

Debit bank accounts with Balanced Payments (YC W11) - forgingahead
https://www.balancedpayments.com/#processing

======
jareau
(I'm a co-founder of Balanced)

Here are some links to our docs:

1\. Create a bank account:
[https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#crea...](https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#creating-
a-new-bank-account) 1.1. You'll want to use balanced.js for this:
[https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/overview?language=bash...](https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/overview?language=bash#tokenizing-
sensitive-information)

2\. Bank account verification:
[https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#bank...](https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#bank-
account-verifications)

3\. Add bank account to an account:
[https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#addi...](https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#adding-
a-bank-account-to-an-account)

4\. Debit an account:
[https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#crea...](https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#create-
a-new-debit)

5\. Use callbacks so you know if the debit was successful:
[https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#even...](https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#events)

~~~
epikur
The text rendering on the site doesn't look great for me in Windows 7/8 and
Chrome/Firefox: <http://i.imgur.com/ictFz0V.png>

------
jonemo
Just in case somebody else living in ROTW was also wondering about
availability, the most important piece of info for us is hidden here:
<https://www.balancedpayments.com/help#22654897>

"Sellers/merchants must reside in the US, have a US mailing address and a US
bank account. Buyers can reside in nearly all countries and use any Visa,
MasterCard, American Express or Discover card (debit and credit)."

This isn't exactly a surprise, but I would really appreciate if you guys (and
all the other payment processing services out there) could include this
information a little more prominently.

~~~
jareau
Sorry about this -- we didn't mean to be misleading. What do you think we
could do to make our country limitations more prominent on our homepage?
<https://www.balancedpayments.com/#processing>

~~~
nolok
If your visitor is not in the US, add a red text or something that says
exactly the quote from parent ? I too was looking for it and ended up reading
the HN comment to find the answer.

~~~
jonemo
Think about it this way: How would you like to find out that a really really
rad service whose website you just found is only available in Liechtenstein
and Iceland? That's how you want to present your geo-restriction.

What parent suggests is a great idea but doesn't work by itself, because it
doesn't work for everyone. I for example am physically located in the USA but
I am still only interested in services that work in Germany. In addition to
that scenario, I know plenty of people who could be your target audience and
who obfuscate their physical location through proxies and VPNs, usually in
order to use US-only services.

I suggest you simply adding it to the text:

Accept credit cards and debit bank accounts for your US-based business.
Proceeds are available immediately.

Notice the difference? If not, read again. Those who care will notice it, for
all others it's two words they ignore.

------
pulledpork
The new homepage you dudes have is a big improvement. Why haven't you blogged
about how you're previewing this stuff on GitHub? It's fun to watch a start up
growing and changing there and I think it it's in really well with the
MVP/agile mindset

~~~
eberfreitas
It is great indeed. The only think that is not so cool for me is that the font
rendering of 'Fanwood Text' is pretty bad on Win 7 Chrome 25.0.1364.97. But I
love it. Just wish the font had a better rendering.

~~~
mjallday
Thanks for the feedback, we're *nix shop so I only tested it in browser shots
to be honest (shame on me).

I'll fire up a VM, check it out and try to find a good fallback or alternative
for Windows.

------
chatmasta
Is it just me or is Hacker News turning into an advertisement for Balanced
Payments?

------
Silhouette
When I click the submitted link, pretty much the first thing I read says this:

 _No PCI requirements_

 _Balanced is Level 1 PCI certified, so you can pass card data directly to us
without worrying about compliance._

I worry about services that say this sort of thing, because while they might
well get away with it, it's still almost always wrong.

I happen to think it would be immensely foolish of organisations like
MasterCard or VISA to crack down on the new generation of low-friction, easy-
setup card payment services who are helping businesses to accept card payments
with minimal effort, because I think alienating them would do severe damage to
the long term viability of the entire business model of such card payment
schemes. However, we _are_ talking about dinosaurs, and if you do incur their
wrath it can be very damaging to your future business prospects, so jumping
through the (much lesser) hoops they expect for businesses that outsource
their payment collection might still be a wise move.

~~~
jacquesm
> Balanced is Level 1 PCI certified, so you can pass card data directly to us
> without worrying about compliance.

That's a perfectly valid statement. Typically the capture is done from the
servers of the IPSP, not on the servers of the merchant. Hence the 'directly'.

~~~
Silhouette
You're covered by at least some of PCI DSS the moment any card data hits your
network, so I fail to see how a business can be passing card data to Balanced
at all without incurring some level of PCI DSS involvement.

If what they actually meant was that customers would be sending their card
data directly to Balanced and it _wouldn't_ ever hit the other business's
systems even transiently, that's a more interesting case. Even then, a lot of
payment gateways that offer "hosted" facilities do still expect their clients
to file a basic PCI DSS SAQ in our experience.

(Just to be clear, I'm not expressing any views on how worthwhile or otherwise
the entire PCI DSS scheme may be.)

~~~
JshWright
> If what they actually meant was that customers would be sending their card
> data directly to Balanced and it wouldn't ever hit the other business's
> systems even transiently, that's a more interesting case.

Balanced seems to be following a model similar to Stripe where the payment
details are indeed sent directly to them (via javascript in the browser, for
the most common use case), and it never touches the merchant's servers.

