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GitHub Sponsors will stop accepting PayPal on February 23, 2023
- xvilka 4y agoPayPal is notoriously bad for everyone - both consumers and merchants. Using another alternative would be awesome.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pretext-1 4y agoIt’s the only widely supported payment scheme which allows consumers to properly manage automatic payments, i.e. authorization and revocation are not stuck in the 90’s.
- Borkdude 4y agoBad move for sustainability of open source software. Not every European has a credit card.
- DeWilde 4y agoIsn't revolut more popular in EU?
- wongarsu 4y agoThey have about 25 million customers, which would be about 5% of the EU population. Meanwhile about 38% of Europeans own a credit card [1]. Revolut is growing rapidly, so I assume there are plenty of bubbles where revolut is more widespread than credit cards. But the near-universal scheme in the EU would be sepa direct debit. And while the lack of instant confirmation is a drawback for online purchases, that shouldn't matter for something like GitHub Sponsors. 1: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/people_with_credit_cards/Europe/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/people_with_credit...
- bogantech 4y agoPut a donate button in the readme
- openplatypus 4y agoMost if not all Debit Cards work for online transactions. This has been a non issue for many years now.
- dncornholio 4y agoMost Debit cards absolutely do not work for most online transactions unless there is a payment provider that offers alternatives to credit cards.
- zinekeller 4y agoI'll stop the discussion here because some regions do issue debit cards that are usable online like a credit card and are connected to Visa and Mastercard with 3DS and such, but other regions either treat that as a luxury item or requires you to pay a maintaining fee just like credit card (for Americans, yes in other countries even if you always paid in time there is still a separate maintenance fee) because they have local systems like Interac or iDeal that are operating indepedently.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago> requires you to pay a maintaining fee just like credit card Which is sometimes waived if you have N funds on the account and/or have enough transaction volume per month.
- openplatypus 4y agoI lived in Poland, Finland, UK, the Netherlands and Germany. Never had an issue pay online with a card since early 2000s. There are two types of debit cards. 1. The legacy Bank Cards (think EC card in Germany) and 2. The "new" (I say new, but they have been around for 20 years) debit cards, which looks and act like Credit Card, but do not give you line of credit and requires fund on savings/current account. Except for German Sparkasse (not a real bank) almost every bank offers you option which card you want (Fidor even issues "Smart" card which is both, legacy and new Debit Card). The Netherlands had time with this super wonky Meastro cards, but I hear it no problem anymore. Some dodgy bank will ask for an extra fee, but most don't. I had my first Debit Card for online payment, as a student in 2004. Yes, paying with CC/DC in Europe is not an issue. It is not novelty. They are common. Your bank might have simply not given it to you.
- rvz 4y agoGreat move by GitHub. PayPal is garbage and it is better that bad gateways like them need to be removed. There are better alternatives that don’t seize your funds and lock your account in order to kill your business or income.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoNo wonder, they probably got their account locked by PayPal for "fraud" on regular basis, while paying exorbitant fees for it. At least that's my experience with PayPal.
- fxtentacle 4y agoI predict that this will absolutely tank the sponsorship for projects that are not US-centric. But maybe that's the intention here??? In Germany, most people don't have a credit card because you don't need one in daily life. Instant payments to friends? Giropay is free. Buy stuff online? PayPal, Giropay, Klarna. Send money to other EU countries? Every bank account supports SEPA, which is free. With that in mind, nobody is willing to pay $50 annually for a card which then charges 3% of every transaction, because there are good and free alternatives. And I don't think anyone will create a CC just for GitHub. Let's hope Microsoft will think this through and offer sane alternative payment methods (like SEPA deduction, the default for recurring payments in Europe) before removing the only non-CC option.
- DeWilde 4y agoThat might be a Germam specific thing, right over the border in Czechia cards are omni-present. Plus you have e-banks like Revolut.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoBut those are debit cards, not credit cards.
- openplatypus 4y agoBoth work well for online transactions.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoOk good. I was not sure, if GitHub wants credit card or is fine with debit card with enabled online payments.
- gray_-_wolf 4y agoIn the linked issue someone tried debit card and it did not work. I have no idea if that was isolated issue or wider problem.
- sammy2255 4y agoGood riddance. We need to pave the way for decentralized payment methods that aren’t greedy with currency conversion rates and fees
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoLike SEPA payment, but from my experience with US bank (BBVA) stuck in 1990s, it is still a big PITA to do something mundane like SEPA.
- Maken 4y agoBBVA is a Spanish bank and it absolutely works with SEPA in the EU.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoyeah, not in USA. There in order to do SEPA, you need to fill a form (!) personally in bank office. You can't do it from internet banking like in EU
- Maken 4y agoAnd I just read the USA branch is not even the same company anymore, despite keeping the BBVA name. International corporations are weird.
