pay out via Trans-pay

[nraoTF]

Original: Direct bank Payout into 100 countries

I was invited by Jareau Wade to join this forum. We currently provide our payout facility to a large marketplace company out of silicon valley and I can confidently say that we are the only company in the world who can resolve this forums issue on payouts.

You can have you company connect into us through an API and we provide payout capability into any bank account into over 100 countries within 24 hours. You don't have to look at rudimentary firms like Payoneer or Bitpay our platform is single plugin and robust.

Please let me know if you want to discuss this further on 2125183876. Thanks

Want to back this issue? Post a bounty on it! We accept bounties via Bountysource.

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks @nraoTF. Can you link me to your API docs or upload them on this thread?

[nraoTF]

Chad- sure I can send you the api- I need to understand your whole analysis- is there a way you and me can speak- we have a huge opportunity and I want to tap into it and I know that we can solve a lot of the issues addressed on this forum. Call me 212-518-3876

Best regard’s

Nagarajan Rao

(212) 518-3876 ©

From: Chad Whitacre [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 7:30 AM
To: whit537/www.gittip.com
Cc: Nagarajan Rao
Subject: Re: [www.gittip.com] Direct bank Payout into 100 countries (#417)

Thanks @nraoTF https://github.com/nraoTF . Can you link me to your API docs or upload them on this thread?

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/417#issuecomment-11528344 .

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[chadwhitacre]

Just gave @nraoTF a call, hoping to have a conversation here this afternoon.

[chadwhitacre]

Is this the right website to be looking at here?

http://www.tfpayments.com/

[chadwhitacre]

Looks like it's a product of ThoughtFocus:

http://www.thoughtfocus.com/products.html

[chadwhitacre]

Not seeing payouts to bank accounts in 100 countries on the tfpayments.com site. Will be interested to hear about that. Also interested in hearing about other successful deployments.

[chadwhitacre]

Hmmm ... actually, @sigmavirus24 dug up http://trans-pay.com/ over on #126.

[chadwhitacre]

Yeah, Trans-Pay is in the ballpark:

Corporate's can use Trans-Pay for the following:

• Low value mass disbursements of funds
• Direct to bank account payments in local currency
• Alternative to Swift
• Quick delivery of funds
• Real-time FX quotes

http://trans-pay.com/benefits.html

[sigmavirus24]

Forgot I had found that. I thought you were referencing Gumroad's payout provider.

[chadwhitacre]

Still not sure who Gumroad uses. Just spent over an hour on the phone with @nraoTF, however. We had a great conversation! They've been building an in-house global payments network for 22 years for Trans-Fast, a retail money-moving platform specializing in non-Western countries (they're especially big in the Philippines). Now @nraoTF is tasked with developing a wholesale business unit called Trans-Pay and is looking to make connections in the Silicon Valley scene.

Trans-Pay is legit. They've been building relationships with multiple banks in many countries for over two decades. They pride themselves on expertise and quality in global bank deposits. They're apparently able to clear same day or next day in over 80 countries in local currency with no hidden fees.

It sounds like Gittip would be able to offer payouts for $10 each. This is significantly higher than the $0.30 we can charge for U.S. transactions.

[chadwhitacre]

@nraoTF A few more questions:

1. What's the exchange rate?
2. What are the countries and currencies you support?
3. Do you provide a fallback to SWIFT or would I be on my own there?
4. Is there a testing/development sandbox for the API?
5. Is there a web-based dashboard for managing transactions and my account?
6. Could I see those API docs?

Thanks! :)

[chadwhitacre]

Also, is there a process for recalling a payment in the case of fraud? Here's the details of Gittip's first brush with fraud a couple months ago. We had people inject stolen money into the system, some of which was siphoned out to fraudulent bank accounts and some to innocent bystanders. Can we pull the money back into Gittip to cover the refunds Gittip makes to the stolen credit cards?

