

Show HN: One curl command issues next-day ACH deposit - mahmoudimus

At Balanced Payments YC W2011, we've been working on simplifying ACH deposits
and we've managed to boil it down to one curl command.<p>Tell us what you think! Ultimately, our goal with this is to provide
ACH deposits for those who are already using existing processing
solutions, but want to pay their users or vendors via ACH instead.<p>US only - we're cooking up something for international.<p>Without further ado:<p><pre><code>    curl https://api.balancedpayments.com/v1/credits \
        -d amount=10000 \
        -d description="Math lesson" \
        -d bank_account[name]="Johann Bernoulli" \
        -d bank_account[account_number]=9900000001 \
        -d bank_account[routing_number]=121000358 \
        -d bank_account[type]=checking \
        -u 7b7a51ccb10c11e19c0a026ba7e239a9:
</code></pre>
Try it out!<p>More about Balanced Payments here: https://balancedpayments.com
======
cperciva
Why have you not been acquired by Stripe yet? This seems like a bug.

~~~
dbul
From <https://balancedpayments.com> "no redirects. no iframes. no external
accounts." That's the unqiue, killer feature right there. If some M&A were to
happen between those companies, the existence of this feature is imperative.
Specifically, if I have a marketplace I don't want my customers to do any more
than a) type their paypal email or b) type their bank account details.

Edit: if you happen to seriously be confused by what I've written, please
visit the url and ctrl/cmd f for the quote. Then, take a look at what is
below. That is,

    
    
      curl https://api.balancedpayments.com/v1/credits \
        -d amount=10000 \
        -d description="Math lesson" \
        -d bank_account[name]="Johann Bernoulli" \
        -d bank_account[account_number]=9900000001 \
        -d bank_account[routing_number]=121000358 \
        -d bank_account[type]=checking \
        -u 7b7a51ccb10c11e19c0a026ba7e239a9:
    

You can't do that in Stripe. If you want accomplish the same effect using
Stripe, however, your customers will need some kind of account which is
external to your site and/or a redirect. Does that help?

~~~
jonknee
I'm confused... Stripe doesn't require redirects, iframes or external
accounts.

~~~
bdcravens
As I understand Balanced Payments, it's for the other side of the transaction:
Stripe is about people giving you money, but Balanced Payments is for sending
others money (where you do a straight ACH deposit). (As opposed to paying them
via Stripe, or PayPal, etc)

~~~
jareau
That's exactly right, but we do offer credit card processing as well. Our
processing and payouts functionalities can be coupled or used separately.
Check out the docs if you've got more questions:
<https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api>

------
wheaties
You guys are fantastic. You documentation is clear. The fact that you all live
on the IRC channels makes obtaining information and help super simple.

~~~
jareau
thanks wheaties. you can see a live stream of our IRC channel on our help and
support page too: <https://www.balancedpayments.com/help>

------
a1k0n
This is sort of frightening. The obscurity of ACH was the only real security
it had; now if I write a check, anyone who sees it can trivially withdraw
whatever they want from my account using the above API, no? What sort of fraud
protection is there?

~~~
jareau
This end point only allows you to send money to a bank account.

~~~
sp332
Only _to_ a bank account? haha and the money never comes _from_ any bank
account, huh? Again: what fraud prevention is there?

~~~
MichaelGG
Presumably, they have some sort of funding system, where they can
control/screen the intake and perform verification.

~~~
jareau
MichaelGG, you're correct. We verify the bank accounts of the companies that
register w/ Balanced to use our ACH API.

------
jjbohn
Nice! Greatly resembles Stripe, which imo is a good thing. Look forward to
using this next time I need ACH on a project.

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rgarcia
Someone should integrate this with Splitwise and solve bill/rent/etc.
splitting once and for all.

~~~
jareau
I tweeted at them. let's see if they reply :)
<https://twitter.com/balanced/status/288748033661870080>

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lancefisher
This is great! ACH is such a pain to deal with. This solves a real problem I
have right now. I'm using Stripe for payments, but I want an easy way for me
to send money via ACH. This looks like the ticket.

------
thematt
Looks great, but the terminology is slightly unclear. Is "Balanced Payouts"
your product name or company name or both? But your URL is balanced
_payments_.com? Might want to sync the two up.

~~~
mahmoudimus
Hi thematt,

Actually, Balanced Payouts is the product that we're showing HN here today.

Balanced Payments is the umbrella payment company that arches over Balanced
Processing, the credit card processing/ach debit arm, and Balanced Payouts,
the ach credit arm.

I'm happy to take suggestions on how to clarify that, if that wasn't clear
from the homepage.

