6 ms·

Based on my previous experience on payment systems, there's a surprising amount of value in not having to maintain direct business relationships with the underl

Based on my previous experience on payment systems, there's a surprising amount of value in not having to maintain direct business relationships with the underlying payment providers. It is much, much easier to work with a company like Stripe than to work directly with Visa and MasterCard and the ACH network, and heaven help you if you're a small company that needs to do automated cross-border payments to a wide range of countries without a middleman. You'll probably also get much better support from a tech-focused company when an API starts freaking out.

exe34 2y ago
I thought I understood everything you said, but isn't Stripe a middleperson here? > without a middleman.
- koreth1 2y ago
  Right, Stripe is a middleman and part of the value they're giving you is that you don't have to work directly with the underlying payment companies. If you had to support the same range of payment options without a middleman, you'd need to have business relationships with a bunch of payment companies, which would be a lot more difficult and time-consuming. Hope that's clearer!
  - exe34 2y ago
    Makes sense thanks!
- OJFord 2y ago
  Yes, GP's point is 'good luck to you doing that yourself, without a middleman [such as Stripe]'.
jackflintermann 2y ago
Yes, exactly, the important thing to us is that our users don't need to build an additional mental model between us and the networks we sit atop. If you know the network, we want you to be able to intuit how our API works. There's a very real difference (arguably the fundamental value-add of our company) in the transport layer, though. The actual mechanics of integrating with, say, FedACH, are a bit long to get into here (we get into it a bit here if it's of interest: https://increase.com/documentation/fedach https://increase.com/documentation/fedach) but suffice to say it doesn't have a REST API.
- koreth1 2y ago
  That's an excellent point too. Some payment systems have abysmal technology. The product I worked on was focused on international payments and in a couple cases, the "API" was literally, "Upload a CSV file via FTP, and at some later point, another CSV file might appear on the FTP server with some of the payment results, but if it doesn't, call us because we probably just forgot to upload it."
  - nijave 2y ago
    Batch jobs and (S)FTP. In a bit of a weird twist, back when I worked at Chase, they were innovating on the ancient technology but it was things like "better batch job management/orchestration" and SFTP proxy to route between different servers and centralize key management
- jrochkind1 2y ago
  I'm curious to learn more about what your customers look like, what sorts of businesses and activities they are in. Where stripe's customers are working on products unrelated to payments, yours are working on products related to payments? I'm having trouble conceiving of examples.
- wodenokoto 2y ago
  But it must have _some sort_ of API. Since your rest API is modelled on their API it made me really curious about how you communicate with those networks.
fendy3002 2y ago
Idk how this one works, but credit card processors need license. If you can use credit card service without requiring that license then it'll be the best additional value.

exe34 2y ago

I thought I understood everything you said, but isn't Stripe a middleperson here? > without a middleman.

koreth1 2y ago
Right, Stripe is a middleman and part of the value they're giving you is that you don't have to work directly with the underlying payment companies. If you had to support the same range of payment options without a middleman, you'd need to have business relationships with a bunch of payment companies, which would be a lot more difficult and time-consuming. Hope that's clearer!
- exe34 2y ago
  Makes sense thanks!
OJFord 2y ago
Yes, GP's point is 'good luck to you doing that yourself, without a middleman [such as Stripe]'.

jackflintermann 2y ago

Yes, exactly, the important thing to us is that our users don't need to build an additional mental model between us and the networks we sit atop. If you know the network, we want you to be able to intuit how our API works. There's a very real difference (arguably the fundamental value-add of our company) in the transport layer, though. The actual mechanics of integrating with, say, FedACH, are a bit long to get into here (we get into it a bit here if it's of interest: https://increase.com/documentation/fedach https://increase.com/documentation/fedach) but suffice to say it doesn't have a REST API.

koreth1 2y ago
That's an excellent point too. Some payment systems have abysmal technology. The product I worked on was focused on international payments and in a couple cases, the "API" was literally, "Upload a CSV file via FTP, and at some later point, another CSV file might appear on the FTP server with some of the payment results, but if it doesn't, call us because we probably just forgot to upload it."
- nijave 2y ago
  Batch jobs and (S)FTP. In a bit of a weird twist, back when I worked at Chase, they were innovating on the ancient technology but it was things like "better batch job management/orchestration" and SFTP proxy to route between different servers and centralize key management
jrochkind1 2y ago
I'm curious to learn more about what your customers look like, what sorts of businesses and activities they are in. Where stripe's customers are working on products unrelated to payments, yours are working on products related to payments? I'm having trouble conceiving of examples.
wodenokoto 2y ago
But it must have _some sort_ of API. Since your rest API is modelled on their API it made me really curious about how you communicate with those networks.

fendy3002 2y ago

Idk how this one works, but credit card processors need license. If you can use credit card service without requiring that license then it'll be the best additional value.