[HN Gopher] Stripe Treasury
___________________________________________________________________
Stripe Treasury
Author : timf
Score : 616 points
Date : 2020-12-03 15:19 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stripe.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stripe.com)
| arusahni wrote:
| I appreciate the use of vim in the animatic.
| rattray wrote:
| Bit of an aside, but as a new entrepreneur selling physical
| products (https://narwallmask.com) I've been surprised by how
| much time I spend banking.
|
| Moving money around is way more of a headache than I would have
| anticipated. And that's before you even get into questions of
| working capital etc.
|
| As a former eng at Stripe who didn't know this product was
| coming, I'm very excited to see what gets built on top of it, and
| to see innovation spurred in business fintech in general.
| rattray wrote:
| (since a few folks have been interested in the mask and this is
| hn, I should mention that I'm currently looking for some
| freelance frontend dev help right now - I don't have time to
| fix the hideous parts of my homepage and it's giving me
| heartburn. Email in profile).
| renewiltord wrote:
| What a fascinating device! Did you find that airlines are
| willing to accept it? They no longer accept my half-mask
| respirator with P100 filters.
| rattray wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Usually yes - sometimes the gate attendant doesn't understand
| that the exhale is filtered (I assume this was the problem
| with your respirator). We have guidance on that here:
|
| https://narwallmask.com/pages/usage-guide#h:flying
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, I actually had an attachment to filter the exhale
| valve. I decided to just swap out as soon as they asked
| rather than explain (because I had a 3M 1860 N95 in my
| pocket) which seems to have been the right choice since one
| of them started to get belligerent about the respirator
| very quickly as I started taking it off. It looks like
| they're very sensitive to people doing non-standard things.
|
| I'm not even one to argue with people in these situations
| so I was happy to play along but that attendant seemed
| eager to escalate.
|
| Perhaps having the extra filters like you recommend might
| help, but I suspect it wouldn't have. Hope things have
| improved since then (a month ago on Alaska).
| sebmellen wrote:
| What a shame that the flight attendants are either
|
| 1) so scared of their management that they won't listen
| to people explaining the masks are filtered or
|
| 2) simply unable to understand that a non-standard mask
| could have a filtered exhale valve (which is much safer
| than a cloth mask for others, too).
|
| I had the exact same thing happen to me on 4 different
| flights, with the flight attendants becoming very
| aggressive. I brought a short note with a diagram of how
| the filtration works, and pointed it out to them, and
| they just told me "sorry, Mayo Clinic guidelines say you
| can't wear that." This was on United, American Airlines,
| and Delta.
|
| The tip I figured out on my last flight was to wear a
| hoodie that covered up the respirator on the side, and
| then wear two surgical masks over the respirator in
| front. Haven't gotten a second look since then. I don't
| think this would be possible with the narwhal mask
| (unfortunately).
| renewiltord wrote:
| Honestly, I was very surprised by the belligerence. My
| strategy for interacting with any authority with
| disproportionate power over me is to tend towards
| normalcy so I was pretty rapidly complying with the mask
| swap.
|
| A friend of mine postulated that they couldn't hear me
| through my mask, but as I took it off and was swapping I
| said "I'm complying, I'm complying, I'm not arguing" in a
| conciliatory tone, it didn't seem to help. I was playing
| the 100% doormat. Didn't stop the attendant from saying
| to me as I was leaving to go to my seat: "It's not that
| dangerous".
|
| I can only guess that they encounter people who do insist
| or that they are on web forums / chat groups with other
| attendants who have encountered people who do argue and
| so they're primed for someone like that. Puzzling
| interaction, to be honest. It was the first time I've had
| any sort of negative interaction with a service
| professional.
| carabiner wrote:
| Did you design the mask from scratch, or is this a rebrand of
| an existing product?
| rattray wrote:
| I created this product, but wouldn't say from scratch.
|
| It's based on a full face snorkel mask, with a few adaptors
| for filters (instead of water) that I designed with the help
| of an industrial engineer and the manufacturer of the snorkel
| mask.
|
| Goal was to reuse existing design and injection molds to
| reduce cost and increase speed to market (wanted to get them
| out in July, took till November!)
| sebmellen wrote:
| What's your supply capacity on these masks? I have a friend who
| works in a medium-sized hospital system in the South, and we
| talked about using snorkelling masks back in May. (They were
| reusing one N95 mask for 10 days per person.) I was surprised
| no one had repurposed snorkelling masks yet.
|
| I sent him the link. If he gets back to me and his hospital
| system is interested, perhaps we could arrange a call. Would
| your HN profile email be okay for reaching out?
| rattray wrote:
| We have over 15,000 on the way this month (some are spoken
| for). Yes, do reach out!
|
| Some folks actually did do this in April, just with
| 3D-printed adaptors: maskson.org and pneumask.org. They don't
| have built-in exhale filters, though, which limits the
| utility.
| artvark11 wrote:
| Is that an actual product or a joke page? I can't imagine
| anyone actually wearing something like that.
| rattray wrote:
| I know it can be hard to believe, but it's very real (just
| like COVID). Maybe this quote from a recent customer helps
| explain:
|
| > I'll look like a freak in the mask, but a LIVING freak.
| Thank you.
|
| We sold over 1000 of them in our first week, not many
| returns. I've been wearing mine for months and get way more
| interest/thumbs-up than "looks".
|
| We do get our fair share of internet trolls, though.
| artvark11 wrote:
| It reminds me of CodysLab's mask
| https://youtu.be/_iwxyzXcP7k
| graeme wrote:
| Instant virality too. I just shared with a friend cause
| it's so novel.
| tricolon wrote:
| It looks much less intimidating than my Honeywell North full
| facepiece respirator, which I've worn in public.
| armatav wrote:
| Oof this is such a good idea. Cannot wait till it's out of beta.
| imtu80 wrote:
| It's great Stripe is coming up with new services and changing how
| we do business online. Most purchases are now happening online,
| subscription based services are on rise and consumer buying habit
| is changing as well.
|
| I like Stripe and I use Stripe for my business. What I don't like
| about Stripe is they stepping on toes of their customers. Stripe
| starts with API service and later they introduce their product
| competing with early adopters. A good example is Stripe Billing
| [0]. Additionally, they position their products top on their
| partners page, therefore making it "popular". I wouldn't be
| surprised to see Stripe launching their own virtual bank product.
|
| [0] https://stripe.com/billing [1]
| https://stripe.com/partners/apps-and-extensions/collection/r...
| switz wrote:
| Is this multi currency or USD only? Does this mean I can store
| EUR alongside USD via my Stripe checkout sales, instead of being
| forced to convert immediately?
| patio11 wrote:
| Stripe Treasury presently supports USD only, but we do envision
| multicurrency accounts as we roll it out to more markets.
|
| Depending on where you are, we may have like-for-like
| settlement available for you (allowing you to receive EUR to a
| EUR-denominated account you have and USD to a USD-denominated
| account you have, saving conversion fees). Write
| support@stripe.com for more details on whether it is available
| for you specifically.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tarstarr wrote:
| Hi everyone, I'm Tara, PM on Stripe Treasury. Treasury is a
| banking-as-a-service API for platforms--built in partnership with
| the world's leading banks. Embed interest-earning accounts, bill
| pay, ACH and wire transfers, and faster access to revenue
| directly in your platform. Happy to answer any questions here--
| and I'd love to hear your feedback!
| narrationbox wrote:
| Is this like Stripe Issuing where it is only available to a
| small number of companies? A lot of newer Stripe products seems
| to be available to large enterprises only. We applied for that
| waitlist multiple times but never heard back. What are the
| revenue or scale requirements for your targeted customers? Is
| it suitable for fintech e-wallets/banks?
| patio11 wrote:
| We have been ramping up our rollout of Stripe Issuing over
| time, and will do similar for Stripe Treasury. Can we have
| your email address? (You can email it to me at this handle at
| stripe.com) Depending on the specifics of your use case, we
| may be at general availability.
