn't participate in the IBAN system. Instead we have something else which necessitates international wire transfer payments be made via an account number, a routing number, and a swift number. It's very annoying. (perhaps business accounts work differently, I get paid directly into my personal account which I'm sure is a bad idea, but it works for me).
- Goopplesoft 12y ago> But it seems to me that buying stuff with a debit card isn't that common in USA. No it is, almost all my purchases are via debit but it comes off my credit card. Most banks come with Credit cards that are just a fee-less low-liability proxy for debit that gets withdrawn from the bank account.
- btown 12y agoNote that this is not true for the US - makes it trivial to cancel a stolen debit card if you realize it's stolen before it can be used.
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- adamfeldman 12y agoAmazing to see this feature roll out at Balanced and now Stripe. The main reason many of my friends don't like using Venmo and related apps is the burden of putting in your bank account and routing numbers (not even the security worry, just the effort it takes!).
- maccman 12y agoAfaik, Balanced don't have debit card payouts publicly available, they only have a landing page which is 'accepting applications'.
- jareau 12y ago(Balanced co-founder here) You're right. Our API has been built, but we're giving private beta access to anyone that made prepayments via our crowdfunding campaign [1] first. Private beta will launch next week [2]. We want to make sure the performance (instant payouts & high coverage) is on par with our standards before a public release, which will happen later this summer. [1] https://balanced.crowdhoster.com/let-s-push-to-debit-cards https://balanced.crowdhoster.com/let-s-push-to-debit-cards [2] https://www.balancedpayments.com/push-to-card https://www.balancedpayments.com/push-to-card
- steveklabnik 12y agoIt actually works in our test API for anyone. Check it: Make a card: $curl https://api.balancedpayments.com/cards \ -u ak-test-2qEM0Znvd8LIVbZ01LbFHvHgab4fkNr3c: \ -d name="Johannes Bach" \ -d number=4342561111111118 \ -d expiration_month=05 \ -d expiration_year=2017 The 'credit' link in the response is that comes back is '/cards/CC2mEWYlYvod2E1w3TJHOiGh/credits'. So we push: $ curl https://api.balancedpayments.com/cards/CC2mEWYlYvod2E1w3TJHOiGh/credits \ -u ak-test-2qEM0Znvd8LIVbZ01LbFHvHgab4fkNr3c: \ -d amount=10000 We will turn it on _in production_ for people in the beta period. Some customers have already integrated it in test!
- vostrocity 12y agoHow about Square Cash then? I was quite impressed to see them use only a debit card number to receive cash.
- ianhawes 12y agoBalanced 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 https://www.balancedpayments.com/push-to-card
- steveklabnik 12y agoYeah, 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.
- kmf 12y agoWhat 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-moves-cash http://jonbwhite.tumblr.com/post/66853226398/how-square-move...
- steveklabnik 12y ago"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.
- ChuckMcM 12y agoI wonder if banks will close this loophole where anyone can effectively "refund" a debit card as a negative cash transaction. (that is without a matching purchase transaction). I saw an option to 'send cash' on Hangouts the other day so I presume Google is A/B testing this as well. (Don't get me started on the notion of hangouts where you can send the other person cash, it seems a bit too attractive to the webporn crowd).
- mason55 12y ago> it seems a bit too attractive to the webporn crowd Why is this a bad thing? Two adults participating in a consensual tranasction
- zacinbusiness 12y agoExactly! I could have more easily paid my way through college :-)
- droopyEyelids 12y agoBecause people are more likely to do things the easier they are, and sex stuff is one of the few ways it's easy for young people to make money. Due to a confluence of perverse incentives across many facets of life, this becomes part of a sales funnel that recruits young people to the sex industry.
- genericuser 12y agoBecause you believe the sex industry itself is bad? Or because specific companies and members of the sex industry are bad, and you are generalizing?
- droopyEyelids 12y agoIn many cases sex work is not a physically or emotionally healthy way to support yourself. In every case it is a limited career that does not scale with age, while inculcating habits and attitudes that make traditional employment or switching industries difficult.
- loceng 12y agoIs this using the same method that Dwolla uses for their 25 cent transactions?
- ihaveqvestion 12y agoWhy don't Balanced and Stripe work together on these features? I understand that they're competitors, but it seems as though we've got good engineers in both companies needlessly duplicating effort. Why not work together to provide this feature and spend that limited engineering time, expertise, and innovation on the things which differentiate the service? Stripe and Balanced aren't direct competitors, I think - why not work together on the common ground and use the time saved to make the differences really shine? [I think I'm being overly utopian, but I don't understand why. Can someone explain it to me?]
- imjk 12y agoRead the "Founders at Work" chapter on Max Levchin and Paypal. In PayPal's early stages, there were multiple companies all trying to do online money transfers securely. They were all fighting fraud to the tune of millions of dollars daily. Eventually, PayPal was the first to figure out some ingenious ways to combat fraud. With the first reliable online money transfer network, they were able to dominate the market, especially on Ebay then the largest ecommerce site. tl;dr - Winner-take-all market.
- treeface 12y agoFor the same reason most companies don't share trade secrets. - Stripe and Balanced ARE direct competitors, much more so than say Stripe and Braintree or Balanced and PayPal. Balanced handles the money in a bit of a different way, but the end product is very similar (i.e. receive payments from cards and bank accounts, and send payments to bank accounts [and now debit cards for both as well]). - One or both companies may feel they have the better solution (see steveklabnik's comment above), and thus collaborating would be giving away intellectual capital for less in return As a potential customer, you should prefer that they do work separately, because when different teams come up with different solutions, the chances are greater that at least one of those solutions is correct. This leads to greater long-term health in the industry as a whole.
- pbreit 12y agoI'm not even sure how that would work and it makes no sense at all.
- mangeletti 12y agoTake that, Dwolla :)
- iLoch 12y agoWow this is awesome. I recently decided to go with Stripe, and this news is only adding on to the positive experience I've had so far. Great work Stripe team, keep it up!