

Ask HN: What's the best service for sending money to your users? - chwahoo

If a start-up wants to support either paying its users or facilitating payments between users (possibly keeping a percentage of the payment), is there an alternative to PayPal?<p>Are there gotchas associated with this process?  For example, ebay has buyers send payment directly to sellers and then bills the seller for ebay's fees after the fact.  Is there a reason for this approach?  Are there other online businesses that facilitate transactions, and what payment services/approaches do they use?
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byoung2
Amazon Flexible Payments (<http://aws.amazon.com/fps/>)

 _Facilitate transactions between a buyer and a third party seller, take a cut
of the transaction, and have control over who pays the transaction processing
fees_

This is the payment system used by KickStarter...supporters pay through the
site, and when it reaches a certain threshold, KickStarter initiates payment
to the project owner, keeping a percentage. Note that the money goes directly
from the supporter to the project owner (and 5% to KickStarter) and not all
into KickStarter's account first.

I think the eBay approach is good if you want to accept more payment methods,
such as money orders and checks. This model ensures that you can always bill a
seller's credit card even when the transaction takes place outside of your
payment system.

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chwahoo
Thanks, this sounds promising. I'll take a look. I never cease to be impressed
by Amazon's collection of services.

~~~
byoung2
Amazon is an impressive company...I sometimes forget that they also sell
books!

