I don't think this is it. If Patreon is using Stripe, they are likely using "Stripe Connect" (https://stripe.com/connect https://stripe.com/connect) - which was

I don't think this is it. If Patreon is using Stripe, they are likely using "Stripe Connect" (https://stripe.com/connect https://stripe.com/connect) - which was built specifically for marketplaces like Patreon to take in funds and pay out. The compliance/legal issues around being a money services business are automatically handled by Stripe in this case. My hypothesis is that this is really around fraud risk more than anything. Batched payments are notoriously confusing to cc customers. If you made a bunch of small donations and got confused as to why you saw one $18.XX charge on your credit card statement, you might open a dispute with your bank, which would have the action of automatically reversing the entire charge with Patreon's processor (i.e. Stripe). Assuming Patreon is eating this and not reversing every donation that is currently batched, then the average chargeback amount (and therefore loss to Patreon) is much higher in the current scenario than if donations are charged individually. In fact, they even wrote about chargebacks and "friendly fraud" in a blog post earlier this year -> https://patreonhq.com/chargebacks-tips-to-fight-friendly-fraud-and-get-your-money-back-14647949d0e9 https://patreonhq.com/chargebacks-tips-to-fight-friendly-fra...