Ecommerce Payout - how do I pay users?

Question

I'm looking for a way to pay users on my website. Paypal and Google Checkout are obvious solutions for getting users to pay you, but are there any solutions for you paying users?

If that's not clear, here's a hypothetical situation: Suppose we have a website where users login. Their job is to tag photos with appropriate text. For every image they tag, they earn 10 cents. How do I go about paying every user automatically? Is there a way to transfer into somebody's bank account, or paypal account?

Also, is there a better term for what I'm describing?

Answer 1

Well, you can use Paypal to 'mass pay' people a big list of people, provided they have a Paypal account or are willing to get one. That's a fast way to get moving, although Paypal will probably take a cut of 3% or so.

Link: Paypal Mass Payment

Google Checkout probably has a similiar feature set.

We used to pay authors that way at GameGuidesOnline.com and it worked fine, although it's probably easier to pay people once a week than to have thousands of 10-cent transactions flying around.

Also, there are zillions of companies called 'payroll services' that will cut checks and transfer funds for you to your people based on an export. You transfer money to a special account, give them the list, and they take care of the rest. That's more expensive, but it may be a nice option for your users.

If I was doing a proof of concept, I would probably start with Paypal. Lots of people have already have accounts, it just works, and on your end, it's easy to set up.

Answer 2

There are quite a few options that would allow you to transfer funds from bank A to bank B. Paypal and Google Checkout are just a couple of those options.

You have to ask yourself where the user community would prefer and I would do that before you start to program anything.