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Providing payment services to structural crowdfunding efforts is a legal grey area when it comes to financial regulations. Amazon is not the first to suspend t
by rickmb 14y ago
Providing payment services to structural crowdfunding efforts is a legal grey area when it comes to financial regulations.
Amazon is not the first to suspend taking on such accounts until they have better grip on the regulatory implications.
- DennisP 14y agoWhy is it a grey area? Which regulations? Seems like a pretty straightforward transaction to me.
- adgar 14y agoMoney laundering is the first giant red flag that should come to mind.
- ScottBurson 14y agoAt first glance, I suppose there would be that potential. I think unglue.it has chosen their business model very wisely. By starting with already-published books, they make money laundering rather difficult to carry out and easy to detect -- to launder money through their service, one would first have to publish a book, which would probably have to sell a significant number of copies for unglue.it to even consider it.
- DennisP 14y agoAny brick-and-mortar shop that accepts cash and charges a lot for labor can be used for money-laundering, but that doesn't make it illegal. An online business is actually less useful for laundering than the brick-and-mortar shop, since you don't have cash payments.
- adgar 14y agoBrick-and-mortar shops don't have botnets.
- milesskorpen 14y agoAt least for Kickstarter, a lot of people seem to think of their payments as part of a transaction ... while they aren't. My understanding is that there are a number of Kickstarters which never produced the promised rewards / end output, and that they have no legal obligation to do so.
- nikcub 14y agoI never understood how the semantics of a crowdfunding payment are any different to when your credit card is taken on file at a hotel for room charge bills. You hand over your credit card upfront in anticipation of a possible payment in the future. I think the real problem here is classifying crowd funding as a product purchase or an investment.
- tomp 14y agoWhy do they allow it for kickstarter (as stated in the article)? Is it possible the reason is because kickstarter is not interfering with their primary business?
- ayelton 14y agoThey've given us the impression that they're not onboarding new crowdfunding companies, but KS is not new. I haven't heard any comment from Amazon about Kickstarter specifically and I'm not going to speculate.