[chadwhitacre]

@nraoTF FYI, I'm tracking Gittip's decision over here. I believe you're already watching that thread. If you would, though, let's keep our conversation re: Trans-Pay on this thread. Thanks. :)

[nraoTF]

Sure- Thanks

Best regard’s

Nagarajan Rao

(212) 518-3876 ©

From: Chad Whitacre [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 7:58 AM
To: whit537/www.gittip.com
Cc: Nagarajan Rao
Subject: Re: [www.gittip.com] explore partnership with Trans-Pay (#417)

@nraoTF https://github.com/nraoTF FYI, I'm tracking Gittip's decision over here https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/126#issuecomment-11793879 . I believe you're already watching that thread. If you would, though, let's keep our conversation re: Trans-Pay on this thread. Thanks. :)

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[nraoTF]

@nraoTF https://github.com/nraoTF A few more questions:

1. What's the exchange rate?- Best live rates- better then bank rates as we have our own treasury team in 3 different time zones.
2. What are the countries and currencies you support?- all the major countries and countries in latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia
3. Do you provide a fallback to SWIFT or would I be on my own there?- No- SWIFT is not an option and will never be through our network – we are better than swift
4. Is there a testing/development sandbox for the API?- yes
5. Is there a web-based dashboard for managing transactions and my account?- yes
6. Could I see those API docs?- sent

Thanks! :)

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[chadwhitacre]

@nraoTF The two main problems I'm having are:

• Coverage. 90+ countries is less than 50% coverage, and without an integrated SWIFT fallback to cover the rest I'm left with a partial solution. If I can solve this problem for all countries with one solution that is preferable.
• Pricing. The price to beat is $2.99 per transaction, with an exchange rate of 2% over mid-market. Can you express your exchange rate in terms of mid-market rate, for easier comparison? Can we come up with a per-transaction price that you're willing to quote publicly?

[chadwhitacre]

(Perhaps I'm just not hearing you on the exchange rate question: are you saying your exchange rates are below mid-market? Can you say how much below?)

[chadwhitacre]

@nraoTF and I have a call scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

[chadwhitacre]

I had a conversation with Nagarajan on the phone today, and we agreed together that Trans-Pay is not the right partner for Gittip at this time, given the scale of Gittip's operation and Trans-Pay's priorities. Many thanks to @nraoTF for engaging with us here on GitHub as well as in email and by phone, and all the best to Trans-Pay!

[chadwhitacre]

Just had a call with @nraoTF after hearing from him again at #126 (comment). We brushed up on Gittip's needs and funding flow and talked about a potential solution where:

• Gittip would be the sender from Trans-Pay's point of view (they would KYC us).
• Trans-Pay would be a merchant in Gittip's marketplace at Balanced.
• Each week at the end of payday:
  • We would transfer a lump sum from escrow to Trans-Pay using the Balanced API.
  • We would FTP a CSV to Trans-Pay (a la PayPal MassPay) to describe the disbursement of the lump sum.

@nraoTF You can see some of our numbers here:

• https://www.gittip.com/about/stats.html
• https://www.gittip.com/about/charts.html

We are doing about 250 deposits per month right now (55/wk), average deposit is $36. We're doubling every four months, so let's project 1,000 to 2,000 deposits per month by the middle of next year. Let's assume half of those could be outside the U.S.

[chadwhitacre]

@mvdkleijn Following up on #126 (comment) ... this is interesting timing given the effort we just went through to narrow our development focus (#1474). I just left a message w/ @nraoTF to have a conversation about timing and where things stand on our end in terms of what we're focusing on right now. I'll follow up here after that conversation.

[chadwhitacre]

Okay, had a phone call with @nraoTF. The story is that he is on a panel at http://www.crowdconf.com/ in a month and is interested in being able to point to Gittip as a customer from the startup world. Next steps would be:

• I sign their NDA.
• @nraoTF sends me documentation for their FTP batch processing system.
• We go through their compliance process. (Do we make it? cf. go through Payoneer approval process #481)
• We choose a few countries to initially launch with.
• We implement the FTP batch upload as part of payday.