|
| There are no particular revenue or scale requirements; we
| tend to roll out features to a few users across the spectrum
| because supporting users from startup-in-a-garage to publicly
| traded customers is what we do. We would be thrilled to talk
| about particular potential use cases; we do envision some B2B
| fintech applications would find the set of capabilities
| appealing. Just drop some details on the form and we'll be in
| touch.
| karlshea wrote:
| > supporting users from startup-in-a-garage to publicly
| traded customers is what we do
|
| Unless that startup is a site that has naughty pictures!
| scrollaway wrote:
| You're getting downvoted but it's fair criticism.
| Unfortunately it's also probably out of Stripe's hands,
| given that it tends to be driven by partner limitations.
| karlshea wrote:
| I also edited out something unnecessary.
|
| But maybe Stripe could be pushing back against those
| limitations or helping to find other solutions. Apple
| seems to be able to (see Grindr).
| jklein11 wrote:
| >Apple seems to be able to (see Grindr).
|
| Can you please elaborate on this?
| karlshea wrote:
| You pay for a Grindr subscription through Apple using
| IAP. Grindr presumably wouldn't be allowed to use Stripe
| given their terms of use.
|
| If one wanted to create something like Grindr but as a
| website instead of an app, the options for payment are
| extremely limited.
| PKop wrote:
| Or maybe people could push back against normalizing
| support for these types of businesses. Many don't agree
| that this should be supported, and think Stripe is
| correct here.
| granzymes wrote:
| Well from the website Issuing looks to be available to
| everyone now. Seems like a normal product rollout to
| progressively increase the audience size.
| narrationbox wrote:
| Interesting, it seems their products are geo-locked. The
| Canadian site still shows "Request invite".
| [deleted]
| james2406 wrote:
| Hi Tara, Thank you for dong this Q&A. Really interesting to see
| that Stripe is heading into the BaaS space!
|
| Will you be offering any consumer loans solutions in the
| future?
| edwinwee wrote:
| No solid timeline--right now Stripe is mainly focused on
| helping businesses grow.
| tim_sw wrote:
| Is this mainly available in North America?
| patio11 wrote:
| (Stepping in for Tara because she is currently dealing with a
| literal fire. Never a dull moment on launch day.)
|
| We're starting the limited beta for businesses serving
| businesses in the U.S., but our ambitions for products are
| always bringing them to all appropriate users on the
| internet. This is one reason why we partnered with global
| banks to launch this.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| A _literal_ fire? Sounds like a good story. Tell?
| tarstarr wrote:
| There's unfortunately a fire in Orange County today and
| had to pack a bag for evac. Truly, never a dull moment.
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-03/wind-
| dri...
| shreygupta wrote:
| I'm in Orange County too! All Irvine schools are closed.
| Stay safe.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Ah. So not, like, in your server room or anything.
|
| Still bad enough. As shreygupta said, stay safe...
| cdnsteve wrote:
| Any ETA when this will be available in Canada? I'd like to
| learn more.
| edwinwee wrote:
| No ETA just yet, but we want to make Treasury available in
| Canada.
| runako wrote:
| Hi Tara, congratulations on the launch!
|
| Do you intend to allow Treasury to be used to build new bank
| storefronts? For example, could someone build a slick mobile
| app and website and use Treasury to launch a B2B "bank",
| complete with FDIC insurance? Would it be acceptable to launch
| an offering like mercury.com entirely powered by Treasury?
|
| Or is the intent to only allow Treasury as an adjunct to a
| "real" business?
|
| Thanks!
| tarstarr wrote:
| Of course, neither Stripe nor users of Stripe Treasury would
| be launching a bank, but you could provide financial services
| for other businesses, entirely powered by Stripe Treasury and
| Stripe Connect. It's pretty analogous to what Shopify is
| doing with Stripe Connect, Treasury, and Issuing to launch
| Shopify Balance: https://www.shopify.com/balance
| nlh wrote:
| This is SUPER cool - congrats on the launch! A few questions:
|
| Do you plan to offer Stripe Treasury to non-marketplace small
| businesses / individuals?
|
| I ask because the #1 thing I've been wanting for the past few
| years is basically Stripe Bank :) I hate Bank of America. I'm
| not happy with any of the other startup banks. And honestly, at
| this point my first instinct when seeing Stripe Treasury is
| "Imma just build my own bank for myself!" (and that actually
| looks like a real possibility, at least technically).
|
| If not, do you plan to offer a retail product for individuals?
| rsync wrote:
| "I hate Bank of America. I'm not happy with any of the other
| startup banks. And honestly, at this point my first instinct
| when seeing Stripe Treasury is "Imma just build my own bank
| for myself!" (and that actually looks like a real
| possibility, at least technically)."
|
| I did this with Twilio - which is to say, I built my own
| little personal telco with Twilio.
|
| It's not without it's ups and downs but there are a lot of
| interesting little superpowers I now have over my telco
| interactions that I would not otherwise have ...
| leafmeal wrote:
| I don't wanna try and sell it here, but I like and use
| simple.com. If you haven't tried it I recommend it.
| mchusma wrote:
| I recommend mercury.com. Amazing in basically every way IMO.
| nlh wrote:
| Yeah Mercury and some other startup banks looks great, but
| at least Mercury appears to be business-only. I need
| something that works for business & personal.
|
| (And I have no doubt they'll all expand to handle both
| personal & business, but I'm impatient ;)
| [deleted]
| mnehring wrote:
| Hi Tara - first, thanks for coming here for Q&A.
|
| My first question is, will any revenue be available for
| companies that build on top of this platform? Normal banks make
| money on interchange on bank cards and interest spread (as well
| as less savory activities like crazy overdraft fees). Is there
| any revenue split with the partner? E.g., maybe Goldman pays
| 0.82%, I offer my customer 0.50%, and so I pocket 0.32% of the
| balance.
|
| Second, what about customer service for the end customer?
| There's clearly a top-level layer that's managed by the
| partner, a mid-level layer managed by Stripe, and the deep
| backend banking layer managed by the partner bank. How is
| customer support split up among those 3?
|
| Those were my two main questions. I heard a couple of people
| asking about use cases. My use case would be an idea I've been
| kicking around for a while. I've been working on a concept for
| a next-level-totally-awesome personal finance budget app. The
| fundamental purpose of a personal budgeting app is to assist
| you in knowing when to say yes, and when to say no to a
| purchase, and to do autopsies on past purchases that may have
| messed things up. I tried a basic version using Plaid to get a
| data feed from my bank, but the Plaid data feed is inconsistent
| from bank to bank (with how it handles authorizations that
| later settle or fail to settle). Being able to bundle a budget
| app directly with banking could be killer. You'd have real-
| time, 100% accurate data coming in. That would be a game
| changer that might make me finally finish my dusty app.
|
| So, Tara, if you're not doing revenue sharing with partners
| yet, please consider it:-). Revenue sharing is a great way to
| make apps-on-top-of-platforms flourish.
| tarstarr wrote:
| We definitely want platforms to make money on Treasury -
| there's a lot of flexibility in how platforms can structure
| monetization (and revshares are totally possible) so please
| contact us to talk more about how this works.
|
| With respect to customer service for the end customer, this
| follows the same process as Stripe Connect. Depending on the
| type of connected accounts you choose, you can have either
| Stripe take on customer support for you entirely, or manage
| customer support yourself. While our bank partners power this
| product, they're never interacting with end users at all:
| that layer, from a customer support perspective, is
| abstracted by Stripe.
|
| Edit: made "connected accounts" lowercase.
| eloff wrote:
| This seems targeted mostly for marketplaces, but I'm curious if
| this enables a way to accept ACH and wire transfer payments. My
| thinking is use the API to let the end customer setup a
| treasury account on my site, they can wire/ACH funds to this
| account of theirs to pay invoices, and I can use the API to
| "debit" funds from their treasury account to mine as needed to
| cover their service bills.
|
| Handling invoicing and payments for a class of enterprise
| customers who can't use a credit card for payments as a matter
| of policy can be painful.
|
| *edit: I think this is actually possible with stripe connect
| today.
