[dclausen]

I've implemented Stripe, Stripe Connect and Balanced, and I consider them to be comparable in offerings if you are a traditional non-marketplace merchant. To say Balanced is inferior save for their Payout speed is not true. Their differences become more clear when you are operating as a marketplace.

It’s been stated before, and I’ll reiterate, Balanced’s merchant account underwriting for marketplaces is performed via their API. This means the marketplace retains complete visibility into the account signup process. With Stripe Connect, you are redirected to their website, which means your potential user may or may not ever make it back to your system for whatever reason.

During merchant underwriting, Stripe Connect requires each merchant to create an account on their system with their own username and password. This means they are free to access their account on Stripe outside of your system. While good for the merchant, it might not be so for the marketplace trying to ensure all transactions continue to run smoothly.

Also, because each merchant account in Stripe Connect is separate, the marketplace does not gain any economies of scale when it comes to pooling together all credit card transactions for volume pricing purposes. Balanced has a single escrow account that all funds are held in and does offer volume pricing based upon that.

In my opinion, Stripe’s focus originally seemed to be on the individual merchant and have recently made changes to make them more attractive to marketplaces. However, Balanced’s approach has been to offer a more complete solution for a marketplace, while still allowing for all the same features to be used as a single merchant.