6 ms·
Liberapay
- 3x3m3 2y agoNo way to donate Bitcoin?
- SamWhited 2y ago[flagged]
- schlauerfox 2y agoIf the end user wants to accept bitcoin, they will publish an address one can directly transfer to. It is peer-to-peer, so no need for a service.
- filmgirlcw 2y agoNo and it isn't on their roadmap. Projects who want to accept crypto should probably just put a wallet address on their pages rather than trying to rely on systems like Liberapay that aren't setup to facilitate transfers.
- wkat4242 2y agoTrue the whole thing about Bitcoin is that you don't need that middle man
- arcticbull 2y ago> However, we do not handle any crypto-currency. Thankfully not.
- culi 2y agoWhat value would that add? Recipients accepting crypto usually just put up a wallet address. Why add a middle person
- rchaud 2y agoconvert the bitcoin to fiat and send away.
- patcon 2y agoI love Liberapay. I wish more people in the EU used it or contributed to it (it's FOSS) instead of using Patreon or GitHub Sponsors.
- wuming2 2y agoAlso in the EU SEPA CT is an option. Lowering fees from 3%-5% to about 1% or less depending on the bank. Thanks to ECB infrastructure.
- daghamm 2y agoI like librapay, I wish more people would use it. I also hope they can reduce the ratio paid to paypal/stripe. More money should go to devs.
- yawndex 2y agoI don't think that would be possible, as Liberapay is essentially just a UI for accepting donations directly into the developers' Stripe/PayPal accounts.
- m00dy 2y agogood catch, it is not a payment processor.
- daghamm 2y agoBut maybe they can negotiate a better deal for their payments?
- m00dy 2y agoPayment processing is dominated by a massive monopoly, leaving no room for negotiation. The industry is controlled by global elites and financial powerhouses who gatekeep access. Only stablecoins have the potential to disrupt this cycle and offer an alternative.
- culi 2y agoDoubtful. It's 100% funded by its own Liberapay page.[0] It's the second-most donated to recipient but at about $650 a week, that's not even enough to hire a full time dev let alone the business skills needed to pull something like that off [0] https://en.liberapay.com/Liberapay/ https://en.liberapay.com/Liberapay/
- psychoslave 2y agoThat's more than median dev salary for most European country. https://helloastra.com/blog/article/average-software-developer-salary-in-2023-in-the-eu https://helloastra.com/blog/article/average-software-develop...
- greenie_beans 2y agoooo curious how hard it is to integrate this with Ghost. It's a perfect CMS for non-profits who are good at blogging and email marketing.
- rpgbr 2y agoGhost integrates directly with Stripe, no need to have an intermediary like Liberapay.
- greenie_beans 2y agoi know. i misunderstood liberapay as an alternative to stripe
- culi 2y agoI follow a lot of very small youtube creators. I can often convince them to start a liberapay just for me to donate. They get 100% of the cut* (Patreon takes 12-16%) and I am supporting both the creator and Liberapay's popularity The main downside is lack of integrations with the tiered perks Patreon offers. Most of the creators I follow don't really rely too heavily on the feature but I can see it becoming a larger hassle if a creator has to manage two platforms * less fees
- extraduder_ire 2y agoI think a notable feature of patreon's cut is that they only take it on withdrawal. I don't know how that works for individual's tax exposure, but it does serve to inflate the cash amounts on the site from people using their patreon income to patronise others.
- culi 2y agoAh that is interesting. I didn't realize that. Is Patreon then allowed to basically act like a bank? Where they can invest the cash that's currently sitting in a Patreon account? Essentially, everyone leaving money in Patreon is giving them a micro-loan A somewhat related feature of Liberapay is there's a lot of flexibility in the frequency of your payments. You can enter in $5/week but it will suggest a payment frequency that minimizes fee. E.g. paying $21.43 every 30 days instead.
- TZubiri 2y agoNot necessarily. Not every entity can do whatever they want with deposits from others, you need to be an actual bank and regulated as such to have the right to invest other people's money
- bilekas 2y agoJust out of interest because it sounds a little too good to be true, but it the content creators keep 100% of the donations, how are LibrePay funding the operation itself ? Edit : My lazy self actually went and read up on it : > Liberapay does not take a cut of payments, the service is funded by the donations to its own account. However there are payment processing fees. This is a great example of dogfooding.
