Im starting a website however my site is dependant on the use of a financial institution to serve as place where members can deposit money for future use. Does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to go about this? Are there any specific institutions I should contact first? What questions should I ask them? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
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If in the service you operate you're acting as a financial intermediary, that's a whole specialist area with regulatory and legal implications. The most common reason to want to hold customer deposits is the case where you have offerings that cost small amounts of money, and the service provider 'take' is prohibitive. For instance, customers can buy stuff that's $1, but you want the minimum transaction to be $10 so you still have an acceptable margin. A lot of startups work round this by, for instance, having customers buy site credits, that can be exchanged for products and services - in which case Paypal and the like are going to be a good option. So my $10 could become 10 credits, or 1000 virtual pennies. If this is a relevant solution, you still need to tread carefully, and think through what you will do as, if and when a customer wants to get a refund of part or all of their balance. |
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Is there any reason why you wouldn't use something like Paypal instead? You can have members pay money in and store it for future use. Have a look at Paypal adaptive payments if you need to share it between accounts. |
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