Was dead wrong about e-transfer APIs for small fintechs

I spent 6 months building my own payment rails for a lending platform in Toronto. Thought the Interac e-transfer APIs were too expensive and slow. Then my dev costs hit $18k and the beta crashed on day one. A friend at Wealthsimple told me to just use a provider like VoPay or Trolley. Three weeks later I had it running for $300 a month. Anyone else wasted time building something that already existed?

2 comments

2 Comments

julia_anderson2d ago

Nah, learning the hard way teaches you what actually matters in the long run.

ellis.leo2d ago

Whoa wait, you actually believe that? Like you think life should just keep piling on the hard lessons for fun? That sounds exhausting to me, honestly. I get that you learn stuff from messing up, but there's a big difference between a little struggle and a full blown disaster every time. Why not take a shortcut from someone who already fell on their face so you don't have to? I'd rather learn from a book or a video than from a hospital bill and a broken phone, personally.