3 ms·

The entire point of Patreon is to spread the transaction fee across the people you are backing at $1/month or $1/post. If they had this 2.9%+$0.35 fee get char

The entire point of Patreon is to spread the transaction fee across the people you are backing at $1/month or $1/post. If they had this 2.9%+$0.35 fee get charged when they charge my card, I would be fine with it. Its the per creator charging of it that is ridiculous. Most of the people I back is at the $1 level, which would be not viable with the new fee. There is no good reason for this, as even paying to the creator should be lump sum via ACH, rather than hundreds of $1 transactions. ACH (a electronic check system in the us) charges a very minimal amount for a connection to the network to cover admin costs. Current fees[0] are $264/yr+$0.000185/transaction. Even with paying ACH fees for both ends (creator and the patreon) and refusing to aggregate, ACH fees are still a rounding error. What they should be doing is offering you to pay via ACH to reduce fees so the creators can actually get a bigger share of the $1 you spend. [0]: https://www.nacha.org/ach-network/administration-fees https://www.nacha.org/ach-network/administration-fees

jasonlotito 9y ago
> The entire point of Patreon is to spread the transaction fee across the people you are backing at $1/month or $1/post. That's decidedly false. The entire point of Patreon is to support creators, and to make it easy for creators to get that support. > There is no good reason for this, There are. Legal reasons. Banking reason. Simply put, lumping together transactions is dangerous. Dangerous for creators, dangerous for patreons, and dangerous for customers. I'm surprised they did it this long. > as even paying to the creator should be lump sum via ACH, What does this have to do with the majority of people paying via CC?
- extrapickles 9y ago
  > There are. Legal reasons. Banking reason. Simply put, lumping together transactions is dangerous. Dangerous for creators, dangerous for patreons, and dangerous for customers. You still keep records of who paid who (eg: This dollar in creator X's account came from backer Y), they are "lumped" as far as the CC processor is concerned so you don't have to pay that per-transaction fee for each creator backed. Basically, as long as the transactions are internal to Patreon, the transaction fees should be inline with the cost of a few rows in a database. > What does this have to do with the majority of people paying via CC? If they really were interested in reducing fees, they would let people pay via ACH, which it currently does not look like they do.

jasonlotito 9y ago

> The entire point of Patreon is to spread the transaction fee across the people you are backing at $1/month or $1/post. That's decidedly false. The entire point of Patreon is to support creators, and to make it easy for creators to get that support. > There is no good reason for this, There are. Legal reasons. Banking reason. Simply put, lumping together transactions is dangerous. Dangerous for creators, dangerous for patreons, and dangerous for customers. I'm surprised they did it this long. > as even paying to the creator should be lump sum via ACH, What does this have to do with the majority of people paying via CC?

extrapickles 9y ago
> There are. Legal reasons. Banking reason. Simply put, lumping together transactions is dangerous. Dangerous for creators, dangerous for patreons, and dangerous for customers. You still keep records of who paid who (eg: This dollar in creator X's account came from backer Y), they are "lumped" as far as the CC processor is concerned so you don't have to pay that per-transaction fee for each creator backed. Basically, as long as the transactions are internal to Patreon, the transaction fees should be inline with the cost of a few rows in a database. > What does this have to do with the majority of people paying via CC? If they really were interested in reducing fees, they would let people pay via ACH, which it currently does not look like they do.