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Liberapay is in trouble
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- maeln 8y agoI guess their payment processor got sick of handling thousand of tiny payment and gave them a random excuse to boot them out asap.
- espadrine 8y ago> Mangopay hasn’t provided a detailed explanation of their decision, so we’re not sure. We’ve tried to understand their concerns, they seemed related to the fact that Liberapay is open to everyone Likelier: Liberapay’s KYC was insufficient. Mangopay probably received a call from the regulator, and they realized that they could not ensure that Liberapay was not (unwittingly) letting people launder money or finance terrorism. The AML/CFT requirements that would have needed to be applied by Liberapay to all its users would probably have caused such friction that they would have grown much slower, however.
- maeln 8y agoIt is also a strong possibility but wouldn't Mangopay would have given some time for Librapay to adapt to the regulation ? The fact that they stop the contract so soon without previous warning (unless Librapay is not disclosing everything) is what make it really weird for me.
- calpaterson 8y ago> It is also a strong possibility but wouldn't Mangopay would have given some time for Librapay to adapt to the regulation ? No anti-money laundering law doesn't work that way > The fact that they stop the contract so soon without previous warning (unless Librapay is not disclosing everything) is what make it really weird for me. That is completely normal (in fact giving notice is pretty lenient), if a financial institution suspects you of money laundering weird things will begin to happen to you such as freezes, orders being ignored, surprise account closures, etc. You will under no circumstances receive an explanation as that in itself is a serious criminal offense because it is considered to be helpful to money launderers when you explain to them what they did that aroused suspicion. Note to readers: if weird things start happening to your bank account (delayed or ignored payments, logouts, etc) get on the phone to the bank and be as helpful to them as you can be. That is typically the only way to get this resolved.
- lixtra 8y agoWith apparently 13 k€ per month processed, how much could they launder? No harm would have been done by giving them a few months grace period.
- espadrine 8y agoThe amount is irrelevant. Financing Nazis is illegal, especially in France, which had a bit of an economic setback about sixty years ago because of them. Oh, and a lot of death and suffering. https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.org/issues/11 https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.org/issues/11
- icebraining 8y agoThat thread is not about money laundering, and it's two years old.
- cannonedhamster 8y agoSo basically if you're literally money laundering for cartels like HSBC, it's cool you've got plenty of time, but if you're a bit player for charity you should be blocked? Doesn't sound legit to me.
- calpaterson 8y ago> Likelier: Liberapay’s KYC was insufficient. Indeed and that would be consistent with no explanation being offered as explaining is normally illegal under "tipping off" rules.
- wut42 8y ago>Likelier: Liberapay’s KYC was insufficient. No. They mirror one-on-one Mangopay's: https://docs.mangopay.com/guide/kyc https://docs.mangopay.com/guide/kyc https://liberapay.com/about/faq#maximum-amount https://liberapay.com/about/faq#maximum-amount
- wut42 8y agoFrom the discussions in https://github.com/liberapay/salon/issues/248 https://github.com/liberapay/salon/issues/248 it seems to be related to controversial users. >I have just received an email from mangopay saying that they want to terminate their contract with us because we have/had a few controversial users. >I've replied, asking for confirmation, and information on how much time we have left.
- fwdpropaganda 8y agoCurrently using bitcoin for payments changes nothing. Yes, the transfer of "currency" are decentralized, but to cash it out (to pay for food, rent, etc) you still need to use exchanges which are centralized.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoIf you need to 'cash out' it's not a 'currency'.
- fwdpropaganda 8y agoA) Regardless of whether you're right or wrong, that's just a discussion about labels. Call it whatever you want, my point still stands: the transfers are decentralized but the exchanges are centralized. B) Even though my point does not depend on whether you're right or wrong, you're wrong. I have USD in my bank but I have to cash them out into GBP. So according to your "reasoning", USD is not a currency? Of course it is, you're just talking nonsense.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoThe money in your bank account is no currency. Either a currency is something you can buy things with, or it's a label with exchange rates. In the first case it can't be something that needs to be cashed out. In the second case you can't buy something and the thing you buy other things with is money. You're usage of Bitcoin, money, GDP, USD and currency is willynilly.
- fwdpropaganda 8y agoYou have added zero to this conversation.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoDoes personally attack people get you somewhere in real live, I wonder?
- antpls 8y ago> So, we’re changing our approach of recurrent donations. Instead of distributing them weekly we’re going to distribute them as soon as the money arrives. For example, instead of disbursing a payment of €26 for a weekly donation of €0.50 as 52 weekly transfers of €0.50, we’ll do a single transfer of €26 and inform the recipient that it corresponds to “52 weeks of €0.50”. Doesn't it negate the initial mission/purpose of Librapay of giving stable, predictable incomes to creators? What is the difference between Librapay and other classical payment methods?
