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The centralisation of services like this has to stop. Why should giving money to creators be a centralised thing (many to many) instead of just a one to many re
by anc84 11y ago
The centralisation of services like this has to stop. Why should giving money to creators be a centralised thing (many to many) instead of just a one to many relationship between the creator and their fans?
- dennisnedry 11y agoSo content creators should use PayPal then for donations? That's also a centralized service. How do you propose a transaction takes place without a service to process the details?
- indiv0 11y agoBitcoin would be the obvious choice.
- marcosdumay 11y agoThat would require a big change to the Bitcoin algorithms, wouldn't it? Those are too many transactions with too little face value.
- anc84 11y agoSimple standard bank transaction? If you want to support the creator regularly, you can easily set that up as well.
- notthathill 11y agoBank transactions are anything but simple to set up in some places, and can also be very expensive to set up when you're talking about international transfers of money. Thankfully there are things like IBANs and BICs, but that doesn't help when a bank wants to charge you something like 5x the value of the transfer (when the transfer is a low value, like 5/month). Credit card processing already handles the whole international transfer cost, and puts the burden on the processor instead of the payer. That processor can then do things like batch transactions to reduce the cost.
- paulmd 11y agoI'm assuming you're a Euro - most places don't have giro transfers like you guys do. A long time ago the US and the European financial systems diverged. The US banks optimized for check processing and credit cards, while the Euro banks optimized for bank transfers. Domestic bank transfers typically cost around $25-35 a pop and take several days to clear in the US. Checks usually post instantly but take about as long to clear - the time between it posting and clearing is basically a loan, and the check may still bounce. Until a few years ago, many banks didn't even allow you to do bank transfers online. Stores will sometimes use "electronic checks" where you provide a blank check and they read the account numbers off it, but this is just a shortcut to avoid handling the piece of paper. The funds are still moved through the checking system. These are not available to regular account-holders either. That's why we come up with all these systems like Paypal and Patreon to move money around - the bank-level tools are cumbersome, slow, and expensive for us.
- nandhp 11y agoThe US is a big market and, unfortunately, the kind of bank transaction I think you have in mind isn't a thing here. We still use checks.
- Already__Taken 11y agoPeople just won't sign up to a new service for each creator they come across it's that simple.
- jerf 11y ago"Why should giving money to creators be a centralised thing (many to many) instead of just a one to many relationship between the creator and their fans?" That had many years to happen. It objectively didn't happen. Fact trumps theory.
- jkaunisv1 11y agoBecause this makes it easy for non-web-savvy creators to get paid, at regular intervals. It establishes trust & familiarity for the users giving money. It's also a good way to minimize transaction fees if you're supporting many creators - from what I remember Patreon batches many small donations into one large transaction.