Our book:
Defensive Design for the Web: How To Improve Error Messages, Help, Forms, and Other Crisis Points
Available Now ($16.99)
Most Popular (last 15 days)
Looking for old posts?
37signals Mailing List
37signals Services
Syndicate
Need advice: Check writing, mass-pay service
23 Aug 2004 by Jason Fried
We’re hard at work on our next “tool” ( Basecamp was the first), and this one will require us to send people money. We’re considered sending money via ACH/EFT (electronically via direct deposit), but we’re also interested in exploring the paper-check model. Does anyone have recommendations for services that will handle this for us? For example, we’d love to send a data feed (XML, comma-separated, or whatever) to a service and have them send out paper checks for us. We’d probably do this every 30 days or so. Any suggestions or feedback would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
7 comments so far (Post a Comment)
23 Aug 2004 | Fazal Majid said...
It depends on whether you anticipate handling international beneficiaries, of course. Have you considered PayPal?
23 Aug 2004 | Derek at CD Baby said...
Jason, now there's something I know a thing or two about. We've paid
over $9 million to our musicians using a combination of:
(1) -
PayByCheck.com
(2) - ACH direct-deposit through Wells Fargo
(3) - PayPal
I can highly recommend PayByCheck for the exact service you describe. We've been using them for 5 years without a problem. (Oh unless you change your bank while with them, then double & triple check that PayByCheck has changed your routing & account numbers *everywhere* in their system.)
Definitely do all three options. If you leave out any one of those three, people will whine and cry for it. I know this from experience. :-)
23 Aug 2004 | Brad Hurley said...
There's also CheckFree, which is the service that Intuit uses for Quicken (but you don't need to have Quicken to use CheckFree). Despite their name, they will print and mail a paper check if the recipient doesn't accept online payment. Since CheckFree works with Quicken, I suspect they would also be able to accommodate the kind of automated process you have in mind with your product.
23 Aug 2004 | pb said...
PayPal's Mass Pay service is now available via a Web Service.
24 Aug 2004 | Justin French said...
No experience, but you'll need to offer more than one, depending on your market. Some will want PayPal, others will want direct deposit or a Paper Check/Cheque.
02 Sep 2004 | John Zeratsky said...
Ooh, the suspense! What's the next "tool" going to be?
30 Jan 2005 | compatelius said...
bocigalingus must be something funny.