- pjc50 8y agoApparently due to a single "controversial user": https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/the-first-year-of-liberapay-e57a3e08a662 https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/the-first-year-of-liberapa... Although I can't figure out who. Possibly https://www.byline.com/column/58/article/1409 https://www.byline.com/column/58/article/1409 ?
- jtbayly 8y agoNo. That’s an old article. Different event. Perhaps same problem, but there’s no evidence I’ve seen to support that yet.
- thiscatis 8y agoSo a donation site with practically no AML/KYC/CTF procedures got shut down by their regulation-bound payment processor?
- icebraining 8y agoNo, they require your personal information according to the KYC rules defined by MangoPay: https://docs.mangopay.com/guide/kyc https://docs.mangopay.com/guide/kyc As a small-time donor, I had to give them the info listed there under "Light Authentification". People who give or receive more have to submit copies of their passport or governmental ID .
- jtbayly 8y agoThank you for actual data.
- nottorp 8y agoDear Medium, Can you stop pressuring me to register when I open a link to you? I closed the tab without reading the article, and soon you'll piss me off enough that i'll remember to not open medium links...
- nine_k 8y agoFirefox and Safari have "reading mode" which helps when you really need to read that article.
- MaxBarraclough 8y agoReader view: for when a website's design is worse than using none at all.
- anc84 8y agoPardon the interruption.
- jtbayly 8y agoDear nottorp, Can you please fight this battle elsewhere and keep your comments on topic? I know it’s irritating. I agree. Just not the right place in my opinion. I came here looking for comments on the article. Thanks,
- Arkanosis 8y agoI've installed this Firefox addon last week: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/make-medium-readable-again/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/make-medium-r... . I highly recommend it. Thanks for having reminded me how awful was the medium experience before; I hadn't even noticed I was on this site.
- bionoid 8y agoEdit: Strike this, I opened two tabs and read the wrong one :) The article is dated February 2017, I didn't notice before "In 2017 we’re going to keep improving Liberapay." near the end. According to their frontpage today, 462 new donations were started in the past month (totaling €350/week). The headline seems misleading.
- CiaranR 8y agoThis article is dated `2018-07-12T21:09:44.399Z`
- bionoid 8y agoWeird, I landed on "The First Year of Liberapay" [0], not sure if the link was edited or I somehow misclicked.. Edit: my bad, I opened the link from a comment.. [0] https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/the-first-year-of-liberapay-e57a3e08a662 https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/the-first-year-of-liberapa...
- ur-whale 8y agoA small business being at the mercy of random payment providers is yet another demonstration that there is a fundamental social need as well as a strong market demand for decentralized payment systems like Bitcoin.
- Nursie 8y agoBitcoin is a failure as a transaction system - it doesn't scale and fees rocket as the network gets full. Lightning appears to be a failure too - it requires a lot of money to be comitted to the network and constant vigilance so as not to lose your funds. Further, the market demand you talk about doesn't seem to be playing out - if anything the accepting of cryptocurrencies for actual transactions (rather than just speculation) seems to be on the decline.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ur-whale 8y agoWikileak was pretty darn happy they found Bitcoin to get out of the clutches of the USG. As for Lighthing, I think you're singing its demise a little too early. They are also not the only way to scaling and ease-of-use.
- Nursie 8y agoLightning appears to have major design flaws, the ones I have mentioned are not the only ones. Wikileaks may well have been happy. That doesn't mean bitcoin is a good solution for wider use, especially with its transaction throughput limitations. Ease of use in the cryptocurrency world is something of a joke...
- existencebox 8y agoSo while I'm not versed enough in the crypto-space to comment on your first two points, I'd like to agree _Heartily_ about point 3, "Ease of use in the cryptocurrency world is something of a joke..." (And if that's why you're being greyed, that's dumb.) As a "dumb user" I went to buy some crypto after the initial crash last winter. I found that: Most exchanges do not permit use in my state (Washington). Of those that did, Coinbase/GDAX ended up having technical issues, leading me on for months of useless support tickets, before blackholing me entirely, and once I finally obtained some eth on gemini, diversifying it into a handful of altcoins required yet-another "exchange search", learning how to do some very sketchy wallet transfers, and using MUCH less trusted exchanges that actually allowed my state and the pairings I needed. (And if I want to liquidate my position, I have to basically invert this whole mess of a flow.) I very well could be going about this in a dumb way, or it could have improved, thus this post (in that someone can feel free to correct me). My perception is that ease of use is in fact a joke, and if crypto wants to become a thing for "Boring Normal People" it needs to fix that.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoShame on Mangopay. This isn't how you treat a customer, especially one who does as much social good as Liberapay. I hope everyone here remembers this next time they have to select a payment processor.
- zajd 8y agoRunning the fundraising infrastructure for neonazis isn't really "social good" if you ask me.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sctb 8y agoCould you please not do this? > Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- zajd 8y agoIt's not unrelated. If people want to wax poetic about how much social good an organization who's on record as breaking the law to fund neonazi groups they should probably provide a reason for the justification.