Payin + Payout via Uphold

[rohitpaulk]

https://uphold.com/en/developer/api/documentation/#introduction

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[rohitpaulk]

Payouts look very promising. We could pay to a USD card, and users could use uphold to convert between USD <-> BTC.

[rohitpaulk]

https://support.uphold.com/hc/en-us/articles/205845376-In-which-countries-does-Uphold-offer-bank-account-funding-and-withdrawals-

[rohitpaulk]

People from other countries are allowed to be members though.

[chadwhitacre]

This also came up at naspeh/mailur#4 (comment).

[mattbk]

I like options.

[chadwhitacre]

@kaguillera and I are prepared to account for this. Right, @kaguillera? :-)

[chadwhitacre]

I guess we'll need to sign up for an account and go through their due diligence process, eh?

[rohitpaulk]

@whit537 - Can you get started with that? At least we'll be able to clearly mark this ticket as 'Ready to start' or close it :)

[rohitpaulk]

By integrating with Uphold’s seamless and open API; Uphold Connect, developers and third parties can create applications, products and services that instantly, and securely deliver and transfer any type of money or commodity to anyone, anywhere at no cost, including free currency conversations and storage. Uphold has built world-leading Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) controls right into its open API. This takes care of the regulatory burden and control requirements developers face when entering the financial economy, allowing innovation without restrictions on a globally compliant and robust platform.

[chadwhitacre]

Can you get started with that?

Sure thing! :-)

[mattbk]

[chadwhitacre]

Hoping to dig into this tomorrow ...

[chadwhitacre]

Alright ...

[chadwhitacre]

/me watches their intro video

[chadwhitacre]

Doing some digging.

http://fortune.com/2015/10/14/bitreserve-bitcoin-uphold/ ← Launched as Bitreserve in 2013, pivoted to Uphold in late 2014.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halsey_Minor ← Founder. Made his money on CNET and Salesforce.

[chadwhitacre]

The question I'm asking is, what are the implications of Uphold for #3504?

[chadwhitacre]

Uphold requires users to join Uphold and go through identity verification on their side. Either, then:

1. We decide that Uphold is going to be our new Balanced, and proactively drive our users to Uphold.
2. Offer Uphold as an option for users who already have an Uphold account.

(1) is tempting, because they've got chops and capital and they're moving a lot faster than us. However, I see several risks down this path (eggs-in-one-basket, lack of control, making Halsey even richer), so we'd want to talk that through.

(2) should be driven by user demand. Do we have that yet? Do we have users clamoring for Uphold as a payments option?

[rohitpaulk]

Why not both?

[chadwhitacre]

Sure, I guess (1) is a superset of (2). Is that what you're saying?

[rohitpaulk]

Kinda. I see us doing exactly what we do with PayPal - If you have an account, you're welcome to link it. If you don't - we'll encourage you to make one.

[chadwhitacre]

If you don't - we'll encourage you to make one.

Except that in the glorious future we want to be able to have users give us their identity info and bank details, so that we can deposit to them ourselves (via Transpay or ACH) rather than having another brand in between. Right?

[rohitpaulk]

in the glorious future we want to be able to have users give us their identity info and bank details, so that we can deposit to them ourselves (via Transpay or ACH) rather than having another brand in between. Right?

That is the goal, yes :) My aim here is to get us some stability while we pursue that goal.

[chadwhitacre]

(Let's use gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#479 (comment) for this convo).

[chadwhitacre]

I'm looking at creating an Uphold account, but it's not clear to me whether there's a difference between an individual and a business account.

[chadwhitacre]

I've created and confirmed email for an account. Looking at registering a dev app ... looking really nice ...

[chadwhitacre]

I am reeeeeeeaaaalllllly wondering if we should go all-in on Uphold instead of rolling our own vault (#3504) and AML (gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#119). What's our unique value proposition? Such existential questions!!!!

[chadwhitacre]

@rohitpaulk What do you see as next steps here?

[rohitpaulk]

I don't think this'll pan out anytime soon 😕 Shall we focus on #726 for the time being?

[chadwhitacre]

Shall we focus on #726 for the time being?

Sounds like a plan ...

[mattbk]

Blocked by paperwork.

[chadwhitacre]

@mattbk More than just paperwork, I'm afraid. It's gonna take a lot of work to be able to answer their questions well!

[chadwhitacre]

text version

[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.