strnisa

vor 8 Tagendiscuss

Founder of Unattach here.

Just to clarify: Unattach does not corrupt or mangle emails. Because Gmail does not expose an API for modifying the original email in place, Unattach creates a new version of the email with attachments removed/downsized while preserving the email's content and metadata.

If you need the original email for legal/evidence purposes, you can back it up first, either through Gmail or Unattach.

strnisa

vor 5 Monatendiscuss

It seems to me that major US cloud companies are using politics to try to get more value from non-US data, which I believe will push the EU (and others) to accelerate the move to their own alternatives. This is another move that seems to sacrifice longer-term trust (and profits) to boost near-term profits.

strnisa

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

From what I can find, Gripto was a cryptocurrency platform for viewing holdings, market info, and relevant news. It seems that the service was retired in late 2018.

strnisa

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

Flattr was a micro-donation subscription service where users set a monthly budget that was allocated to creators.

Small Transfers is for usage-based billing of online services and APIs. There is no monthly budget, wallet, or pre-funding. Customers are charged only for actual usage.

strnisa

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

BLIK is a bank-backed payment method used at checkout.

Small Transfers is an API for a merchant to charge a customer tiny amounts (as little as $0.000001), which are batched into a single card charge via Stripe.

strnisa

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

If a customer's balance is under $1 at the end of the month, we delay charging them for up to 60 days and send email reminders. If it's still under $1 after 60 days, we charge at least $0.50 and credit the difference (after fees) to their account for future use.

strnisa

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

Customers do create an account and provide a payment method, but they don't pre-fund or hold a balance, and they don't initiate a payment. Small Transfers is an API that allows merchants to charge very small amounts programmatically. At the end of each month (or earlier, if a threshold is reached), we charge the customer what they owe. This makes the tiny charges viable and avoids death-by-$0.30.

It's not a PayPal remake, since there are no wallets, no P2P transactions, and no stored funds. In addition, Small Transfers allows very small charges (as mentioned above), and provides customer OAuth and spending caps.

strnisa

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

I'm working on Small Transfers (https://smalltransfers.com/), a payment platform that makes it very convenient for SaaS / API makers to provide a pay-as-you-go model to their customers.

You can charge as little as 0.000001 USD per request. The platform uses our own system for tracking usage, which is settled through Stripe. No crypto, tokens, or wallets.

If combined with subscriptions, the pricing can work similarly to mobile plans, where monthly plans become cheaper above a certain usage threshold.

Looking for more developers to try it and share feedback.

Resources: integration guide (https://smalltransfers.com/merchant/docs/integration-guide), a quick walkthrough (https://youtu.be/WQW5fiUFNRk), a Next.js template (source code: https://github.com/smalltransfers/nextjs-starter, live demo: https://nextjs-starter.smalltransfers.com/), an AI template (source code: https://github.com/smalltransfers/ai-starter, live demo: https://ai-starter.smalltransfers.com/).

strnisa

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

I understand not wanting another subscription. You can subscribe and then immediately turn off auto-renewal — your access stays active for the full year you paid for.

On PAYG, you can target the largest emails first and stop whenever you've freed enough space. For example, processing 300 of the largest emails at $0.01 each is about $3; if they average around 10 MB, that's 3 GB freed.

strnisa

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

You're correct that this adds a barrier to entry, but for many users, that hurdle is still lower than asking them to start a subscription or buy a prepaid bundle.

We plan to provide the classic "Google Sign-In" style pop-up window instead of a redirect. Research indicates that it can increase conversion by approximately 5-10%.

Additionally, we are considering a white-label onboarding flow. If the merchant provides proof of customer identity, we can also skip the sign-in step. Both of these should help improve conversion rates.

A fully embedded solution is possible, but it would require the merchant to collect the customer's card details on Small Transfers' behalf (using Small Transfers' Stripe publishable key), which complicates things from both implementation and legal perspectives.

strnisa

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

I misunderstood this comment originally. In principle, Small Transfers (ST) could let a content site bill AI agents per request. Each site (acting as an ST merchant) would expose a simple "content" endpoint. The AI agent (as an ST customer) would perform a headless OAuth flow, after which the content site could charge for access. We currently don't support headless OAuth, but if anyone is interested in exploring this use case, please get in touch.

strnisa

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

That's an interesting idea. This may avoid the e-money issues, but:

  - The customer has to pay upfront, which lowers conversion rates.
  - No shared balance across multiple merchants, resulting in higher total payment processing fees.
  - As you already noted, trust shifts to each merchant to honor unused balances.

strnisa

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

The key legal issue is interchangeability. Single-merchant vouchers are generally acceptable. If a voucher can be used across multiple merchants, it's often treated as e-money in the EU. Not being able to use funds across multiple merchants would significantly reduce the value for customers, as they would no longer be able to share payment processing fees across merchants.

strnisa

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

I see what you mean — yes, this could be useful to some customers. We already implement a small grace amount above the max-owed limit that allows for continued service; your idea would essentially allow the customer to increase the default grace amount.

strnisa

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

The primary objective of the max-owed limit is to cap per-customer risk.

If you are suggesting that the max-owed limit is actually N×X, then that would multiply worst-case exposure by N, which is undesirable.

If you are suggesting that we charge the customer when they owe X while their max-owed limit is N×X, this would be worse for the customer, since they would pay `N × (X × variable_rate_fee + fixed_rate_fee)` instead of `N×X×variable_rate_fee + fixed_rate_fee` in payment processing fees.

strnisa

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

Authorization hold periods are set by the card networks/issuers and by merchant category, not Stripe.

Even if longer holds were possible, using authorization holds as a prepayment proxy can raise regulatory/consumer-protection issues similar to holding customer funds.

strnisa

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

Each customer already has a limit on the amount they can owe before we require payment. Each customer account also requires a unique payment method, which must pass Stripe Radar and 3-D Secure checks. We plan to add more checks in the future.

strnisa

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

We don't hold upfront funds. When a customer pays, we initiate Stripe transfers to the merchant as soon as the funds are available.

Paying the merchant before the customer's card payment settles would mean advancing funds, which would start to resemble lending/guarantee rather than payments, raising regulatory issues. It would also concentrate risk at the platform: defaults from one merchant’s customers could jeopardize the platform for all merchants.

strnisa

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

Yes, merchant abuse is a risk. What we do and plan to do:

  - Each merchant requires an OAuth grant, and customers can revoke it at any time.
  - A customer ledger shows what, when, and how much each merchant charged. This can be shown in the customer's dashboard and monthly statement emails.
  - Customers have account-level spending caps to limit exposure. We will add per-merchant caps.
  - If patterns look off or we get complaints, we can pause new charges and review.

strnisa

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

Subscriptions are great for predictability, and most apps should keep them.

Small Transfers can be added to help with:

  - users who dislike subscriptions
  - infrequent users
  - reducing/removing free-trial costs for non-converting users

A common pattern is hybrid pricing: pay-as-you-go (PAYG) for light/occasional use, a subscription for regular use. Similar to mobile plans, where monthly plans become cheaper above a certain usage threshold. I use this pattern for one of my services: https://unattach.com/pricing

I believe that Small Transfers also enables services that aren't viable with subscriptions or prepaid credits, e.g., a movie-suggestion service.

Submissions

AI-calls-Editor: IDE-native refactoring for AI coding assistants

Show HN: Small Transfers – charge from 0.000001 USD per request for your SaaS

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