~~~
kposehn
Love the ach feature except that we need to receive payments in addition to
making them.

Our payment sizes are in the 5-7 figure range and checks take too long. Will
you have the ability to receive via verified ACH in the future?

~~~
jareau
We're testing that functionality out right now. And trust me, we're well aware
that this is a highly demanded feature. We've discussed it at length with our
community on github: <https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues/2>

~~~
kposehn
Thanks for the link; looking forward to using the platform :)

------
codegeek
clickable <https://balancedpayments.com>

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callmeed
At NextProof, we use BrainTree and ACH funds to our photographers. This looks
cool but I'm trying to understand how it's different/better than what we do
now.

~~~
jareau
Last I heard, Braintree discontinued their ACH API. Are you still using it?

~~~
callmeed
Yes

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MichaelGG
Cool looking product! I'll note that the GoDaddy cert on the homepage is a bit
cheesy, although I don't know if your target audience cares or notices.

------
spier
What exactly is an ACH deposit btw? (sorry, German reader here)

Can one only send money with an ACH deposit or also pull money from an
account?

~~~
jareau
hey seb, ACH = automated clearing house[1]. It's the US network for moving
funds between two bank accounts. ACH is a push & pull system, but our API only
supports push.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Clearing_House>

------
alpb
If I embed this request onto an HTML form, what would be the name attribute on
input element? Is it going to be like name="bank_account[type]" ?

~~~
mahmoudimus
Hi there! Thanks for inquiring!

Here's a simple jsfiddle: <http://jsfiddle.net/KRFtB/>

Obviously - you wouldn't encode your secret key, etc in production, but this
is an example.

If you want to tokenize it properly, try:

<http://jsfiddle.net/mahmoudimus/DGDkt/11/>

We don't support CORS yet, but we're planning to do that shortly :)

Our company runs like an open source project, so anything you might have
thoughts on, we discuss publicly here:

<https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api>

We are also on IRC providing real-time support: irc.freenode.net #balanced

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rabrooks
ACH is way too slow. It is really an artifact of a slow moving banking
industry. Dwolla has made some limited strides with their 'Instant' product
but asking new customers to go through the signup process is also cumbersome.

Is Balanced Payments working on something that can put funds into someones
bank account within the hour?

~~~
rsync
Exactly.

ACH, wire transfers, etc. - it is amazing how much of our "modern" banking
practice is still defined by the constraints of (literally) horses and
buggies.

3pm cutoff times, overnight settlement, multi-day wire settlement ... what a
clown show.

~~~
onetwothreefour
FedWires are almost instant... depending on your bank, receiving bank, etc.

For most B2B FedWires, it's pretty much instant. Yay Treasury.

The cutoffs do suck, however.

The US needs to catch up to the rest of the world with regards to banking. And
also kill off checks.

~~~
jareau
What's the cost for FedWire?

~~~
onetwothreefour
The nominal cost (cost to the bank) is here:

[http://www.frbservices.org/servicefees/fedwire_funds_service...](http://www.frbservices.org/servicefees/fedwire_funds_services_2013.html)

It costs less than $1 to send a FedWire. The FedWire can be up to $1BN. :)

The FedWire system is actually very similar to transfer systems in other
countries. I'm not sure why ACH is still in use apart from as a way to
digitize checks.

That said, most banks charge, at minimum, $12 per wire in/out for personal
accounts. Most business/corporate accounts get wires free since that's how
people pay each other (something like $1TN in wires is processed every day).

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rabidonrails
Great to see -- this has been a giant pain in the past! Happy to see you guys
taking this on (so I don't ever have to :)

~~~
jareau
Thanks! We think of pain tolerance as a core competency. ;)

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joshwa
So if I understand the product correctly, I have to give you the money first,
wait 3-5 days, and then I can pay people?

That's why there is no way to specify the _source_ account?

~~~
jareau
Yeah, unfortunately we can't speed up the process for bringing money into the
system like we can for sending money out (i.e. next-day deposits). You'd have
to fund your Balanced account first before sending payouts.

------
GaryRowe
As an alternative to the ACH approach, Bitcoin offers this

bitcoind sendtoaddress <bitcoin address> <amount>

Works anywhere in the world, not just USA.

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xxpor
Does this work with Savings accounts?

~~~
jareau
Yep. You'll notice a 'type' field on the bank account resource. You can set it
to 'checking' or 'savings'
[https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#crea...](https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#creating-
a-new-bank-account)