| tarstarr wrote:
| Stripe Invoicing is purpose built for exactly that problem:
| serving enterprise customers who don't want to use a card for
| payment. While I think Treasury or Treasury+Connect could
| help in a pinch, Invoicing is likely the best solution with
| the smallest implementation lift.
| teagee wrote:
| Hi Tara, this looks like it solves some of the limitations
| we've run into using Stripe Connect with ACH, which is very
| exciting! Will existing platforms using Stripe Connect
| eventually be able to add Stripe Treasury for existing users?
| tarstarr wrote:
| definitely! we want to make it as easy as possible for
| existing Stripe Connect users to add Treasury functionality
| for their connected accounts. Request an invite [0] (the
| product team is personally monitoring this queue) and let's
| chat about what you're looking to do!
|
| 0. https://stripe.com/treasury#request-invite
|
| edit: added a space
| teagee wrote:
| Wonderful! I requested an invite, my email is tyler@... and
| my initials are TG. Looking forward to hearing from you!
| philip1209 wrote:
| When platforms carry float or help issue loans, do they make
| money?
| tarstarr wrote:
| We absolutely want platforms to make money on Treasury and
| our other financial services products (Capital and Issuing.)
| For our Issuing and Treasury products, contact us to talk
| more about how this works -- there's a lot of flexibility in
| how a platform can structure monetization. For loans, it's
| more immediately straightforward: you'll earn a revenue share
| on all loans extended, with zero financial liability on
| credit losses.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nojvek wrote:
| The landing page doesn't really explain what kinds of problems
| Treasury solves (may need some customer education since it's so
| new)
|
| IIUC this is useful for marketplaces like Lyft/Uber/Shopify to
| automatically provision bank accounts for drivers and have
| money deposited in there? The value add is faster payouts?
|
| Can I use this as a replacement to plaid api? I.e open a bank
| account through stripe and use that as a way to do finance
| analytics? What are the banking fees?
|
| Basically: which customer audience is this targeting ? and what
| headaches does it solve for that audience?
| tarstarr wrote:
| Here are some of the common use cases we're seeing so far: *
| Bank account replacement for SMBs and sole props, integrated
| directly into the platform or marketplace they're already
| using. For example, today a Shopify merchant earns their
| revenue on Shopify but then has to transfer funds out to
| manage overall cash flow elsewhere (e.g., pay bills). Shopify
| is building Balance [0] with the Treasury API so this user
| can manage all of this in one place with a single view of
| revenue and spend. Other benefits of course include faster
| payouts, rewards specific to the ecosystem, and adding
| product features enabled by read/write access to the money
| management data (e.g. you could roll your own invoice
| reconciliation or alerts, or give users a discount on your
| SaaS if they ran sufficient volume on your card).
|
| * Open loop wallets, like offering a "spend" account within
| your product that a user can either use to buy in-product
| purchases, or use the card/ach/wire functionality to buy
| external goods. E.g. a car leasing platform for drivers adds
| Treasury, drivers can use the wallet for discounts on car
| leases, also use the card to spend on gas.
|
| * Product operations, like having a platform-level Treasury
| balance you use for reserves, chargebacks, and as glue to
| make your product flow work. E.g. On demand services
| marketplace that "buys items customers need and delivers it
| to their door" can issue cards from a central Treasury
| balance to their drivers, so that they can use a physical
| card to buy the burrito for the customer at the restaurant.
|
| ...but part of the point with Treasury is that we don't know
| every use case prior, just like we didn't know every way
| developers would use Stripe Connect (developers are pretty
| creative!). Our goal was to build for specific use cases, of
| course, but also build composable enough primitives that
| people could recombine them in ways we didn't imagine. We
| wanted to make a tool that helped unlock developer
| creativity, because flexible tools were so lacking in the
| existing fintech infrastructure space.
| anon589 wrote:
| keyword is Treasury eg handling all the payment operations
| tasks that an in-house corporate treasury team that's
| responsible for moving money in and out of the company's bank
| accounts might complete
| dreamer7 wrote:
| weavr.io seems to be an alternative . They may have more
| resources on the problems it solves
| jabart wrote:
| Will this support paper checks that can be written on the spot
| by a client?
| tarstarr wrote:
| Money management accounts created with Stripe Treasury can
| send bill payments, which depending on the payee may be
| delivered entirely electronically or as checks. We have no
| current intentions of making printable paper checks a
| feature, but please get in touch if you have a compelling use
| case for that that isn't solved by online bill pay.
|
| The accounts can also do both push and pull ACH payments.
|
| While we do not currently support depositing checks into the
| accounts, we expect to soon, via "remote deposit capture."
| You may have seen this sort of experience in mobile
| applications for many U.S. banks the last few years: take a
| picture, check gets deposited. If we offer this, we will do
| it in a fashion which minimizes the engineering work required
| by the software company, like we broadly try to minimize non-
| value-creating engineering work for our users.
| shreygupta wrote:
| Billing (invoices, specifically) has an invite feature to
| mail in checks and has auto-reconciliation. Maybe it's
| possible to integrate that?
| philip1209 wrote:
| Do the push ACH payments support the per-invoice account
| numbers from Stripe Billing? (which is useful for automatic
| reconciliation)
| jabart wrote:
| Request submitted. It can be solved by bill-pay, our older
| clients will want a checkbook to hand checks to vendors on
| delivery for items which will have them setting up a local
| bank account for that. Remote Deposit is key for any non-
| profit/political account as they get mailed a lot of
| checks.
| adrr wrote:
| Curious how customer support works? There's a dispute for
| an ACH pull, who is handling the dispute, I'd assume the
| bank that has the charter? Same goes with remote check
| deposit, someone has to verify the check.
| griffinkelly wrote:
| The one thing I've been hoping Stripe eventually rolls out is
| escrow; hopefully this is a step towards that?
| edwinwee wrote:
| Escrow has a precise legal definition--and while we don't
| support straight-up "escrow," Stripe recently added support
| to hold funds for up to 3 months. You can use Stripe Connect
| to manually control (in this case, delay) payout timing:
| https://stripe.com/docs/connect/manual-payouts.
| pqdbr wrote:
| Why does the US support holding funds for up to 2 years,
| while everywhere else (like Brazil) only 90 days?
| sudhirj wrote:
| This is usually governed by country specific financial
| laws.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| "Financial services" are verbatim not allowed by Stripe's
| Acceptable Use Policy. What kind of businesses are permitted to
| use Stripe Treasury?
|
| Which functionality is specifically provided (or anticipated to
| be provided) by Goldman Sachs Bank? The answer is probably a
| credit card.
|
| Who performs KYC? Is it Stripe FTEs, Stripe contractors, or a
| vendor? Is it Evolve's vendor? The answer is probably a vendor.
|
| When submitting payments or transfers, does your interface
| provide a way to show purpose of payment when the transfer is
| initiated? The answer is probably no.
|
| Not sure why this keeps getting downvoted, these are not very
| opinionated or critical questions. It's also pretty reasonable
| to just guess answers, especially benign answers, based on
| their competitors, if they choose not to answer. They're all
| good faith questions.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This is a bit harsh. Stripe's value add is handing you an API
| and doing all of the hard work behind the scenes, same as
| Twilio (integrating with far flung telco gateways with
| byzantine interfaces). It's not necessary for Stripe to
| handle payment flows or issue cards themselves. Success is if
| customers are willing to pay Stripe instead of wrangling all
| of those vendors together themselves (which sounds like a
| good bet to make).
|
| Disclosure: Stripe CC processing customer, no other relation.
| senko wrote:
| I'm not reading it as criticism.
|
| Considering Stripe forbids financial services in their
| t&c's, and this allows Stripe users to implement financial
| services, the question is, what kind of financial services
| are now allowed?
|
| Would be great to hear a few use cases for Treasury that
| can't be done with existing Connect platform (and which
| fall within t&c's).
|
| Genuinely curious.
| patio11 wrote:
| Suppose a driver for a rideshare app wants to pay their
| car payment.
|
| Stripe Connect can't be used to hold funds from many
| rides for a month; they have to pay it out to a bank
| account (which they might not have) or to a disbursement
| card, which (because loan repayments are generally not
| paid on a card in the U.S.) likely doesn't solve their
| problem without withdrawing cash and buying a money
| order. That is extra effort and cost for the driver.