- franga2000 4y agoDecentralized like...payment cards, controlled by a global duopoly?? The closest thing to decentralized payments we have is SEPA payments via PSD2 "open banking" APIs, but that is significantly more difficult to implement and bank support is spotty due to TPPs having to negotiate access with each bank individually.
- gytisgreitai 4y agoConsidering the fees paypal charges - no wonder. At our company we are also trying to ditch paypal, since it constitutes to the lion share of total fees we pay payment processing, though paypal overall share compared to other payment methods is in the bottom percentage. Congratulations to Github on this step!
- gray_-_wolf 4y agoHonestly I do not understand why none of these sponsorship programs take direct bank transfers. Those are free in Europe for all parties involved, so they would have exactly zero processing fees. More money for them (since they can take bigger slice) and more money for the projects (since there are less parties taking their share). I just find it baffling.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoI would assume tax reasons. Receiving money out of the blue without invoice is asking for audit from your local tax bureau.
- johannes1234321 4y ago> zero processing fees This isn't true for a business. For business accounts with many incoming transactions many banks charge a small amount. Way less than PayPal and such, but more than zero. With Deutsche Bank for instance 0.06€/transaction.
- kkarpkkarp 4y ago> A credit card is the most insecure [...] payment method. On contrary, it is the most secure because of the chargeback. Someone stole your credit card data and bought anything with your money? No problem, just fill in chargeback request and money are back. Bank will handle the rest (including the finding the place where it was stolen and stopping accepting credit card transactions from that place at all, so if you are running online shop, better really secure the transactions).
- dncornholio 4y ago> On contrary, it is the most secure because of the chargeback. So a leaky card is better because you have chargeback. Meanwhile, debit cards are more secure and also offer chargeback.. Meanwhile, my debit card can get stolen and nobody will be able to use it. If I lose my credit card, anyone can do anything.
- kkarpkkarp 4y ago> So a leaky card is better because you have chargeback. Yup, I will still stick to my point. Someone stole my card? Not super convenient, but I do not lose any single penny. All will be back on my bank account. Someone stole my Paypal password (on the phishing site)? It is my problem, Paypal will not refund it to me. I bought some travel trip but travel agency did not fulfilled its obligations? With credit card and chargeback I have all money back (and travel agency has their deal with payment company ceased). With Paypal this is my problem and Paypal is not going to refund me any single cent. Since my first chargeback request I don't hesitate to pay with cards at all. (And chargeback processing was faster than anyone expected: bank always contacts the other side to see their point of view and because other side doesn't want to loose their deal and go banckrupt, they send me money back on very same day)
- exelib 4y agoNot sure if this is accurate. I was able to initiate a chargeback process from UI as a growing startup not giving a ** to return my money.
- dxuh 4y agoThis is clearly a bad idea, because credit cards are not as ubiquitous everywhere as they are in the US. If they don't want to do their research properly to figure this out, then they should at least ask, e.g. by giving a proper, timely notice with some option to back out. A month is clearly not enough. It's not even enough time for people to look for other income streams as the current ones will inevitably be affected. I really have trouble understanding decisions like this by companies that put so much focus on diversity and inclusion, but never really consider that other places outside of the US exist for many of their decisions. It frankly makes no sense to me to spearhead the effort to rename the master branch to main, but ignore that people outside the US can't sponsor projects without a credit card. The actual harm done by the latter is arguably larger and definitely more clearly measurable. It's very disappointing.
- sofixa 4y ago> This is clearly a bad idea, because credit cards Debit cards are, though, and it doesn't make any difference for online payments. Ideally GitHub should support more local options (e.g. SEPA transfers, UPI, etc.), but card payments are already a very good starting point.
- dxuh 4y agoIt totally does. I am from Germany and I cannot use my bank card for online payment and most people I know can't do it either. Especially if they have bank accounts at banks you can go to in person. Some online-bank accounts provide cards that can be used with online payments, but it's far from the most popular option.
- sofixa 4y agoWhat type of card do you have and what century is your bank in? I've had online capable Visa/Mastercard debit cards in Bulgaria (you know, poorest and least developed country in the EU) since at least 2010, if not before. In France even the legaciest of the legacy banks (the ones where to open a bank account you have to go in person and wait a week for everything to be processed) provide basic MasterCard/Visas, which are of course online capable. I don't know of any card being available in either country that isn't capable of online payments. I've heard Germany is behind the times in some aspects, but I didn't know your banking was so bad. Are you still using cheques too?
- seydor 4y agoPeople mention credit cards as alternatives, but forget paypal's ease of use. It's a lot of work to enter a credit card for small , mostly one-time payments. Paypal makes that easy, at least for me i tend to purchase more because of it.