Ask HN: How to Send Money to Users?
13 comments
It really depends on who you are sending money to. Assuming your sending to people with bank accounts a remittance service would work, like transfer-to (recently renamed Thunes) [1] and EMQ (sea only) [4]. There are several services like this, and its how mobile wallets and remittance agents (electronic ones) send cash. You may need several to provide maximum coverage if operating globally.
Each country also has their own remittance providers [2] so if you are serving a specific country it would be worth digging to find out who has the best APIs. Mastercard has a service [3] that supports 80 countries but your recipients require a card. Note if your recipient is a business with an EDC machine there is a nifty way to send them cash using MC VCNs (what some global hotel booking sites use).
Most remittance providers now send to wallets in addition to bank accounts, which can be used to send cash to non-banked users. Though in practice this could be a pain for them and coverage is limited and the mobile wallets vary in quality and KYC restrictions.
1. https://www.thunes.com/
2. Only use licensed ones! Spotted this one operating in us: https://www.dwolla.com/
3. https://developer.mastercard.com/product/mastercard-send
4. https://www.emq.com/
Each country also has their own remittance providers [2] so if you are serving a specific country it would be worth digging to find out who has the best APIs. Mastercard has a service [3] that supports 80 countries but your recipients require a card. Note if your recipient is a business with an EDC machine there is a nifty way to send them cash using MC VCNs (what some global hotel booking sites use).
Most remittance providers now send to wallets in addition to bank accounts, which can be used to send cash to non-banked users. Though in practice this could be a pain for them and coverage is limited and the mobile wallets vary in quality and KYC restrictions.
1. https://www.thunes.com/
2. Only use licensed ones! Spotted this one operating in us: https://www.dwolla.com/
3. https://developer.mastercard.com/product/mastercard-send
4. https://www.emq.com/
PayPal?
This is an excellent question. I have yet to discover a good API based method. Let me know if you find one.
PayPal has an API for this that IIRC isn’t just tied to PayPal funny money accounts.
Crypto :)
This is actually a good answer. Crypto was built for this and you don't have to worry about triggering any anti-fraud or anti-money laundering safeguards.
But, people might not know how to cash out. 90% of people will want cash.
If it's something like refunds, the common approach is to have some ewallet with credits and track how much you owe them.
There's a popular mobile game show here that does that. Once you win $50 or some treshhold, they let you cash out, which is handled through a manual process. It's tedious but it meets anti-money laundering and gambling regulations.
There's a popular mobile game show here that does that. Once you win $50 or some treshhold, they let you cash out, which is handled through a manual process. It's tedious but it meets anti-money laundering and gambling regulations.
Actually, how to send money to end users at scale is a terrific problem. Scenario is something like you run a federated "micro-work" site and you want to compensate ~1M. Ideally, what we want is something like Square Cash for small business with an API.
Fiverr sends money via PayPal, bank transfer or a Fiverr Revenue Card which looks to be powered by Payoneer.
I think you might have to consider getting licensed for something like this in the US. There are all sorts of AML regulations for money transmitters.
TransferWise has a payouts API.
Payment gateways don't seem to cater to this - except Stripe which only supports US debit cards.