HACKER Q&A
📣 alexmccain6

Would you use self-hosted payments to avoid payout holds?


No hold on payouts for online businesses.

I’m a founder and recently had a payout from a major payment platform delayed without much warning. The delay directly affected my ability to cover infrastructure costs, even though the money had already been earned. That experience was frustrating and made me question how much control builders really have over their own cash flow.

This got me thinking: instead of relying entirely on black-box gateways that pool funds and control payout timing, would builders want a self-hosted payments setup where money goes directly to their bank account using instant bank rails like UPI, SEPA Instant, or FPS? Not as a replacement for cards or Stripe, but as a way to avoid opaque payout holds where instant settlement is already possible.

Before building anything, I wanted to ask: is this something you’d personally use, or are payout delays simply an unavoidable cost of doing business online? I’d really appreciate hearing real experiences and honest opinions.


  👤 salawat Accepted Answer ✓
Forget it. DoA due to Bank Secrecy Act, compliance costs (AML/KYC), money transmitter licensure, and the fundamental structure of the U.S. financial system

You could make a self-hostable solution, but the rest of the financial network would basically either refuse to accept your packets without sufficient proof of regulatory compliance in order to preserve their own good standing with regulators. It's a pretty jealously guarded sector, because it sorta has to be to make fiscal crime tractable.

I mean... Go for it if you want. Just be aware, your resulting impl cannot be legally employed without a money transmitter license.


👤 openspend
Trying to solve it with OpenSpend. Feel free to steal the idea.

Sending e-transfers to businesses to pay for things is legal, unless I am mistaken. Please enlighten me.