#nickdnk_best-practices
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- nickdnk_error, 1 hour ago, 70 messages
- nickdnk_error, 1 day ago, 7 messages
rich lance
lusty holly
Hello again! There are many reasons. At a high level, disputes are very difficult to manage with direct charges on Express, you're responsible for covering negative balances as the platform, these types of charges don't work with Radar, metrics and reporting are extremely difficult, email receipts have limited customization, and fee behavior can be difficult to predict.
rich lance
Okay, so how is that different from "None" dashboard? It seems that under-the-hood we're still operating in three categories; Express, Custom and Standard.
But to me it would seem all the things you mentioned would be just as hard (or harder) without the Express dashboard?
lusty holly
A lot of this also applies to the "None" dashboard option, but the main issue I think is that you're trying to map controller properties to old style account types, which I would encourage you to avoid doing.
rich lance
"map controller properties to old style account types" I don't understand what this means exactly. Can you clarify ?
lusty holly
You're trying to map controller properties (onboarding type, dashboard access, etc.) in your brain to account types (Express, Custom, etc.). That's something you can do in some cases, but in other cases it doesn't work because there isn't a direct mapping between a particular set of controller properties and the older account types.
rich lance
Yea it's a bit confusing. It's also not clear at all when I, as a platform, can pool connect transactions to obtain discounts. This is not possible with Standard but was possible with Custom and Express. I'm assuming the deciding factor is "negative balance liability" ?
(This is the only reason I need to change from Standard to this new system)
lusty holly
I'm not familiar with pooling transactions for discounts or anything related to fees. That's a question you'd need to ask Stripe support.
proud thicketBOT
rich lance
Ok, I will send an email to the rep. I had a meeting with him but he didn't actually know because it was rather new this method of doing it
But it looks like the optimal setting then is destination charges, but that means I basically have to rebuild a lot of the current system as we exclusively use direct charges + standard connect.
No wait a minute, I need to be sure. When I perform a transaction with my secret key and a stripe account header and apply an applicaiton fee, that's a direct charge, yes?
lusty holly
Yes, that's a direct charge.
That API request happens on the connected account, and the resulting payment object(s) exist on the connected account, not your platform. That's a direct charge.
rich lance
Yes, that's what we do now with Standard, and that works fine
so with destinations it's platform charge + transfer, so I'm assuming this only complicates refunds, not charges
or is this where the whole "auto-reverse transfer" comes in?
lusty holly
At a high level, with destination charges, all of the charges and related objects are on your platform account. That means you can much more easily handle things like refunds, disputes, etc. right from your Dashboard in a single place.
You can also do things like reverse transfers when you need to pull back funds you've transferred to a connected account in the case of refunds/disputes, yep.
rich lance
Okay so my problem is this:
- We use standard connect. Our customers manage and are responsible for their own account
- We use direct charges
- We don't handle refunds, we refer to our connected accounts and they decide on their refunds. We have an integration on our site that just handles their stripe account for them. They only go to stripe to handle onboarding/compliance and change their bank account info.
I want to move to a solution that gives me access to volume discounts (I'm aware you said you don't know about this), which I am going to assume is accessible as soon as I select either Express or None for dashboard and select "platform is liable".
Now, with the above knowledge, assuming everything works fine with Standard connect this way, which challenges would I add to this flow if I used direct charges with the express dashboard, which you do not recommend? Having to cover negative balances for connected accounts obviously is one, but aside from that?
I see one thing that changes is that I now always will put fees on the platform, not the connected account.
lusty holly
I want to move to a solution that gives me access to volume discounts (I'm aware you said you don't know about this), which I am going to assume is accessible as soon as I select either Express or None for dashboard and select "platform is liable".
That's a big assumption. While I don't know much about this at all, I was under the impression that in order to get a volume discount like the one you're describing the charges would all have to be on a single account, meaning your platform account, meaning you can't use direct charges. I could be totally wrong, but it seems like step zero is confirming this for sure with your rep before proceeding.
Now, with the above knowledge, assuming everything works fine with Standard connect this way, which challenges would I add to this flow if I used direct charges with the express dashboard, which you do not recommend? Having to cover negative balances for connected accounts obviously is one, but aside from that?
The Express Dashboard is extremely limited and does not provide any way for your connected accounts to handle refunds, disputes, etc. You, as the platform, would need to handle them or provide some other way for your connected accounts to handle them via your own site/app.
This also extends to the negative balance issue; again, no full dashboard access means you need to handle negative balances on those connected accounts as the platform, which is much more difficult with direct charges than it would be with destination.
rich lance
I am 100% certain I can obtain discount with Connect, it just cannot be on Standard. Previously this would be possible with either Custom or Express, but as we've established, those simple conventions are out the window with the new system.
Users don't need to use Express Dash for anything except compliance and onboarding. They don't handle refunds or disputes from the dashboard.
How is it "much more difficult" to handle negative balances? Wouldn't I just transfer the amount required to the connected account? In 99.9% of cases, this would never happen for the platform I'm building.
It only ever happened once we needed to transfer money, and that was due to covid
(for connected accounts)
lusty holly
It depends on a lot of factors. If you don't have negative balance issues then it might not be a practical issue for you.
rich lance
If I could start over I would probably go with Destination Charges like recommended, but this platform is pretty big at this stage and moving everything to that could be quite the pain
lusty holly
I think the next step is to talk to your rep about the discount you want and if it's specifically going to work on direct charges or not.
rich lance
I also generate reports on my own for each payout, so users don't need metrics or reporting either
Yes, I already asked him
But you may be right in that the discount is not determined by any of the connect features (dash, liability etc), but simply by whether it's direct or destination charges.
Which would also hold true based on what I just said since Destination is not available if you select "Full" dashboard (Standard)
I wonder how much work it would be to migrate to Destination charges.
lusty holly
You would be in a much better position to answer that than me. 😅
rich lance
Of course
Or, I hope
"Destination charges are only supported if both your platform and the connected account are in the same country"
that's a none-starter cause we're in 5 countries already
lusty holly
Ah, well, there you go. That's another thing to bring up with your rep to see if it impacts the discount situation.
rich lance
Okay, thanks for your help (and rubber-ducking :D)
lusty holly
No problem! I hope your rep gives you some good news about your situation!
rich lance
Yea me too cause it's looking bleak for my plans if destination charges are required
I added this to our connect onboarding flow by the way:
$client->accounts->updateCapability($stripeUserID, 'mobilepay_payments', [
'requested' => true
]);
Seems like that's all I needed to do to enable MobilePay when they connect to our platform. Naturally I check that the country/currency combination is eliglible for mobile pay first.
(other thread closed)
thick edge
👋 stepping in here
rich lance
All good we're done!
rich lance
Sure, I will. I think I need to get hold of my stripe contact for this one unfortunately.