|
| Stripe Treasury would let the rideshare platform give
| their drivers an embedded money management account. That
| _would_ allow indefinitely holding money, and would allow
| them to use e.g. bill pay for car payments, similar to
| the way that many HNers probably pay their own car
| payments today.
|
| This is good for the platform (solves a pain point for
| many drivers) and good for the drivers (they get faster
| access to their funds, decreasing the likelihood they'll
| get dinged for a late repayment, and can spend less of
| their time managing low-value-added money movement when
| they could instead be driving).
| vincentmarle wrote:
| > This is good for the platform
|
| Just curious, who gets paid the interest on these
| accounts?
| bavell wrote:
| Wouldn't it be way easier and better for the driver to
| just open a bank account? Why would they want to tie
| something as important as making car payments to their
| ephemeral gig work?
| trhway wrote:
| bank may not open an account for the driver, and why push
| the drivers to the bank if you can provide kind of
| substitute of those services thus expanding your business
| in such a great way.
|
| >Stripe Treasury would let the rideshare platform give
| their drivers an embedded money management account. That
| would allow indefinitely holding money, and would allow
| them to use e.g. bill pay for car payments, similar to
| the way that many HNers probably pay their own car
| payments today.
|
| It sounds like what Stripe is doing is providing a quasi-
| bank account, kind of retail frontend emulating limited
| banking services and backend-ed by GS and the likes as
| Stripe doesn't seems to have a license themselves
| ("commoditize your complement" comes to mind). Though it
| doesn't sound like a service for the driver, it only
| looks like it. It is the service for the platform.
| Interesting who really owns the "embedded" account/money
| - platform or the driver. If the driver then it looks
| more like bank, if the platform - interesting can of
| worms, like you employer providing an imitation of a real
| account for you and holding money in your name. I.e. it
| seems that the point here is to find a way to keep money
| in the system (the platform keeping drivers' money in
| Stripe - i.e. "That would allow indefinitely holding
| money" seems to be the key here) instead of just merely
| piping the money.
| [deleted]
| closeparen wrote:
| Many people don't want or cannot get real bank accounts,
| e.g. because they can't sustain the minimum balance, have
| been blacklisted for bouncing checks, or it just isn't
| the norm in their community.
| lambda_obrien wrote:
| It's kind of a slippery slope to start letting employers
| hold pay in an account they control... reminds me of the
| union busting articles on the top right now, with
| Facebook building employee housing now, the idea you
| brought up is the next step towards the "Facebook Store"
| and scrips.
|
| I understand some people have trouble banking, but the
| answer should then be for us to ensure they can have
| equal access to banking, no matter what.
| closeparen wrote:
| Agreed. But this is not some gig economy thing... when an
| institution needs to pay you and you don't have direct
| deposit, often they will send you a prepaid debit card
| instead of a check. Even the federal government does this
| [0]. These cards tend to have predatory fees.
|
| [0] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/economic-impact-
| payments-being-...
| lambda_obrien wrote:
| I'm aware of that practice, and that's why I would hope
| that we could build something like the often talked about
| USPS bank, or whatever, so everyone can have equal access
| to real banking with no predatory practices.
|
| Not that any gig companies are doing this yet, or even
| thought to do it, but I just don't like the idea of this
| being done in a "company scrips"-like fashion, there are
| some things that should be totally nuclear to the touch,
| and tying _even more_ of your life to your company (in
| the USA you have medical, housing, food, etc. tied to
| your work) should be nuclear.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > and that's why I would hope that we could build
| something like the often talked about USPS bank, or
| whatever, so everyone can have equal access to real
| banking with no predatory practices.
|
| I signed up on the wait list and emailed patio11
| specifically to build such a product. Regarding your
| point about company scrip, I think prevention against
| that is best served by reaching out to your Congressional
| representatives, as well as members of the U.S. House
| Committee on Financial Services, to legislate safeguards.
| Without the force of law, protections are only polite
| suggestions.
| closeparen wrote:
| Will be interesting to see this product allows you to
| support customers who are e.g. on the ChexSystems list or
| have inadequate ID. Since it is real banks under the
| hood, same problems may apply.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I would specifically want the ability to onboard folks
| who ChexSystems had blacklisted, since you could provide
| accounts that don't extend credit.
| senko wrote:
| Thanks! This makes sense, we could've definitely used it
| on a project a while ago (ended up using Connect but had
| to modify the product to accommodate).
| an_opabinia wrote:
| If my rideshare platform _also_ lends or leases vehicles
| to its drivers, would Stripe Treasury permit the drivers
| to repay the loan or lease via the driver 's treasury
| account where they get paid? Does regular Stripe support
| paying back loans or leases?
|
| When I say permit, I mean from an acceptable use point of
| view, not an engineering point of view.
| patio11 wrote:
| I know of no reason we'd not support the first, though
| feel free to run that by us formally if you want explicit
| permission in writing (which presumably a rideshare
| platform large enough to have a leasing operation would).
|
| We don't support using Payments to collect loan
| repayments in most cases.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| > in most cases.
|
| Are their cases where you do support using Payments for
| loan repayment?
|
| I've had an idea for an "informal loan" platform that
| facilitates loans between friends, but paid back
| automatically, but I haven't ever acted on it because of
| the ban on using Stripe for loan repayments.
|
| Synapse offers something like this, but is geared more
| toward loan origination than to strictly facilitation.
| [deleted]
| Kye wrote:
| The nice thing about being Stripe is they can decide what the
| terms are. I'm sure they thought this through.
| patio11 wrote:
| Stripe Treasury does not violate our terms, and allows SaaS
| platforms (and similar) to provide their business users with
| access to capabilities which are regulated with those
| capabilities fulfilled by entities with the appropriate
| licensing and backed by our financial partners. This is
| similar to how our Connect product lets our regulated entity
| do money transmission on behalf of a demand economy company
| without them needing to do money transmission themselves.
|
| Goldman Sachs is one of our financial partners for Stripe
| Treasury. Specifically, they provide custodial services for
| the money management accounts. For more details on this sort
| of thing, I'd recommend reading or having your lawyer read
| the contracts.
|
| KYC goes through Stripe's processes. This is both
| operationally complicated and something that we generally do
| not go into detail on.
|
| Given that the implementing SaaS business will control the UX
| around initiating a payment, they could control how much or
| little bookkeeping to do at time of a payment or transfer.
| Let me know if that doesn't answer the thrust of this
| question.
| jjeaff wrote:
| So if one wanted to make a savings app like Acorn, would
| that violate the stripe terms?
| pbalau wrote:
| > Stripe Treasury does not violate our terms, and allows
| SaaS platforms (and similar) to provide their business
| users with access to _capabilities which are regulated with
| those capabilities fulfilled by entities_ with the
| appropriate licensing and backed by our financial partners.
|
| Ha? What does this mean?
| smallnamespace wrote:
| I read it as:
|
| > ... provide their business users with access to
| capabilities which are regulated __,__ with those
| capabilities fulfilled by entities with the appropriate
| licensing ...
|
| Short version: we do the hard things for you so you don't
| have to. Correction welcome if that comma doesn't convey
| the intended meaning.
| pbalau wrote:
| The comma I got on my own, after some time. I'm still not
| clear on what those capabilities _are_.
| graeme wrote:
| Financial or banking capabilities, I think
| JxLS-cpgbe0 wrote:
| > Goldman Sachs is one of our financial partners for Stripe
| Treasury
|
| Does Goldman Sachs' misreporting of millions of
| transactions to the FCA align with Stripe's business ethics
| policy?
| cambalache wrote:
| Stripe's business ethics policy.
|
| That policy has 2 clauses.A)Generate more money. B)
| Generate more publicity. The rest is glitter to bamboozle
| you.
| jskajakzkjx wrote:
| Is that something that happened in the past or some plans
| Goldman has announced for the future?
| liujy wrote:
| I believe the above user is referring to the 1MDB scandal
| which took place earlier this year.
| JxLS-cpgbe0 wrote:
| The past:
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/mar/28/city-
| watchd...
