E-commerce / Money Holding Question

[tntcoder]

Hi,

I'm just after some idea of how much it would cost to have the following functionality on a website:

- Each user can load money into their website account, e.g from paypal or credit debit card.

- This money is then stored in their website account, and can be used within the site for various tasks.

- User can withdraw money from their account at a later date, e.g bank transfer or paypal.


If I could handle the coding/security side of things myself, would there be any massive banking costs to let me handle money in that fashion? Any standards I would have to abide by? Is there many overheads associated with withdrawals for example?

Basically is it a feasible idea? Its for a new business idea im planning, and this would kind of be a core feature of the system and would be great if its possible.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[NathanT]

I've seen a few sites do simular things.

Business or website has a paypal/bank account.
User uploads money in to his account where it "sits". The website then uses whatever internal accounting but does not touch the paypal account until the user wants to take the money that they have left back in to their account.

It is feasible but you would have to take a good long hard read of the fees that are incurred with Paypal account and pass those on to your users. Same if you were to use a merchants account for your banking (for credit cards).
Generally Paypal now monopolizes this area so there would be a good place to start.

I personally don't see why people would have money sitting in somebody elses account when they could just pay for things as they need.. unless you are offering them a good transfer rate on their GBP£'s for e-£'s

 

[suarve]

Seems pointless really when you have sites like paypal, that you can easily integrate into your own site. I personally don't like the idea of have a kind of bank on a website and would much prefer to just buy services when needed.