Merge pull request #4 from whit537/patch-1

Clean up the README

README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+Balanced API Spec
+=================
+
+Online marketplaces enable a new form of commerce at a scale that has never
+existed before. The success of online marketplaces has the potential to
+materially effect the global economy by creating new jobs and economic activity
+that previously did not exist. Airbnb, Kickstarter, Etsy, and other
+marketplaces have created new forms of income for businesses and individuals.
+That's what gets the [Balanced](https://www.balancedpayments.com/) team excited
+and what the [Balanced API](https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/integration)
+hopes to support.
+
+Payments for marketplaces is unfortunately painful because of unique
+requirements including paying sellers, payments aggregation policies, tax
+ramifications, and fraud. Balanced lets you charge cards, escrow funds, and pay
+sellers the next business day without the pain of building a payments system.
+
+The primary goal of this repo is to create more openness behind the decisions
+driving the designs and functionality of the Balanced API. We reached out to
+existing and potential customers when designing the API, but that was a limited
+set of people we already knew. We've received tremendous growth in the last few
+months, and our new customers have great feedback or at least want to
+understand the reasoning behind the original decisions.
+
+We're going to automate validation of our API code against the specifications
+in the repo. Any changes to the API can't be deployed unless they've been
+merged into master first. Any merge to master will happen concurrently with
+deploys of the API and the [docs](https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs). That
+means the specs need to be auto generated (except for comments) instead of
+handwritten to make sure the code and specs can never go out of sync.
+
+We'll do our best to have even internal discussions online. All changes (even
+by the Balanced team) to the specs must be submitted via pull request and can
+only be merged in by @matin after giving the community a chance to comment on
+the changes.
+