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Note that Liberapay had to change payment processors, and in the process they changed how the payments work (https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/liberapay-status-

Note that Liberapay had to change payment processors, and in the process they changed how the payments work (https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/liberapay-status-update-a76403f4e0 https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/liberapay-status-update-a7...). I get the impression that they're getting into a state now where there's probably an "expectations mismatch" between what people expect to be doing when they set up a recurring donation compared to how Liberapay actually works. As the blog post mentions, now you can say "I want to donate $5/month" and you put in $60 to cover a year, but you have to pay that full $60 immediately, and the recipient also receives the whole $60 (minus fees) right away as well. After that point, there's not really any way for the donator to change their mind and stop donating after a few months, so it's more like a one-time donation with a reminder but still being presented as a smaller recurring one. I think the problem is that overall it will end up encouraging people to make smaller donations for shorter time periods because they won't necessarily want to commit for many months or years' worth up-front. Then that means that they have to be sent reminders to re-donate more often, which feels more annoying and will probably result in people just letting their donations lapse more often than repeatedly renewing them.

kzrdude 8y ago
You diplomatically state this, but they fail to deliver on the most important thing of their service, surely there is a plan to fix this?
- cyphar 8y ago
  It used to work this way, and the way it was done is that you would pre-load your account with money and then they would transfer it (transaction fees made withdrawals each month prohibitively expensive). Unfortunately they were forced to change payment processors (MangoPay kicked them off their platform without an explanation) and they weren't able to find a new payment processor that gave them the same feature (having a staging bank account). The blog post that GP linked explains things in far more detail.
wjoe 8y ago
That's quite a drawback. I don't mind supporting some creators and YouTubers through Patreon or YouTube membershops because $5/month isn't all that much. But if I had to make a decision to spend $60 to support them that much for the year, I doubt I would do that for most. Some charge $50-$100/month on Patreon for certain benefits too, I doubt many would be willing to pay $1000 up front for that for a year. I'm surprised this is a payment processor limitation. I thought Stripe supported automatic recurring payments?

kzrdude 8y ago

You diplomatically state this, but they fail to deliver on the most important thing of their service, surely there is a plan to fix this?

cyphar 8y ago
It used to work this way, and the way it was done is that you would pre-load your account with money and then they would transfer it (transaction fees made withdrawals each month prohibitively expensive). Unfortunately they were forced to change payment processors (MangoPay kicked them off their platform without an explanation) and they weren't able to find a new payment processor that gave them the same feature (having a staging bank account). The blog post that GP linked explains things in far more detail.

wjoe 8y ago

That's quite a drawback. I don't mind supporting some creators and YouTubers through Patreon or YouTube membershops because $5/month isn't all that much. But if I had to make a decision to spend $60 to support them that much for the year, I doubt I would do that for most. Some charge $50-$100/month on Patreon for certain benefits too, I doubt many would be willing to pay $1000 up front for that for a year. I'm surprised this is a payment processor limitation. I thought Stripe supported automatic recurring payments?