On the one hand this seems like a good opportunity to finally make some headway on #126. I hesitate for two reasons:

• We just managed to focus our collective attention (adopt "milestone focus" and decide on first focus #1474), and this falls outside of our current focus. We need to be flexible enough to assess and respond to opportunities. It doesn't seem right to shift focus after finally gaining focus for only about 30 seconds.
• We currently outsource our anti-money-laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) burden to Balanced. That's _BIG_. If we go with Trans-Pay, then my understanding is that we're making ourselves responsible for this AML and KYC. The FTP integration might be trivial, but sorting out KYC for N countries won't be.

I'm leaning against pursuing this opportunity at this time.

[colindean]

Gittip should not be concerned with KYC compliance. 👎

Maybe there's a tiny but growing market for a third-party KYC compliance firm? I'm sure the Bitcoin world would love being able to farm that out.

[mvdkleijn]

All in all, I'd say: let's not do this.

Gittip should not become responsible for AML and KYC, certainly not until we're bigger. Balanced does both. just out of curiosity: does MangoPay?

[chadwhitacre]

I've received the batch FTP documentation and customer application from @nraoTF.

I was trying to think this morning about whether we could do this as a pilot project, limit it to a handful of accounts just to understand the process better. It occurs to me that in addition to an increased AML/KYC burden, we're also talking about storing bank account details in our database. My understanding is that PCI is a requirement of credit card companies. Does PCI apply to bank account details? Even if it doesn't, shouldn't we act like it does? Storing bank account details in our database is a second way that this would seem to expose us to significant risk.

[chadwhitacre]

@nraoTF Can you clarify these for us?

• Would Gittip be responsible for AML/KYC on our customers?
• Would Gittip be responsible for storing our customers' bank account details?

[mvdkleijn]

Does PCI apply to bank account details? Even if it doesn't, shouldn't we act like it does?

Don't know, but yes we should. Storing bank account details is (depending on location of bank account owner) a lesser security problem, but its still sensitive information.

[chadwhitacre]

Replied:

Thanks. I appreciate your feedback and I would like to move my business in the direction of greater compliance, as of course that will be best for us regardless of whether we are able to partner with Transpay. It sounds like setting up a proper business office is the next step. Are you able to provide further concrete action items for us to achieve minimum compliance?

Setting up an office reticketed as #155.

Re: "overall AML/KYC compliance wariness" I'm assuming they mean #417 (comment).

[techtonik]

Yes. The "overall AML/KYC compliance wariness" is a very vague refusal. In my practice compliance == checklist. And here it is doesn't sound like a checklist, more like "we don't want to deal with your shady business". =)

[chadwhitacre]

Blocked on AML (gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#119).

[chadwhitacre]

Heard from a new sales rep, setting up a call.

[chadwhitacre]

Private call (to be summarized here) scheduled for Wednesday (Jan 20) at 10 am UTC-5.

[chadwhitacre]

Sounds like Transpay is doing well, they landed deals with Upwork and Google. They're streamlining their onboarding process; here's their new Client Application (US).pdf. We're still too small for this to make sense yet, but maybe next year? The product looks great.

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks, []. I think it's going to take us at least a year to get our KYC/AML and our growth where we want it to be before reapproaching Transpay, but I'd be fine with a touchpoint in six months or so if you like ...

[chadwhitacre]

United States: Transfast is registered as a Money Transfer Business with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and licensed as a money transmitter in 37 U.S. states.

https://www.transpay.global/Home/FAQ (click "Licences")

It occurred to me that we would need this to be the case in order to use Transpay.

[justinxreese]

@whit537 Do you have a 10,000 foot view on Gratipay's stance with Transpay? Considering it in a project, but there is a lot of information in this thread to parse.

[chadwhitacre]

@justinxreese Latest comments (since #417 (comment)) give a good overview. We'd like to use their service but we want to tighten up our KYC first. Your best bet is probably to get into a sales call with them. I can introduce you in email if you want ... let me know! :-)

[nobodxbodon]

Re-ticketed to gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#974 for further discussion and planning. After deciding on concrete implementation plan and dev work starts, this will be reopened for tracking purpose.