

Ask HN: I want to pay people, not just accept payment. What are my options? - mr_luc

So, accepting credit card payments is a single (admittedly, long) line of code for most languages if you're using most gateway+merchant bundles.<p>Some, like Authorize.net, let you accept ACH transfers.<p>Is there anyone out there that lets me MAKE ACH transfers with a few lines of code?<p>Or am I forced to live in the stone age/use paypal?
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andhapp
hmmm if you can transfer money into your merchant account then transferring
money into someone else's account should be straight forward but that's not
the case. I would suggest pay-pal but transferring money into someone's bank
account would actually take 3-5 working days from it so that sucks...but yes
you are right pay pal is the only way...

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mr_luc
Thank you! Yes!

It seems insane to me.

I mean, I can see how it would cause all kinds of money-laundering headaches
to regulators, but that had better not be the reason. Because money launderers
can already operate with near-absolute impunity (their problems are more
organizational, scaling their methods while keeping them under the radar).

There's got to be a bank out there that offers an API like this, but I wonder
what the entry point looks like, cost-wise.

Man. This seems like an obviously stupid thing. There should be more options
than Paypal.

edit: okay, going offline for next week. Will check back next Tuesday.

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rms
I have heard that ACH transfers are much more common in Europe. How do they do
it there?

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HeyLaughingBoy
Do you mean you want to pay employees? What do you mean by "pay people?"

~~~
mr_luc
I mean I'd like to give a user of an application money -- preferably, transfer
it directly into their bank account. Or not even a user.

If we can't, _that's_ stupid.

I mean, if the customer had a merchant account and a web interface for it, I
could use it to send him money from my debit card or a corporate cc.

From my exhaustive research (googling over this crappy latin american wifi),
it looks like the answer is "that's impossible; use paypal to do it by hand."

Stupid, if true.

