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Agreed. I can easily afford the fees they were adding, I'd be totally fine bumping my single monthly payment by 3% + $0.35, that's pocket change to me. What bug

Agreed. I can easily afford the fees they were adding, I'd be totally fine bumping my single monthly payment by 3% + $0.35, that's pocket change to me. What bugs me is the clutter/volume (mental, email confirmation, and credit card transaction) associated with splitting my convenient single monthly payment into more than a half-dozen separate charges throughout the month, depending on whether each creator's campaign is on a monthly or per creation basis on top of increasing each of those sub payments by that same fee.

da_chicken 9y ago
Yeah, the charges need to accumulate throughout the month and then fire off on the first of the following month. That will cover both monthly and per-creation payments, and it minimizes the number of transactions that Patreon has to pay to process and the number of transfers they have to make to creator accounts. I understand that people want their money right away, but if they're allowing payments as low as $1, then they need to limit the number of transactions somehow.
- delecti 9y ago
  Their big blog post actually explained (IMO) fairly well the logic behind their decision. Patreon works differently from many subscription models which have you on a monthly basis pinned to the date you started. If you start Netflix on the 15th, you'll be billed on the 15th each month. Meanwhile if you start a Patreon pledge on the 15th there's the issue of whether you're charged on the 15th for the first month or on the 1st of the next month. And if the latter, what about pledges that unlock additional rewards, can those people cancel before their first actual payment? Essentially they have a lot of complicated problems to solve, they just picked a solution that introduced a whole lot of new problems for the very people who provide the life blood for the service.
londons_explore 9y ago
Bundling things together is usually frowned upon by credit card companies. Especially when that money is going to end up in a bunch of different places. It makes anti-money-laundering practically impossible, because all the payments might contain some legitimate component together with some fraud component. Also, from the user perspective, if a user is unhappy with any one of the things they are patrons of, they might ask the bank to do a chargeback. That would make their chargeback rate much higher, which is also bad for business.
- rtpg 9y ago
  Seems to me like Patreon partnering with someone like Paypal would be the best bet in the long run. Have deposits, and transaction fee-less transfers, since everything would happen within Paypal/some bank.
- glenneroo 9y ago
  And conveniently for the CC companies, they also make money per transaction.

da_chicken 9y ago

Yeah, the charges need to accumulate throughout the month and then fire off on the first of the following month. That will cover both monthly and per-creation payments, and it minimizes the number of transactions that Patreon has to pay to process and the number of transfers they have to make to creator accounts. I understand that people want their money right away, but if they're allowing payments as low as $1, then they need to limit the number of transactions somehow.

delecti 9y ago
Their big blog post actually explained (IMO) fairly well the logic behind their decision. Patreon works differently from many subscription models which have you on a monthly basis pinned to the date you started. If you start Netflix on the 15th, you'll be billed on the 15th each month. Meanwhile if you start a Patreon pledge on the 15th there's the issue of whether you're charged on the 15th for the first month or on the 1st of the next month. And if the latter, what about pledges that unlock additional rewards, can those people cancel before their first actual payment? Essentially they have a lot of complicated problems to solve, they just picked a solution that introduced a whole lot of new problems for the very people who provide the life blood for the service.

londons_explore 9y ago

Bundling things together is usually frowned upon by credit card companies. Especially when that money is going to end up in a bunch of different places. It makes anti-money-laundering practically impossible, because all the payments might contain some legitimate component together with some fraud component. Also, from the user perspective, if a user is unhappy with any one of the things they are patrons of, they might ask the bank to do a chargeback. That would make their chargeback rate much higher, which is also bad for business.

rtpg 9y ago
Seems to me like Patreon partnering with someone like Paypal would be the best bet in the long run. Have deposits, and transaction fee-less transfers, since everything would happen within Paypal/some bank.
glenneroo 9y ago
And conveniently for the CC companies, they also make money per transaction.