- internetter 2y agoLiberapay is my platform of choice! It lacks a lot of flashy features but it feels like the closest thing to an 'exchange between friends' instead of a commercial sort of relationship. For the type of works I link my LiberaPay to, I don't have nor want tiers and rewards associated with them, as that forms a social contract where I am expected to perform more labour. I only want money from people who are thankful for what I've already provided, and I only want what they're willing to provide. I suspect microscopic rewards like discord roles, a news letter, ect. do increase revenue, but then again you're managing a community. I encountered issues with Stripe so that's been disabled, PayPal only, but PayPal doesn't auto renew. Again, I suspect I lost a considerable amount of money because of this. But again, taking money from people who wouldn't explicitly click 'renew' when they get the email doesn't feel right. I also began offering Ko-fi as an option, however, because some people are uncomfortable with unfamiliar platforms.
- internetter 2y agoCont... To the best of my understanding and lived experiences, there is a strong correlation between 'ethical compromise' on the part of the content creator and how much they can expect to be compromised for their work 1. A donation link in the footer... people only see it if they're looking for it 2. More overt reminders (when KDE added a single yearly popup notification, donations dramatically increased) 3. Adding tiers to step up the donations (e.g. maybe you could convince most of the $3.99 folks to do $4.99) 4. Adding rewards to fuel the funder's egos (I try to send personal emails thanking them but this isn't an explicitly mentioned 'reward' unlike, say, positions in the credits) 5. In addition to rewards, supplementing income with sponsors. The sponsors frequently are exploiting both the creator and the consumer (e.g. Honey), but nevertheless compensation does increase. Also, affiliate programs. Hard to do without your own integrity being compromised when recommending products. 6. 'Dangerous' monetization that plays with emotions. Onlyfans creators creating pseudo-relationships. Entire sponsored videos for stuff like gambling. Of course, it is hard to argue that the oft. underpaid content producers are really the ones making ethical concessions when they exist under a system that... underfunds them... but nevertheless it is undeniable that there are ethical concessions, and these concessions are made because they increase revenue. The really really sad part is that you really only see big creators throwing doing this stuff despite already having more than enough, and they always get away with it, whereas if a small creator were to pull this their audience would eat them alive.
- bsnnkv 2y agoDoes Liberapay provide the various tax forms a receiver needs to file their yearly returns in the US?
- creer 2y agoThe receiver does not need any tax forms in the US. Payers are obligated to issue tax-related forms in certain circumstances. But the receivers don't even need those to file their own tax paperwork.
- internetter 2y agoThis is an oversimplification. More than likely, income from Liberapay can be categorized as a 'gift.' Often, gifts aren't taxed to the recipient, so long as its less than $18,000 (this is not tax advice), Liberapay does not provide tax forms or tax advice. Its up to you to accurately categorize the income you receive based on the LiberaPay ToS, the expectations of your donors and the IRS, and your specific campaign. Your payment processors (PayPal and Stripe) absolutely do provide tax forms. Its your responsibility to make appropriate use of them. But Liberapay itself doesn't have forms it needs to provide (and by god you don't want to provide tax forms or tax advice you aren't required by law to give)
- schlauerfox 2y agoPretty sure that is misleading, i'm no tax lawyer but gift rules only apply to friends and family. Buskers have to report income from performing, waitstaff have to report voluntary tips given to them and while there's probably no caselaw yet, I would suspect the IRS would fight you on income you receive entertaining other people not being 'gifts'.
- internetter 2y agoA gift is defined by the IRS as "Any transfer to an individual, either directly or indirectly, where full consideration (measured in money or money's worth) is not received in return." Nowhere in this statement does it say "gift rules only apply to friends and family" If you reach the point where a substantial portion of your income is Patreon or whatever (and thus, you wouldn't be otherwise performing the entertainment service), I'm sure the IRS would view it differently. "a recipient generally can exclude from gross income for federal income tax purposes a donation from a nongovernment donor as a gift if the donation is motivated by detached and disinterested generosity and is not in anticipation of an economic benefit or in return for services." ref https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/03-0025.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/03-0025.pdf and Commissioner v. Duberstein, 363 U.S. 278 (1960) perhaps, my categorization of "more than likely" could be incorrect. But given how relatively small[0] most accounts make on Liberapay, that is what I imagine most in the US would be calling it. https://liberapay.com/explore/recipients https://liberapay.com/explore/recipients
- mvdtnz 2y agoOne thing I like in a payments system is when the website goes down from a little bit of traffic.
- johnisgood 2y agoThey submitted it to HN to try out their new {hard,soft}ware. :D
- nanna 2y agoI submitted this Liberapay link, and have no association with it besides funding a few projects and coders through it. They wouldn't have been expecting a surge in traffic.
- johnisgood 2y agoI was partly joking, it is something I would have done. Thank you for the clarification though, and thanks for the submission, Liberapay is great.
