

Ask HN: How Would You Do Escrow b/t Users in Bootstrap w/o Paypal? - alliemobley

tl;dr: Need to do escrow between users without paypal, what do?<p>I`m the new CTO, redoing ConnectWithContractors.com(asp.net 2.0 webforms website) in bootstrap and open source technologies to love my life a little more and minimize scaling/hosting/dev costs and maximize utility, sanity, and on-boarding time.  The old app was too poorly implemented to get myself on-boarded without going to great lengths, so I taught the CEO just enough coding to understand the problem and sell him on a fresh start. Check it out: connectwithcontractors.github.com
The asp.net app had an unfinished attempt at an escrow implementation via paypal.  I heard paypal intends to fix the issues they have had in the past, but I don't want to use them in our mvp, unless it's the fastest solution to the problem, in which case, so be it.<p>So what would you do HN?
======
JoachimSchipper
Escrow just screams fraud; properly solving that is a billion-dollar business
by itself, so I'd strongly urge you not to implement something yourself.

That said, escrow.com and the like exist; I have no experience, but escrow.com
seems to accept most every reasonable way of paying for an acceptable fee.

~~~
alliemobley
I agree that building an escrow service to solve a construction problem
doesn't make sense. It`s like your car needing a new engine so you build a jet
instead. Anyone want to build an escrow startup with a garunteed customer
lined up?

~~~
JoachimSchipper
What _is_ wrong with escrow.com [1] for what you're doing?

[1] No personal experience. This is not a recommendation. Feel free to
substitute one of their competitors, if such exist.

------
startupstella
Check out balancedpayments.com. I haven't seen anyone else with an escrow and
payments solution that is robust (i havent used them, just doing research for
my own projects)

