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Ask HN: How Would You Do Escrow b/t Users in Bootstrap w/o Paypal?

3 points by alliemobley ↗ HN
tl;dr: Need to do escrow between users without paypal, what do?

I`m the new CTO, redoing ConnectWithContractors.com(asp.net 2.0 webforms website) in bootstrap and open source technologies to love my life a little more and minimize scaling/hosting/dev costs and maximize utility, sanity, and on-boarding time. The old app was too poorly implemented to get myself on-boarded without going to great lengths, so I taught the CEO just enough coding to understand the problem and sell him on a fresh start. Check it out: connectwithcontractors.github.com The asp.net app had an unfinished attempt at an escrow implementation via paypal. I heard paypal intends to fix the issues they have had in the past, but I don't want to use them in our mvp, unless it's the fastest solution to the problem, in which case, so be it.

So what would you do HN?

6 comments

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JoachimSchipper
Escrow just screams fraud; properly solving that is a billion-dollar business by itself, so I'd strongly urge you not to implement something yourself.

That said, escrow.com and the like exist; I have no experience, but escrow.com seems to accept most every reasonable way of paying for an acceptable fee.

jamesjguthrie
I thought the point of using an escrow service was to avoid fraud?
alliemobley
While of course I'd like to avoid fraud, the point right now is to make an mvp that people can start using for real. We can iterate on fraud prevention once we have something to defraud, and ideally build toward a system that degrades gracefully to use alternative providers in case the primary is down or tries to withold money such that we can just drop in new ones as startups enter this space and compete against one another.
alliemobley
I agree that building an escrow service to solve a construction problem doesn't make sense. It`s like your car needing a new engine so you build a jet instead. Anyone want to build an escrow startup with a garunteed customer lined up?
JoachimSchipper
What is wrong with escrow.com [1] for what you're doing?

[1] No personal experience. This is not a recommendation. Feel free to substitute one of their competitors, if such exist.

startupstella
Check out balancedpayments.com. I haven't seen anyone else with an escrow and payments solution that is robust (i havent used them, just doing research for my own projects)