Balanced

Balanced was a payments API for online marketplaces and crowdfunding platforms, founded out of Y Combinator (W2011) and backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), SV Angel, Collaborative Fund, and angels including Brian Chesky and Ashton Kutcher. It offered a developer-first API for processing cards and bank (ACH) payments, paying out to sellers, and handling seller identity/underwriting for marketplaces. Balanced announced on 2015-03-13 that it was shutting down its payments platform and gave customers 90 days notice, striking a transition deal that migrated card, bank account, and seller identity data to Stripe by 2015-06-11. The company and its API are defunct; the balancedpayments.com domain is now a parked/lander page and the api/docs hosts no longer resolve.

Balanced is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Payments, Fintech, Marketplace Payments, and ACH.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

5.7/100 minimal ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

0 APIs

CompanyPaymentsFintechMarketplace PaymentsACHDeveloper APIDefunct

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

Composite quality — 5.7/100 · minimal

Contract Quality 0.0 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 0.0 / 20

Commercial Clarity 0.0 / 20

Operational Transparency 0.0 / 13

Governance 0.0 / 12

Discoverability 6.8 / 10

Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 15

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

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Source (apis.yml)

aid: balanced
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/balanced.png
name: Balanced
description: Balanced was a payments API for online marketplaces and crowdfunding platforms, founded out of Y Combinator (W2011)
  and backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), SV Angel, Collaborative Fund, and angels including Brian Chesky and Ashton Kutcher.
  It offered a developer-first API for processing cards and bank (ACH) payments, paying out to sellers, and handling seller
  identity/underwriting for marketplaces. Balanced announced on 2015-03-13 that it was shutting down its payments platform
  and gave customers 90 days notice, striking a transition deal that migrated card, bank account, and seller identity data
  to Stripe by 2015-06-11. The company and its API are defunct; the balancedpayments.com domain is now a parked/lander page
  and the api/docs hosts no longer resolve.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/balanced/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- a16z
- SV Angel
- Collaborative Fund
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
x-status: defunct
x-defunct-date: '2015-06-11'
x-shutdown-announced: '2015-03-13'
x-migrated-to: stripe
x-founded-via: y-combinator-w2011
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-18'
tags:
- Company
- Payments
- Fintech
- Marketplace Payments
- ACH
- Developer API
- Defunct
apis: []
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-19'
  status: backfilled
  pass: local-v1
  note: backfilled from .gitignore signal + verified work evidence