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > Stripe Treasury does not violate our terms...
|
| Would AngelList's angel investing product, built on
| Treasury, violate Stripe's AUP? How about TransferWise?
| These are financial services companies, they are something
| I can imagine building on Stripe Treasury. But they are
| probably against your AUP, even if of course they are
| permissible from a legal point of view.
|
| > KYC goes through Stripe's processes. This is both
| operationally complicated and something that we generally
| do not go into detail on.
|
| One of the things I like about banks is, when you're
| dealing with large amounts of money, which is what I aspire
| to do, you are talking with an educated person on the other
| end of the line. It's very easy to talk with integrity
| because the bank's FTE is experienced, vested in a positive
| outcome for you, doesn't get tripped up with keywords, and
| critically, because they live here and are paid well, they
| have something at stake, you can achieve a remedy if you
| don't get what you need from them.
|
| With a contractor, there's a script. It's hard to talk with
| integrity because you might say a forbidden word, or you
| might merely delay your legitimate business even further by
| having to wait even longer for a Zendesk follow-up, or you
| might be dealing with someone in a foreign country beyond
| the law who is just going to criminally misuse information
| in your docs, like your passport, because SOC 2 and ISO
| 27001 are just policies, they're not laws and they're
| especially not enforcement. This is pretty consistent with
| everyone's experience with contractors versus W2 in
| customer service and other cost departments, it is not a
| controversial position, it is definitely correlated with
| the fact that it is capricious, with no remedies, when you
| are locked out of eg your Google account, compared to say
| getting your checking account closed at a bank for non-
| legal reasons - at least the bank gives you the money in
| the account, while Google generally does not give you your
| emails nor responds to your support tickets.
|
| It's one thing when it's a $100 merchant payment. Who
| cares. It's another when it's a $1,000,000 transfer. I
| understand the desire to scale and compartmentalize, to use
| vendors. It is pretty clear that the bulk of compliance
| work is not done through W2 Stripe employees, although I
| don't see why that is possible with a bank and not with
| Stripe.
|
| > Given that the implementing SaaS business will control
| the UX around initiating a payment, they could control how
| much or little bookkeeping to do at time of a payment or
| transfer.
|
| I'm asking, how do the typical statement-of-purpose and
| other KYC processes adopted by other fintech firms fit into
| your API? For example, if my business or I transfer
| $1,000,000, most fintech firms ask a day or two later to
| fulfill more detailed statement of purpose asks, as part of
| a "large transfer compliance" department sort of thing,
| like providing an invoice and information about the
| recipient. I understand this is above-and-beyond any
| regulatory requirements but I could be wrong. So suppose my
| end user makes a $1,000,000 transfer that I fulfill using
| Stripe Treasury-backed API, do you then follow up days
| later with the Treasury implementer (me), via e-mail, to
| obtain PDFs from the end user, etc.? Or do you simply not
| perform this sort of above-and-beyond ask?
|
| The broader question was really about, how do you
| anticipate doing this KYC in an API-driven way? Or is the
| answer you will not? I'm not asking the specifics of the
| policy, I understand you cannot disclose the policy, I'm
| asking from a UX point of view, how will that policy be
| acted out? Because building the whole API implementation
| and then winding up in an e-mailing PDF back-and-forth with
| a contract Stripe employee anyway sounds pretty crummy.
|
| Are the unusual asks are part of determining whether or not
| the implementor / intermediary is obeying an AUP, not to
| fulfill legal obligations? AUPs are at once quite
| subjective and opinionated but also surprisingly uniform
| among Internet money companies, leading me to believe that
| this is not something anyone actually feels strongly about
| but really just cargo-cults. While I do not personally
| believe this, the most cynical belief is that this is data
| gathering and lead generation, that Treasury is really a
| Robinhood-style business, so the docs asked are retained to
| be later analyzed for secular, non-compliance reasons like
| identifying new customers (i.e., the recipients's business)
| and pricing.
| tarstarr wrote:
| There are many financial services companies which are
| supportable. For example, Clearbanc, a financial services
| company, uses multiple Stripe products. We try to help
| users by offloading some of the regulatory and compliance
| work to us, but as you are aware regulation in financial
| services is complicated and nuanced. I can't speculate on
| each possible use case serially, but we're interested in
| hearing specifics and trying to support more legitimate
| fintech businesses versus less with this product.
|
| As for handling exceptions on individual transactions:
| this is something which Stripe does very frequently with
| respect to our Stripe Connect users. For example, we
| might need to inquire about a large payment made over a
| Stripe Connect platform, particularly if it appears out-
| of-character for their usage or for that platform. (We
| might have questions about a million dollar "pizza"
| order.) Depending on our specific business relationship
| with the platform, the flow might be the platform
| reaching out to the customer for documentation, it might
| be the platform reviewing information provided
| contemporaneously with the transaction, it might involve
| us reviewing metadata on the transaction, or it might
| involve us reaching out to the user.
|
| Depending on the specifics of what a platform does, it
| might have internal compliance or fraud teams. Many of
| our large platforms do; we interface with them (and
| create interfaces for them) to maximize their
| effectiveness and minimize silliness.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > Clearbanc, a financial services company, uses multiple
| Stripe products
|
| If Clearbanc tried to use a Stripe product today, it
| obviously uses the words "investor" and "Fund me" on its
| landing pages, "democratize access to capital," - so it
| sounds like crowdfunding, even though I know Clearbanc's
| business isn't. Your contractor compliance team would say
| no, but a Stripe W2, who is equipped for this kind of
| nuance, would say yes.
|
| However: "We provide the capital to grow and, in return,
| are paid a percentage of revenue until we are paid back
| plus a small 6% - 12% fee... no dilution, no board seats"
| is clearly describing a loan. Here's a link (1) to an SEC
| filing where in plain language a Clearbanc loan recipient
| describes receiving a "loan" from Clearbanc. So it's
| clearly a "lending instruments" and credit service, in
| violation of your AUP, no doubt about it, you even use
| the word lending instrument to provide the flexibility to
| account for this sort of stuff. And here, a contractor
| would _not_ be able to figure out what I just did - they
| 'd say, "oh their landing page is not using the word
| loan, which is a keyword in my script" - but a W2 would!
|
| I get it, you want to have it both ways, I get that
| reality is just, "It is case by case, and in reality, we
| decide for (1) totally random reasons, like whether or
| not you are reviewed by a contractor or an educated W2,
| and (2) the cut of your jib." Maybe you guys permit loans
| in Stripe Connect.
|
| Maybe these Clearbanc guys really did invoke some kind of
| magic, by not using the word loan but instead using the
| word advance and fees, even though their own Fast Company
| article says loan and the recipients (correctly) account
| for and legally define the money they received from
| Clearbanc as a loan. I don't know. It's actually really
| surprising and I'm trying to cut to the core of the AUP
| question and why it generates so many problems for you
| guys.
|
| Is your real takeaway: "Oh, I can't say specific
| companies." I believe this is wrong! I think you should
| not be afraid to say Clearbanc, and then find out they
| make loans, and you should be able to just say, "No to
| AngelList and no to TransferWise." It's not that big of a
| deal that Clearbanc makes loans, which is against your
| AUP, you can work with whomever you want! Which is really
| what I'm getting at, which is to facilitate a
| conversation, something between educated people who
| aren't trying to gotcha each other, that is what we're
| having, about what the potential of the platform is - not
| a situation where, oh man, what do I put into this "What
| do you want to build with Stripe Treasury" box on the
| invite form? Because if I put in the wrong keywords, I am
| shut out from something really useful to me, not because
| I am doing something weird and want to skirt compliance,
| but because it is free.
|
| (1) https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001700895/00
| 0114420... "During 2018, the Company entered into several
| loan agreements with Clearbanc in the amount of $670,443,
| bearing interest ranging from 9.25% to 15%. Interest
| expense on these loans totaled $26,560 for the year ended
| December 31, 2018. The unpaid principal balance was
| $291,214 as of December 31, 2018."
