Ask HN: how to make recurring outgoing payments

[eknuth]

Ok, I have stripe for processing credit cards and it looks great. I would like to be able to handle payments for my customers and send them money on a recurring basis.

I haven't found an easy way to do that. Should I just cut them checks? I'd love a service like stripe for handling outgoing payments as well.

[chalst]

I assume you are in the US. Cheques seems to be usual within the US, but I find them a nuisance when I am there, and people outside the US generally hate cheques, which are very expensive to negotiate. Here in Germany, I shred US cheques for less than $100 and ask to have the money sent to a friend to the US instead; small cheques are simply not worth the bother.

A better way to handle this is to set up a wire transfer authority with your bank: you might need an overpriced business account to do this, but I have set one up with a regular home account. The way it worked for me, about 10 years ago, is that I needed to go into the branch to authorise each recipient account, but once I had that, I could make transfers with a phone call, with a PIN for authorisation. That was convenient enough, I dare say that most banks today have internet interfaces that might be more or less convenient than that.

If you are invoicing to Europe or other countries in the IBAN network (i.e., mostly S.E. Asia), consider getting a dollar-denominated account with a European bank: the fees for wire transfer should then be much lower than other routes.

Money brokers offer cheaper rates for wire transfers than retail banks. My wife uses E-Trade for international transfers and likes their service.

[eknuth]

Yes, US. Sorry to make the assumption!

All payments would be domestic, at least at first. But I would love to make it international at some point. Thanks!

[robflynn]

I implemented a site that had this requirement. Much like the suggestions already here, we found that PayPal was the easiest route.

We used a standard Merchant account (Authorize.Net if I recall) to handle incoming money. For the outgoing money, we had a script that we ran monthly that would calculate the amount due to each member. We then sent that money to each user's paypal account (we required a paypal address upon signup.)

I, too, wish there was a better solution, but I am not immediately aware of one.

I was going to recommend talking to Sahil Lavingia [http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sahillavingia] (Gumroad, etc.) as Gumroad does payouts to users based on the items they sale. If I recall correctly, their incoming payment system uses Stripe. It appears that Gumroad also uses Paypal for paying users, though speaking to Sahil may still give you some additional insight.

Best of luck, I hope this info helps.

[MrMike]

Same amount to each recipient each month?

If you're with a major bank (BOFA, WF, etc), you can schedule payments with your bank via their online banking.

The original question implied an API for outgoing payments, but since that doesn't exist (afaik), you can ease the burden. For payments that vary in amount, most major banks allow you to add a payee once, then whenever you know the amount/date a payment will be due, you can schedule it. Ideal? Probably not, but I find it much less painful than checks+stamps+USPS.

[adambarber]

The easiest way is probably mass payments with paypal. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-ove...

[eknuth]

That looks good. It would be like an affiliate program.

I don't know why I have an aversion to paypal, though. I just want "stripe for payments". I don't think it exists, though.

[adambarber]

Paypal isn't ideal for getting money, but for giving money, it doesn't get any easier. Mostly everyone has a paypal account, so adding a paypal email address field to their profile allows for easy scripting of the payment file build process.