[HCoop-Discuss] Alternatives to Paypal and Stripe?

[Kenneth Pronovici]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:15 AM Joseph Yaworski <jyaworski at carotid.us> wrote:
> Have we discussed alternatives to PayPal and Stripe recently? With them
> taking a cut of membership, it might be a good time to look at other
> options. Some of us could likely do ACH, at least in the US.

As far as I remember, we haven't talked about this during my time on
the board, which is only about 15 months at this point.   Clinton may
know more, since he's been the treasurer for a while now.

>From what I've read, it seems like we would still need a payment
processor like Square or Stripe in order to accept ACH.  There are
still some fees involved, although they are likely to be less than the
credit card processing fees we pay today.  However, it also seems like
our liabilities would be different for ACH.  For instance, it appears
that the co-op would get charged a penalty fee if an ACH payment is
rejected for insufficient funds or other reasons.  We would have to
take that risk into account.

It also seems like the cost is only one of the factors we need to
consider.  Since everyone who regularly deals with payments is doing
it on a volunteer basis, I'm inclined to prefer a solution that is
easier to deal with, even if it costs the co-op a little more in fees.
  From the brief digging I've done, it's not clear to me whether ACH
would require more or less work to administer.

I guess it's really a question of how many people would want to take
advantage of this, and how much money we are likely to save vs. any
extra work that ACH entails.

KEN