

Ask HN: how to make recurring outgoing payments - eknuth

Ok, I have stripe for processing credit cards and it looks great.  I would like to be able to handle payments for my customers and send them money on a recurring basis.<p>I haven't found an easy way to do that.  Should I just cut them checks?  I'd love a service like stripe for handling outgoing payments as well.
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chalst
I assume you are in the US. Cheques seems to be usual within the US, but I
find them a nuisance when I am there, and people outside the US generally hate
cheques, which are very expensive to negotiate. Here in Germany, I shred US
cheques for less than $100 and ask to have the money sent to a friend to the
US instead; small cheques are simply not worth the bother.

A better way to handle this is to set up a wire transfer authority with your
bank: you might need an overpriced business account to do this, but I have set
one up with a regular home account. The way it worked for me, about 10 years
ago, is that I needed to go into the branch to authorise each recipient
account, but once I had that, I could make transfers with a phone call, with a
PIN for authorisation. That was convenient enough, I dare say that most banks
today have internet interfaces that might be more or less convenient than
that.

If you are invoicing to Europe or other countries in the IBAN network (i.e.,
mostly S.E. Asia), consider getting a dollar-denominated account with a
European bank: the fees for wire transfer should then be much lower than other
routes.

Money brokers offer cheaper rates for wire transfers than retail banks. My
wife uses E-Trade for international transfers and likes their service.

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eknuth
Yes, US. Sorry to make the assumption!

All payments would be domestic, at least at first. But I would love to make it
international at some point. Thanks!

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robflynn
I implemented a site that had this requirement. Much like the suggestions
already here, we found that PayPal was the easiest route.

We used a standard Merchant account (Authorize.Net if I recall) to handle
incoming money. For the outgoing money, we had a script that we ran monthly
that would calculate the amount due to each member. We then sent that money to
each user's paypal account (we required a paypal address upon signup.)

I, too, wish there was a better solution, but I am not immediately aware of
one.

I was going to recommend talking to Sahil Lavingia
[<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sahillavingia>] (Gumroad, etc.) as
Gumroad does payouts to users based on the items they sale. If I recall
correctly, their incoming payment system uses Stripe. It appears that Gumroad
also uses Paypal for paying users, though speaking to Sahil may still give you
some additional insight.

Best of luck, I hope this info helps.

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MrMike
Same amount to each recipient each month?

If you're with a major bank (BOFA, WF, etc), you can schedule payments with
your bank via their online banking.

The original question implied an API for outgoing payments, but since that
doesn't exist (afaik), you can ease the burden. For payments that vary in
amount, most major banks allow you to add a payee once, then whenever you know
the amount/date a payment will be due, you can schedule it. Ideal? Probably
not, but I find it much less painful than checks+stamps+USPS.

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adambarber
The easiest way is probably mass payments with paypal.
[https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-
ove...](https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-overview-
outside)

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eknuth
That looks good. It would be like an affiliate program.

I don't know why I have an aversion to paypal, though. I just want "stripe for
payments". I don't think it exists, though.

~~~
adambarber
Paypal isn't ideal for getting money, but for giving money, it doesn't get any
easier. Mostly everyone has a paypal account, so adding a paypal email address
field to their profile allows for easy scripting of the payment file build
process.

