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Ask HN: Payment Processor for a banned business model.

4 points by maresca ↗ HN
We are currently building a service that is a suite of tools for managing lottery pools. We are looking at processors but have found that most have provisions against gambling and lotteries. We've looked at Braintree, Stripe, and PayPal so far.

We will be charging a yearly subscription fee for access to our service. We won't be paying out anything to our users. We are on the edge case of this set of banned business models. Does anyone know of any payment processors that would cater to our needs?

8 comments

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wtracy
At the risk of sounding flippant: Have you considered Bitcoin as a primary payment method? Situations like yours are the main reason I want to see altcoins succeed.
maresca
That will definitely be an option at some point. I just don't want to turn away any potential customers because they don't have bitcoin.
psykovsky
Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, etc.
dangrossman
1) Take checks and wire transfers. It's not such a burden for something that's only paid once a year.

2) Google "high risk merchant account" and start contacting the providers. They have more freedom in underwriting and choosing what risks they find acceptable than 3rd-party processors, the kind of companies you've been contacting.

maresca
We'd rather not take checks/wire transfers. Our site digitizes the whole lottery pool process. It wouldn't align with our goals to force users to use checks/wire transfers.

This was what I was looking for. Thanks. I've only looked at well-known providers so far. I have a lot more research to do.

BorisMelnik
look for an offshore highrisk merchant.

what will most likely happen is they will hold 25%+ of your revenue for 30 days and release it periodically. once you meet certain thresholds those numbers will increase / decrease based on charge backs and other factors. hit me up if you need a referral.

gesman
Create your own dollar-for-point gift cards, use any payment processor to allow people to buy such giftcards, and then let people manage pools with their card balances.
patmcc
Are you going to be actually buying the lottery tickets? Or is it just a service to manage/organize the pool? If it's the latter you might want to get in touch with the payment processors, as that's probably fine.