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Ask HN: What do you use to pay out multiple people (Stripe/Wise/PayPal, others?)

by ajeet_dhaliwal on 6/4/21, 3:43 PM with 15 comments

Hi all,

I'm lead dev at Tesults (https://www.tesults.com) and I'm looking at options to pay out users participating in our affiliate program.

We're happy with using Stripe to receive payments and manage subscriptions but paying out is limited to US accounts only that's quite disappointing because we like Stripe. Tesults is currently based in the UK and need to pay out to people globally. I'm investigating Wise, PayPal and looking at others and wondering what others here are doing. Keen to here about other options I may not have considered.

Having an API is useful, rather than having to manually upload a CSV file.

  • by Urgo on 6/4/21, 10:01 PM

    I've been using Transferwise, which is now known as Wise to pay people outside of the US for years. For inside the US I'm using Quickbooks. Other then liking their original name better I can't really say anything bad about Wise.

    While not as quick as a crypto transfer, wise is remarkably fast when comparing it to the US banking system at least. The person you're paying does need a wise account and their banking details entered in it, but beyond that the funds are ACH'd out of my account and converted to their own local currency and deposited directly into their bank accounts.

    It does look like they have an api [1] too though as I only have two people I'm paying with it I've always just entered it manually.

    [1] https://api-docs.wise.com/#wise-platform-api

  • by domk on 6/4/21, 4:34 PM

    At Purple Dot (waitlisting platform for e-commerce), we use Stripe.

    Not sure which Stripe product you are using exactly, but with Stripe Connect it is possible to pay out people in quite a few countries now, not just the US. If you only have a UK registered business, you should be able to cover EU at least.

  • by elementiks on 6/4/21, 11:32 PM

    We actually use a combination of Transferwise, Paymentrails and PayPal. We are a US e-commerce company with hundreds of foreign vendors that we pay every month. It gets complicated quick, particularly when dealing with certain countries. Some countries might have receiving limits, some countries don’t allow business to personal transfers. That’s partly why I use a mix of payout providers. Usually one of them will support the country I’m trying to send to. Be careful with Tipalti. I think they were the ones who wanted to have you sign a contract and guarantee them certain volume.

    I have not looked into Stripe, but TransferWise is by far the cheapest option overall. And all three have an API.

  • by nsp on 6/4/21, 4:26 PM

    At Teachable (course hosting and sales platform, we remit a ton of money), we use Stripe where we can w/account transfers, and paypal mass pay which kind of sucks but has low fees for everyone else

  • by tornato7 on 6/4/21, 5:43 PM

    Stellar works really well - you can just have users input a stellar address or make one for them. They'll need some sort of crypto exchange account to withdraw, though.

    You can send USDC or native XLM. There's a nice JavaScript API and you can even batch payments up into one operation. Fees are negligible.

  • by kilimchoi on 6/4/21, 4:03 PM

    Check out Tipalti