- cozzyd 2y ago-lerapay?
- mixmastamyk 2y agoHmm, the name seems a bit off. "Librepay" makes me think of a user-respecting service. Liberapay sounds like it is based in Liberia or something.
- gjm11 2y agoIt has an entirely different inappropriate association for me. Having spent years singing in choirs, when I see the name I get the words "Liberapay, Domine, de morte aeterna in die illa tremenda..." running in my head, to the tune of the spiky fugal setting in Verdi's requiem.
- juunpp 2y agoliber/a/um is Latin.
- seltzered_ 2y agoRelated: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr flattr , which shutdown in 2023.
- brianzelip 2y agohttps://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.com https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.com
- amryl 2y agoCan it be compared in any way with GNU Taler payment system ?
- riffraff 2y agoNo, it's something like Patreon, not a currency infrastructure.
- Changaco 2y agoNot really, but support for Taler could be implemented in Liberapay. If someone is able and willing to tackle that, there's a possibility of funding the work with an EU grant: https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.com/issues/1309#issuecomment-2002579804 https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.com/issues/1309#issue...
- nickpsecurity 2y agoHas anyone done a review with the strengths and weaknesses of Liberapay vs common platforms?
- bullen 2y agoI wish they had ways to setup fixed price recurring payment items. Right now I use gumroad but they take a very high fee.
- KennyBlanken 2y ago> 745 new donations have been started in the past month, increasing total weekly funding by $899.10 > 14 new pledges have been made in the past month, adding $35.79 of weekly donations waiting to be claimed. > 20,426.66 was transferred last week between 14,076 users. Not really encouraging stats for a system that has been around for ten years, though maybe the PR from being mentioned on here will give it a boost. (It took considerable effort to copy that text, because they are using text-selection blocking tricks. Nowhere else on the page is this the case...)
- lazzlazzlazz 2y ago> The fees vary by payment processor, payment method, countries and currencies. In the last year, the average fee percentages have been 3,1 % for the payments processed by Stripe and 5 % for the payments processed by PayPal. Stablecoins seem so obvious it's unbelievable.
- Galanwe 2y agoUnfortunately, depending on where you live, there could be high fees, fiscal and compliance complexity when dealing with crypto currencies.
- crazygringo 2y agoStripe supports stablecoins if the merchant enables it. They still charge 1.5% though. Building and maintaining integrations and dealing with customer support and monitoring accounts for fraud costs money. And the number of people who keep spending money in stablecoins is minuscule. (I'd never use them because I want fraudulent transactions to be able to be reversed.)
- DrNosferatu 2y agoCan you keep how much you’re earning private?
- Changaco 2y agoYes. The box to check is in https://liberapay.com/about/me/edit/privacy https://liberapay.com/about/me/edit/privacy
- smallerfish 2y agoSince it's nonprofit, are donations 501c3 deductible? I am on the council of a conservation foundation based in Costa Rica. We want to make it easy for US based philanthropists to donate and receive some tax benefits from the donation. There is an organization named Amigos of Costa Rica [1] which is set up for this purpose, but they have somewhat steep fees on top of the payment processor's, and they only reconcile the balance on a weekly basis, through wire xfers, which is not ideal. [1 - https://www.amigosofcostarica.org/ https://www.amigosofcostarica.org/]
- juunpp 2y agoIt is French, so not specifically 501c3. https://en.liberapay.com/about/legal https://en.liberapay.com/about/legal
- rchaud 2y agoDonations to Liberapay itself could be considered tax deductible if they are domiciled in the same tax region as you. Liberapay is the nonprofit, not the parties it transmits funds to.
- nanna 2y agoFellow Emacsers, note there are a few accounts on Liberapay of people who make some of the things we love: Org Mode: https://en.liberapay.com/org-mode/ https://en.liberapay.com/org-mode/ - Ihor Radchenko (Org mode maintainer): https://en.liberapay.com/yantar92/ https://en.liberapay.com/yantar92/ - Bastien "bzg" Guerry: https://en.liberapay.com/bzg/ https://en.liberapay.com/bzg/ - Timothy "Tec": https://en.liberapay.com/tec/ https://en.liberapay.com/tec/ Magit: https://en.liberapay.com/magit/ https://en.liberapay.com/magit/ - Tarsius (Magit, Transient maintainer): https://en.liberapay.com/tarsius/ https://en.liberapay.com/tarsius/ Guile Emacs: https://en.liberapay.com/guile-emacs/ https://en.liberapay.com/guile-emacs/
- webspinner 2y agoI remember seeing this a while ago, but it's a decent alternative to Patreon!