| derefr wrote:
| I'm confused. Are you trying to say that Stripe is
| violating their own policies by offering a clearing-house
| API to facilitate their customers getting loans from
| banks?
|
| Or are you trying to say that a Stripe _customer_ would
| be in violation of Stripe 's policies, if they used this
| facilitaton-of-loans to provide loans to _their own_
| customers?
|
| Because I think the first statement is obviously false;
| and the second statement is obviously true, but vacuous
| -- in that that's _not_ the service that Stripe is
| offering. (Or, I mean, it could be in special cases, but
| it 's not pitched that way because for most companies
| doing that would be _a legal impossibility_.)
|
| Obviously, Stripe can hook your company up with a bank;
| and obviously, that bank can offer your company some
| loans. Those two processes, separately, are entirely
| normal things that happen every day in the financial
| world. Combining them doesn't change that.
|
| Obviously (to me, at least), your company _cannot_ take a
| loan offered by a bank, and repackage that same loan to
| your own customers as part of your offering as if it was
| from you, with your company controlling+mediating that
| relationship -- at least, not without you yourself being
| legally reclassified as a bank. (Which is why that 's not
| what _Stripe itself_ is doing here. They 're just
| facilitating already-legitimate transactions between
| banks and businesses, without owning or mediating those
| transactions.)
|
| And that fact has nothing to do with any company's
| policies, Stripe's or otherwise; that just has to do with
| what activities are only legal for banks to do. _Stripe_
| isn 't filtering these customers out. They're just
| telling them that they can't take do X with service Y
| Stripe provides, because they're not banks, and only
| banks can legally do X, regardless of _how_.
| rsync wrote:
| "I'm confused. Are you trying to say that Stripe is
| violating their own policies by offering a clearing-house
| API to facilitate their customers getting loans from
| banks?"
|
| I think your parent is expressing (among other things)
| frustration about the fact that Stripe is presenting this
| product as a very modern, very Internet-based, very
| progressive product that we expect will be governed by
| the same kind of opaque, sometimes capricious enforcement
| of ToS/AUP that google uses to unexpectedly lock people
| out of their gmail accounts or "de-monetize" their
| youtube accounts for no discernible reasons ...
|
| ... but at the same time, this isn't a free email account
| and it isn't a video service - it's serious, grownup
| business involving real money.
|
| So the question becomes, what kind of people are manning
| the back end infrastructure and how much of it is driven
| by algorithms ? As your parent describes, he can go to an
| _actual bank_ and sit down with a _real employee_ and
| have a substantive conversation with nuance and
| understanding ... which you can 't have with an
| algorithm.
| rsync wrote:
| "While I do not personally believe this, the most cynical
| belief is that this is data gathering and lead
| generation, that Treasury is really a Robinhood-style
| business, so the docs asked are retained to be later
| analyzed for secular, non-compliance reasons like
| identifying new customers (i.e., the recipients's
| business) and pricing."
|
| Thank you for this insight, however unlikely it may end
| up being - it is very well taken.
| donor20 wrote:
| Can I ask a quick question - do you have familiarity with
| corporate treasury type activity at businesses and SAAS
| businesses?
|
| The volume of businesses that will be interested in this
| is going to be high. Your accounting platform would LOVE
| to be able to add banking features. Your expense
| management platform would LOVE to have direct integrated
| debit cards and cash management for you (and their
| customers will love it). Your education institutions
| would love to have their stored value / payment flows
| made more efficient (huge numbers of changing students
| with onsite and offsite dining, stipends, reimbursements
| etc etc with lots of lost cards and more).
|
| In most cases, business do a POOR job of KYC when
| onboarding payment recipients.
|
| My guess is stripes default flow to onboard hairstylists
| and dog walkers will be stronger, and repeat bad actors
| will be more easily identified by them then whatever your
| existing corporate treasury process is (usually upload an
| ACH file with some very minimum checks based on a webapp
| onboarding).Stripes model for KYC / onboarding will be
| API driven almost certainly, that's going to be part of
| the value add without question. Emailing PDF's back and
| forth is not scalable for onboarding with KYC frankly
| (and not always that secure).
|
| In more specialized cases, the person building on top of
| the treasury function, if required by their business /
| license etc, would need to do additional bookkeeping /
| KYC as necessary. That's how it always is. For example,
| many states require a money transmitter license.
| Transferwise could do the recordkeeping and validation
| around transfers at whatever additional level needed to
| be able to offer their product in those states, which may
| include things like finding out source of funds. So if
| you are operating a money transfer business, yes, you
| either may not be allowed on stripe, or you may get asked
| what is going on.
|
| The other thing is, for many transfers "on platform" its
| going to be VERY clear what is going on. Stripe will have
| metadata access on the API side it looks like. They can
| review what is happening for reasonableness. And they
| already play in a pretty large space, I would be
| surprised if a lot of use cases exceeded their capacity
| and am sure MANY use cases would be within capacity.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| > KYC goes through Stripe's processes.
|
| I take it this means that Stripe will still be acquiescing
| to activist pressure and taking actions to deplatform
| clients? Or is this opaque KYC process limited to the
| minimum required by law? Stripe's history of banning
| conservative clients in other offerings seems unacceptable
| for a platform trying to dig in deeper into core layers of
| the financial ecosystem.
| shreygupta wrote:
| Hi Tara! First off, I've never posted on HN before, but I felt
| so obligated to write this because this solves so many of the
| challenges my team has been going through building our
| application. I'm wondering if students under 18 are permitted
| under the TOS? I can see how this product will change the open
| banking game and fill so many gaps in. Thank you for building
| this!
| bastawhiz wrote:
| If you sign up for Stripe and you're under 18, you'll be
| required to have a person 18 years or older register as the
| business representative for your account (usually a parent or
| guardian). Depending on your country, the age requirement may
| vary.
|
| If you're under 13, you are not allowed to use Stripe at all
| regardless of what country you're in.
| shreygupta wrote:
| Right, of course.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Hello Tara,
|
| Do you allow transactions by and with users in states which the
| US is (illegally) imposing sanctions on? Like Iran?
| edwinwee wrote:
| No, regulations would prevent Stripe from working with users
| that have business in sanctioned countries.
| einpoklum wrote:
| So it's a faulty and discriminatory service then.
| lomoeffect wrote:
| Sounds like something to take up with the US Government
| to be honest. Every payment processor faces this
| challenge.
| callmeed wrote:
| I was denied access to Stripe Issuing for a project I have in
| the works. I wasn't given a lot of details why or when I could
| reapply.
|
| Is the same thing going to happen with Stripe Treasury? How can
| I find out if what I want to do is permissible now that
| Treasury exists?
| edwinwee wrote:
| Was it perhaps for a more consumery-type use-case instead of
| business? Issuing (and Treasury) are mostly focused on
| building for businesses at this moment (but are also
| expanding the number of use-cases). Could you email me at
| edwin@stripe.com and I can take another look?
| callmeed wrote:
| Yes and yes. Thanks.
| waffle_ss wrote:
| Is Stripe Treasury still beholden to Stripe's list of
| restricted businesses?[1]
|
| A few years ago I started a company with some partners and we
| signed up with Stripe Atlas. At the end of the lengthy
| application we got rejected by Stripe because our business
| falls under the "regulated" category. Even though we didn't
| need credit card processing, just ACH, and the former is
| seemingly where these list of prohibited businesses come from.
|
| We ended up going full steam ahead with Dwolla instead.
| Although the developer experience is not as polished as Stripe,
| they don't discriminate against fully legal businesses that
| should be allowed to bank and transact like any other.
|
| [1]: https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses
| edwinwee wrote:
| It is--the businesses we're not able to work with are mostly
| restricted by the financial partners and banks that Stripe
| works with. But we do want to support as many business types
| as possible--and for Atlas in particular, we've recently been
| able to support many more. (For example, we fully support
| telemedicine companies now.) Would you be able to email me at
| edwin@stripe.com? I'd like to take a second look at that
| rejection.
| senoroink wrote:
| What was the business? Stripe's not really making the rules
| here, it's the financial partners backing them. Just because
| something is "legal" doesn't mean it's not risky. As an easy
| example, from the page you linked, "psychic services" are
| banned.
