[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Does "Zapier for payment automation" exist?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Does "Zapier for payment automation" exist?
It's 2026 and I shouldn't spend 3 hours every month manually
splitting $15K revenue: * 50% to co-founder * 10% across 3
contractors * 5-10% to ~15 affiliates * 30% to tax account This
should be automated. Maybe through a kind of workflow builder that
can trigger money flows. What I've tried: - Stripe Connect: Only
splits to one account - Zapier: Can't actually move money (ToS
restriction) - Manual scripts: Works but I'm now maintaining
financial infrastructure. - Escrow.com: $100 min fee, designed for
one-off transactions What I want: Set rules once - money routes
automatically each month. Questions: 1. Does this exist? (Feels
like I'm bad at searching) 2. If not, why? Regulatory? Nobody
trusts automation with money? Technical blocker? Stable coins could
maybe help shipping this. 3. What's your current solution? Custom
code? Just manual transfers? I've talked to ~20 founders. Most are
either: - Writing custom scripts (requires dev skills +
maintenance) - Paying accountants (expensive, still manual) -
Suffering through manual transfers (time sink) Seems like a gap
between "fully manual" and "build your own payment infrastructure."
Am I missing something obvious?
Author : PL_Venard
Score : 4 points
Date : 2026-01-21 14:16 UTC (8 hours ago)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This should be available in your bank or other treasury
| management provider automation. Does your bank not support this?
| If you're not getting this from your current biz bank, I would
| shop around. I recommend Mercury (no affiliation, just a happy
| customer), but others provide some level of this too.
|
| (workflow automation providers do not want this liability, as you
| note in Zapier's ToS, which is totally fair)
| PL_Venard wrote:
| Does Mercury actually support this? Or are you describing
| scheduled payments (which still require manual setup each
| time)?
|
| I'm looking for: - Dynamic rules based on revenue amount -
| Multiple variable destinations - Percentage-based splits - One-
| time setup, runs forever
|
| Maybe I'm missing a Mercury feature? What's the workflow you
| use?
|
| Im a Brex user and interested by this
| cstdsmrtcntrct wrote:
| This is what smart contracts do.
|
| A smart contract with a stablecoin (or a _wrapped_ stabblecoin)
| would probably solve for this use case.
|
| You want to avoid leaving a bank password in clear text for the
| process running in cron; so it would really be best for the bank
| to support Read-Only and Read-Write access tokens
| PL_Venard wrote:
| Good point on smart contracts: that's one approach I'm
| exploring.
|
| Trying to figure out if this should be: - Crypto-native from
| day 1 (smart contracts + stablecoins) - Fiat-first with crypto
| as backend (abstract the blockchain) - Pure fiat (traditional
| banking APIs)
|
| What would you actually use?
| cstdsmrtcntrct wrote:
| Multisig with no smart contract is the simplest escrow.
|
| It's probably simple to find a validated smart contract that
| splits its inputs to multiple outputs?
|
| If there is transaction privacy for the smart contracts, then
| how to verify that the contract actually still sends to the
| correct - initially configured - parties?
|
| And then logging. Task accounting implies logging, but logs
| are bytes that cost money in a blockchain so is the
| transaction log sufficient
| MikeNotThePope wrote:
| You could hire someone and buy back your time.
| cmuguythrow wrote:
| I think sequence fulfills this requirement?
| https://www.getsequence.io/
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-01-21 23:01 UTC)