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Show HN: Open-source Stripe Connect alternative
I've been using it personally for the past few months, and onboarded 5,000+ sellers and done 3,000+ payouts. 74% of new sellers on my marketplace choose Zoneless over Stripe, which is really interesting. I appreciate crypto and stablecoins are a bit of a touchy subject, but for this use case of sending global payouts cheaply, it's perfect.
The project is open source with an Apache 2.0 licence, which means there's the benefit of no lock-in and no risk of your account getting flagged or shut down. It also has an almost identical API and dashboard to Stripe.
Would love to hear any feedback you may have in the comments.
bastawhiz
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It also doesn't offer you protection against fraud (which is a huge problem that marketplaces face).
Frankly the missing piece to this is a real, actual identity verification component. If you're not checking identities against sanctions lists at the absolute minimum, you're not doing your due diligence. I wouldn't take that risk. The last thing you need is to be on the receiving end of a US Treasury inquiry.
tinyprojects
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This is a fair concern. Zoneless does verify the identity of payout recipients through Didit, and marketplaces can require KYC before the first payout. We also have support for blocking OFAC-listed wallet addresses, and also have additional checks to flag suspicious behaviour.
I agree that KYC doesn't eliminate marketplace fraud, though. That's true with Stripe Connect too; Stripe explicitly leaves platforms responsible for monitoring and preventing fraudulent activity even though it handles KYC and provides risk tooling.
I think the area I could make much clearer in the docs is the distinction between identity verification, sanctions screening, and marketplace fraud prevention.
satvikpendem
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renierbotha
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For context - I'm building a marketplace for artists and struggling to find a global payouts rail. The ones that exist have really high turnover requirements or reject new marketplaces that deal with higher value physical items due to chargeback risk.
tinyprojects
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This is mainly for the payout side, but there is a working stablecoin checkout / payments /subscription system in the project - there's no limit on charges, and there are no chargebacks possible because it uses stablecoins.
peter_d_sherman
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Also, what I find, well, let's just say "entertaining" here in the HN comments is that some posters (who don't do very well at identifying themselves!) complain about the as-of-yet-somewhat-"imperfect" (let's just say) at this point in time KYC and identity verification of customers aspects of this thing... (you have to love the double standard there!)
Forgive me for saying this, but aren't all Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrency transactions (at least in all cryptocurrencies that don't track identity) subject to the KYC and identity verification complaint?
In other words, you've got the tiniest of fishes in this pond, Ben, and he's trying to do the right thing, and he at least is a little bit accountable to "the spirit and letter" of doing the right thing -- whereas all of the other black-box cryptocurrencies DO NOT do anything KYC or identity verification wise.
Yet you other posters, you other critics -- are willing to see the "mote in Ben's eye" whereas you are not willing to see the "beam" in your own -- all of the other black-box cryptocurrency, foreign currency, and other systems for trade/transactions that you do not control.
Ye hypocrites!
I have nothing to say to you... half of you are people with agendas paid off by dark money funds, and half of you are bots, also paid off by dark money funds.
Ben, you are on the right track, you are doing the right thing!
Ignore what all of these crackpots, cranks, and agenda-driven paid-for-by-dark-money naysayers have to say!
You always see them, en masse, on any HN article that is halfway political or halfway financial.
They are always hypocritical, always willing to railroad discussions to their political and/or financial ends.
They never observe the bigger issues, and if you debate them they will railroad the debate into corner cases and use those corner cases to make you look bad!
So, getting back to the software, I like it, I think it's absolutely brilliant!
And I'm a human being with a real name, real flesh and blood, and I can own every single damn thing I say on HN, every single damn comment I make, without ever hiding behind an alias!
(Maybe HN should implement a "KYP" policy. That is, a Know Your Poster. policy... That is, know the person making the comments...)
Anyway, way to go, Ben!
aleqs
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Also the pricing is not very clear - you mention your costs went down to $6, but the first paid tier is $99/month ?
tinyprojects
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Thanks for this feedback, that could be clearer - the $6 is the total network fees for the underlying rails if you were self-hosting (about $0.002/transaction). The managed hosting option is just if you don't want to host it and run it yourself.
haaz
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php_survivor
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tinyprojects
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zuzululu
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so take normal cards then pay out in USDC....is that safe?
tinyprojects
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I totally understand where you're coming from, because I felt the exact same, but stablecoins specifically do not suffer from the same crypto crowd problem. They are just a very boring, elegant way of moving money cheaply.
zuzululu
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its these systematic risks that makes me wary but I understand your product now and I think that it makes sense but do you need Stripe approval ? how will i take card without stripe ?
stripe is very strict about certain categories
great work and thanks for explaining in detail but as a crypto skeptic I think I finally see one use case here that is legitimate.
my only gripe is "where do i get usdc and how to keep it safely" coinbase, metamask....these things add a lot of friction and exchange fees where i have to turn USDC into USD those have to be considered
tinyprojects
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Zoneless is completely independent of Stripe, you do not need Stripe approval or a Stripe account to run it. We have some beginner guides in our docs for handling topping up / exchanges. I use Kraken+, which is about $5/month and removes trading fees.
zuzululu
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for keeping regular payment processor for checkout....is that stripe? aren't they looking and evaluating your marketplace and then saying yes or no still ? or do you mean to use a high risk processor?
tinyprojects
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Zoneless has an open-source checkout to accept payments/subscriptions via stablecoins if you wanted a completely self-hosted alternative. I am very aware that not everyone wants to pay via stablecoins yet, though. People are very open to being paid with them, hence why it works well for payouts.