| waffle_ss wrote:
| Pharmacies exchanging prescription drugs. Regulated, not
| risky - don't confound the two.
|
| And there are no "rules" restricting these transactions
| over the ACH network, Stripe is applying the widest scope
| of restrictions gathered from across of its partners, which
| include the credit card processors.
|
| And I was asking this question to the Stripe PM, not some
| uninformed white knight.
| tener wrote:
| Things which aren't risky on some level just don't get
| regulated. There is a ton of risk involved in pharmacies.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I tried out Stripe's API years and years ago and it was
| immediately obvious that these guys were good.
|
| I think you can tell a lot about a company by how well they do
| their documentation.
| [deleted]
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| I see a lot of comments about the applications for startups,
| which is only logical. (This is HN after all.) But I think this
| could be even more transformative in vehicle sales.
|
| Example: I work for a boat manufacturer. We've wanted to sell
| boats online for many years, but it's not the kind of product you
| charge to a credit card. (Most of our boats are in the $30k-80k
| range.)
|
| So one of the biggest challenges to selling online is the
| financing. A service like this, once it opens up outside the US
| and for B2C, could solve that problem.
|
| I could see this having a transformative (disruptive?) effect on
| boats, RVs, cars, trucks, ATVs, etc. Basically any big-ticket
| item that doesn't require getting a lawyer involved.
| jakozaur wrote:
| I'm continue to be amazed by Stripe innovations. Financials
| companies used to stagnate (e.g. PayPal) while Stripe keeps
| reinventing itself... Stripe Capital, Stripe Checkout, Stripe
| Treasury...
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Atlas is pretty awesome too. Build a C Corp in a few minutes.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Atlas was priced right, but we had a negative experience with
| it. Document templates were wrong, spouses never got emails
| for signature, workflow steps were out of order, tax id
| issuance took very long, and on top of that they are
| extremely oversubscribed, so hearing back from their support
| team took a while. Atlas has a lot of potential, but needs a
| lot of work.
| edwinwee wrote:
| I'm really sorry that happened. We've invested a lot this
| year in making things smoother (incorporation is faster
| than ever and our Atlas support team has scaled up), but
| I'd like to see what went wrong in your case--and if we
| could prevent it from happening again. Could you email me
| at edwin@stripe.com?
| dang wrote:
| A related article and discussion are here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25289523
| WC3w6pXxgGd wrote:
| Does anybody understand this? There's nothing explaining this on
| the page.
| rsync wrote:
| Perhaps it is too early to ask this question, but in case anyone
| here is an early user of Stripe Treasury (or there are Stripe
| employees here):
|
| What is the Stripe Treasury equivalent of a Twilio Twiml Bin ?
|
| A Twiml bin is a block of code that you can enter _into your
| twilio account, through their management interface_ and then
| perform actions, etc., without any outside hosting of code or
| additional services.
|
| It's perhaps not the most powerful mechanism but it is
| tremendously simple and efficient to just type the code into the
| user interface in your account rather than hosting code to call
| with webhooks, etc., etc.
| krm01 wrote:
| does this mean I could create and operate my own interest-free
| bank where people can store money and pay their bills, without me
| having to go through all the regulations?
| densekernel wrote:
| Now every company can be a FinTech company!
|
| https://a16z.com/2020/01/21/every-company-will-be-a-fintech-...
| coachtrotz wrote:
| Pretty interesting that Stripe is partnering with Evolve, Citi,
| and GS and not SVB whom they use for Stripe Atlas.
| scop wrote:
| Super interesting from a business perspective, but can't help but
| think of the personal front too. While it may be difficult to
| execute safely/cheaply, just the _idea_ rolling my own personal
| checking account is phenomenal.
| drewrv wrote:
| This is something I've wanted for a while, for personal use
| only. I wonder if their pricing and license will actually
| accommodate this kind of use case though.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| What features are you looking for? If you have an account at
| Capital One (or most other major banks) you can get pretty good
| control over it thru Plaid.
| Oblouk wrote:
| I'd prefer Capital One not have access to and sell all my
| purchase data.
| tarstarr wrote:
| Stripe Treasury currently supports businesses whose customers
| make business use of the platform. We are interested in
| innovation in personal financial services, too, but see more
| need currently from B2B platforms. We will see how things
| develop as we improve this offering!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jeremymcanally wrote:
| I look forward to the GitHub project that makes a one-click to
| deploy to Heroku your own "bank" using this. :)
|
| I haven't dug into their terms, but is there any reason you
| couldn't create effectively a bank of one customer (or even just
| your family?) with this, backed by their larger institutions?
| Issue your own debit cards, the works?
| alexobenauer wrote:
| This would be incredibly interesting.
|
| I have yet to find a bank for our business accounts that
| doesn't make me jump through ridiculous hoops to get basic
| things done.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I've had good luck with https://mercury.com for business
| banking.
| PStamatiou wrote:
| Same, Mercury is great
| mattcantstop wrote:
| Where is all the mercury.com spam coming from. I am highly
| skeptical this is organic.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| My comment comes from my own experience with the product,
| nothing more nothing less. I share so it can help others
| who have the need. Can't speak for anyone else's
| comments.
| jjb123 wrote:
| +1 for mercury, great option for this use case
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| patio11 elsewhere here: "Stripe Treasury is presently only for
| businesses serving businesses"
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This was the first thing I thought of!
| scrollaway wrote:
| I look forward to the terraform bank account module to follow.
| :)
| anaganisk wrote:
| Isn't that just regular banking with extra steps? I mean how
| different is it from asking a bank for its api access?
| [deleted]
| crb002 wrote:
| Interest on short term holdings - sweet. Then again, AWS is a
| bank that gives 30 day loans - they still win because the payment
| friction is after the fact.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Evolve Bank & Trust will probably be the bank most of these funds
| sit in [0]. With this partnership, and their Mercury Bank
| partnership [1], they've positioned themselves very well. For a
| small bank out of Memphis [2], this is quite impressive.
|
| [0]: https://stripe.com/treasury#request-invite
|
| [1]: https://mercury.com/
|
| [2]: https://www.getevolved.com/contact/locations/
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| Does this service allow anyone that is legally allowed to
| participate in the US financial system? Or is it limited to
| people that your partner banks "want" to deal with?
|
| I'm thinking about the unbanked and others that financial
| institutions tend to not want to deal with. Living in a large
| city, I've seen plenty of people that use gift cards, transit
| cards, etc as their "bank" because bank services are unavailable
| or the fee structure is too onerous. Or, for example, someone
| that has been in prison for financial crimes and needs a way to
| rehabilitate back into society.
|
| Thanks!
| patio11 wrote:
| We are extremely in favor of making financial services
| available to more people in more places at lower cost and with
| less arbitrary restrictions. That said, we won't be able to
| solve this problem singlehandedly in a day; Stripe Treasury is
| presently only for businesses serving businesses. As an
| infrastructure provider, we are also reliant on our users
| building the platforms their communities need.
|
| Fees matter for businesses too, though. Many small business
| owners are greatly inconvenienced by e.g. the $X,000 minimum to
| avoid a $15-25 monthly maintenance fee. By bringing large
| global banks a great deal of deposits at once, we've convinced
| them to not impose maintenance fees on the end-users of these
| accounts; they're willing to send the money they're not
| spending on customer acquisition (advertising, branch networks,
| sales reps, etc) back to Main Street.
|
| Another thing scale allows us to do is advocate for our users
| with financial partners. For example, earlier this year we
| successfully convinced the relevant parties to approve
| processing payments for telemedicine companies, which was
| previously not something they were comfortable with. That is
| something that previously each company would have had to
| individually negotiate, and e.g. startups in the space or
| individual medical practices might not have had sufficient
| reputations with their financial institutions to cause major
| changes in their appetite. We were able to get it through by
| emphasizing how our scale, maturity, and robust compliance
| program allowed us to allay their concerns.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| > Stripe Treasury is presently only for businesses serving
| businesses.
|
| I missed that. Thank you for replying!
