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For my purposes WePay is close to being a perfect solution, but just falls short: "Who owns the money in a Group Account? Groups make it easy to track finances
by ahi 16y ago
For my purposes WePay is close to being a perfect solution, but just falls short:
"Who owns the money in a Group Account?
Groups make it easy to track finances and share information, but the Group Administrator owns the money in the Group Account and is the sole cardholder on the WePay Prepaid Visa® Card."
From the group perspective, it shouldn't be too hard to make a group administrator sign an agreement in regards to how they may spend group funds. The problem is that group funds are vulnerable to third parties. e.g. The fraternity president goes on a bender and runs someone over. The victim will be able to go after "group" funds due to the personal liability of the group administrator. I don't have a solution for this, though I imagine a lawyer could work one up. Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where the paper work and legal fees for setting something up (trust? nonprofit?) are completely out of proportion to the assets trying to be protected.
As far as I can tell, WePay essentially provides a personal bank account with methods of billing and sharing information with other people. Useful, but handwaving about "groups" doesn't carry a lot of weight with the IRS or courts.
- ahi 16y agoarg, from the WePay site. "(1)Depositing the money into your personal bank account is a bad idea, but (2)applying for an EIN and waiting in line at the bank to open an account just for your class reunion is a huge hassle." Depositing the money into your personal bank account is precisely what you are doing with WePay. WePay should be solving problem (2) but instead has tried to just obscure problem (1).
- billclerico 16y agoI disagree with you here. As you stated earlier, the amount of funds being protected is usually out of proportion to the amount of effort required to register an organization, obtain an EIN and open a bank account. For groups that want the additional protection, we encourage them to setup a full fledged bank account. In the future, we are exploring ways to have our accounts in the name of organization tax IDs as well. For the most part, we are replacing cash and checks in personal bank accounts with a simple & transparent solution. We are a far better solution here, and are not trying to "obfuscate" anything.