| uses wrote:
| Does this allow me to basically create my own bank? Like could I
| make my own version of Simple, and use this as the back end? I'm
| confused because I thought there were a lot of legal requirements
| to banking and not just the actual services they provide, which
| this seems to commoditize.
| tarstarr wrote:
| Stripe isn't a bank either! We hold various financial licenses
| and partner with a number of large global banks to power Stripe
| Treasury. That said, you can definitely build atop Stripe
| Treasury to offer your customers fintech services, so that they
| can perform all of their money management needs on your
| product. Though we're interested in helping entrepreneurs build
| financial services for many use cases, today we only support
| businesses (which includes sole props!)
|
| To the point of legal requirements -- there are absolutely a
| lot of legal requirements here, but Stripe Treasury abstracts a
| lot of the complexity of those requirements and makes it easier
| for you to comply than if you had to go at this alone.
| xyst wrote:
| Would have been nice if stripe actually got into the consumer
| banking business instead of using existing big bank
| infrastructure. Probably could have spun off a separate entity
| for consumer banking and hook their treasury api into that
| system.
|
| Partnering with companies such as Goldman Sachs is typically not
| a good look from an optics perspective -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs_controversies
| ytrytr wrote:
| > Partnering with companies such as Goldman Sachs is typically
| not a good look from an optics perspective -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs_controversies
|
| Lol, as if having a 'Controversies' section on Wikipedia
| automatically precludes GS from being one of the best at what
| they do.
|
| Also, a lot of this 'Optics' talk doesn't matter in the real
| world, which is why something like Marcus has been as
| successful as it is, and people have rushed to get the Apple
| Card.
| dave_4_bagels wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but this appears to be Stripe trying to
| take make inroads with Plaid's existing services?
|
| Is it just me, or is this expansion of Stripe's functionality a
| bit concerning? It goes without saying, that now Stripe will be
| able to clamp down and censor banking AND payment activity they
| deem inappropriate or allowed by their banking partners?
| joshuakelly wrote:
| There's a reason "marketplaces" get a call out on this landing
| page. Every single startup that has to manage buyers and sellers
| ends up needing to implement their own bespoke "treasury"
| operations. There are other players in this space (Modern
| Treasury for example), but obviously the distinct Stripe
| advantage is integrating with the payment stack.
|
| This would have saved years of development efforts and
| maintenance on treasury operations for my team at a previous gig
| (in the live events/ticketing space, who are probably going to
| read this comment - hi guys).
| jjeaff wrote:
| Isn't that just stripe connect?
| radihuq wrote:
| This has an incredible amount of potential in the events space
| --- I'm excited to see what new advances this tech will enable
| pbowyer wrote:
| Why?
|
| I'm really not getting the usefulness of this offering, so
| can't have been exposed to or dealt with companies that have
| the problem it's solving.
|
| I have worked with events companies on ticketing systems, so
| any example scenario you can share around events would be
| great to help me understand.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Seems like that would be more inline with the stripe connect
| platform.
| radihuq wrote:
| Today, yes, but I think in the long run a platform that
| implements something like Stripe Treasury has the
| opportunity to provide a ton of value for bottom-market
| event planners (think: those people that run 10 person
| workshops out of a community center)
| joshuakelly wrote:
| It's also true at the high end. Business decisions around
| key service providers in the AAA+ live events space are
| driven primarily by access to what effectively are
| financial services (advances and other lifecycle events,
| and in general the ability of your counter party to act
| as an underwriter). Access to quasi-financial services
| are the key differentiator at the top of the market.
|
| This will be especially true looking forward to the post-
| COVID relaunch of tours and festivals.
| anon589 wrote:
| Outsourcing KYC is a questionable decision though - I'm
| wondering how much of a black box that is or you get the same
| info as if you implemented it yourself.
|
| There's always false negatives for systems like this, and if
| Stripe wrongly tells you someone is good then are you liable
| for acting on that decision?
| intricatedetail wrote:
| In my country relying on someone else's advice even if that
| is a qualified professional advice won't remove any liability
| from a person acting on such advice. It's just an information
| that one needs to decide for themselves and accept
| consequences.
| joshuakelly wrote:
| I can't speak specifically to the liability question since I
| don't want to provide any inaccurate information.
|
| To the false negatives problem itself though, I think your
| implicit assumption is the correct one - that false negatives
| are a bigger potential problem than false positives. In my
| experience, the false positive rate on declines was
| immaterial to the business. The impact of a false negative is
| definitely a different question.
| weego wrote:
| Outsourcing KYC is essential if you want preventative
| measures. Having your own just allows you to learn from
| getting stung.
| gcblkjaidfj wrote:
| Corollary: Outsourcing KYC means they learn from _you_
| getting stung.
| giovannibonetti wrote:
| You can have your cake and eat it, too: - Start with a
| third-party KYC solution - Slowly develop your own and
| compare the results with the one from the provider - When
| your own solution provides something similar to the other
| one, you can abort the subscription
| derefr wrote:
| Which in turn means you benefit from everyone else who's
| already been stung. KYC solutions' risk:reward ratios
| start high, but asymptotically approach 0 as the provider
| learns from its customers' problems. If you're signing up
| for a well-established one, you're able to free-ride on
| all the learning that's already been done.
| _alex_ wrote:
| So much this. I would have zero interest in building out
| kyc vs having stripe do it for me
| tempsy wrote:
| It's a question of defensibility if some regulator came
| to you and asked why you allowed certain individuals
| through because a black box told you without any
| additional context.
|
| And I don't think anyone builds their own KYC from ground
| up - it's more whether you have context for a decision
| with your own vendor implementation vs a black box yes or
| no.
| conductr wrote:
| Isn't it Stripe's partner bank that is ultimately
| underwriting all the KYC on a platform like this? I
| assume they've signed off on how Stripe has implemented
| it so as to be sufficiently defensible
| jdmichal wrote:
| Ding ding. Notice to open the Treasury account, you need
| to specify the bank. Stripe is not owning the accounts,
| the bank is, so KYC is pushed to them.
|
| EDIT: For those that think that just opening the accounts
| as Stripe would be a workaround, the answer to that is
| "beneficial ownership" and is part of KYC.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Will Stripe indemnify you against inaccurate results?
| hammock wrote:
| So now anyone can create their own Venmo app, and just use
| Stripe Treasury on the backend? What's the idea behind this?
| nrmitchi wrote:
| Treasury at this time appears to be limited to businesses
| that serve other business, _not_ businesses that serve end-
| users.
|
| Obviously there is a lot of potential overlap there, but in
| those situations I suspect that the "rules" would be that you
| could use Treasury services for your "serving businesses"
| side, but not for your "end-consumer" side.
| swalsh wrote:
| I don't think so, this is not really meant for consumer
| oriented applications. Completely different regulatory
| animal.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| Truly remarkable service. I am sure this is not the intended use
| case, but am wondering if it would be possible to build an
| experimental stock (or alternative capital asset) exchange with
| Stripe Treasury? It seems as though all the pieces are included.
| Including interest rollover, and potentially margin trading
| accounts.
| cplantijn wrote:
| This announcement comes very close to Atlanta entrepreneur/rapper
| Micheal Render (Killer Mike)'s Greenwood bank, a grassroots black
| owned bank. I wonder if they are using Stripe Treasury as their
| banking platform.
|
| Bank: https://bankgreenwood.com/
| Kye wrote:
| I don't see anything about who they bank with on the site other
| than it's FDIC insured.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| When is Stripe going to IPO so mere souls can also invest in the
| company, it's been long overdue.
| 42droids wrote:
| I would also like to know this.
| agildehaus wrote:
| I get this, but being private is often a reason why a company
| is great.
| xyst wrote:
| Good for the people that want to speculate on the stock price,
| but bad for the people that actually use their products.
|
| I honestly hope they never go public, otherwise I fear they
| will just become another souless "salesforce"
| ianhawes wrote:
| This looks like a great product from Stripe. If anyone is
| searching for an offering thats a bit more mature and not invite
| only, I highly recommend Synapse[0] as a Banking as a Service
| platform.
|
| [0] https://synapsefi.com/
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