11 ms·

BuyMeACoffee silently dropped support for many countries (2024)

343 points by beeburrt 1y ago

rdtsc 1y ago
“20% and subject to changes” yikes what a way to say “you’re losing territory and you’re not in the news enough for us to bother”. That’s probably one country that needs the help from a place like that.
notpushkin 1y ago
So they’re disabling Wise/Payoneer because they can’t implement some optional features on top of it? Why not just gate the features based on the payout platform instead?
- bayindirh 1y ago
  Too expensive to implement (in developer salary), and AI can't code it in five minutes and ship it yesterday?
  - notpushkin 1y ago
    They are a small company, yeah, but that also means they are extremely agile, and this feels like the kind of a feature that would take me (a single developer) maybe a couple days to implement.
    - bayindirh 1y ago
      I mean, if spending 16 hours to implement a future proofing feature is not acceptable, I don't know what is.
- noeltock 1y ago
  Or maybe that's simply their public-facing reason.
ascorbic 1y ago
[2024]
olalonde 1y ago
[flagged]
- pbhjpbhj 1y ago
  Don't you pay more in transaction costs than the cost of a coffee? And then pay in environmental costs.
  - olalonde 1y ago
    No, on-chain transaction fees aren't higher than the cost of a coffee. They're currently around $0.15 per transaction - cheaper than typical credit card processing fees. Plus, you could always build an off-chain transaction system with zero fees. As for the environmental impact: individual Bitcoin transactions don’t directly increase energy usage. Miners consume electricity regardless of whether any given person transacts. And while mining is energy intensive, it doesn't have an environmental impact in itself.
    - pbhjpbhj 1y ago
      I must have misremembered? Last time I looked (maybe 2 years ago) I thought actual bitcoin transactions took maybe an hour to confirm and cost a couple of dollars -- am I just short more marbles than I thought I was or has something changed with how they do transactions. The context I was looking at related to storing data in the bitcoin ledger. I think I commented here, I'll have to look back and see.
      - olalonde 1y ago
        It's a dynamic market so fees can vary depending on congestion, BTC price, etc. Expected time to first block confirmation is around 10 minutes assuming your fee is high enough to be included in the next block (when blocks are full, miners prioritize transactions with higher fee). When you send a transaction, you get to pick what fee you'd like to use. For this kind of service, transaction speed isn't really important so you can get away with setting a low fee. Here's a 0.15$ fee transaction that was mined just 6 minutes ago: https://mempool.space/tx/2e66ba1758e233ff1b2395c7db55f8327deeae4f05f55b3af5c9c6ccdd358e81 https://mempool.space/tx/2e66ba1758e233ff1b2395c7db55f8327de... By "off-chain", I meant something like BuyMeACoffee letting users top up a wallet via an on-chain deposit, and then handling tips internally (e.g., in a SQL database). That way, small payments don't each require a blockchain transaction.
casenmgreen 1y ago
From mid-2024. I regard all FinTech-type companies as unreliable, after incredible (in the literal sense of the word) experiences with Revolut (seven years to get an account closed and the money in it returned, and that actually happened only after I made a GDPR request, and they got it done - seems its less work for them to close than meet the request) and Transferwise (who shortly after the UA war started, blocked donations to the UA State bank military support account - yes, really, if you didn't know). By all means have an account with them, but never, ever, ever, rely on it, and plan on the basis that the next morning you wake up to find the account, and everything in it, has gone, and that customer support is a defensive shield the company uses to keep customers at arms length. If you want almost no-cost currency conversion (2 USD minimum, but you have to convert like 100k USD I think it is to go above that), use Interactive Brokers LLC. They won't let you have an account purely for currency conversion, but as long as you do a few trades now and then, it seems fine.
- notpushkin 1y ago
  > Transferwise (who shortly after the UA war started, blocked donations to the UA State bank military support account - yes, really, if you didn't know). Oh wow. Well, at least donations to NGOs / individuals seem to work. Agreed, IBKR are a nice bunch. I wouldn’t rely on them either, but it’s always better to have more options, in case everything else fails. And of course, when banks can block your accounts at any moment just because they don’t like your passport, crypto is king.
  - apples_oranges 1y ago
    Of course who would ever doubt that
  - throwaway290 1y ago
    Ironically crypto is also what helps fund and survive (bypassing sanctions) the warmongers and dictatorships which make banks not like our passports In the end poor peasants shouting "crypto is king" are the ones owned from both sides. They are used for profit by their local oppressors/gangs and by western cryptobros. The peasants transactions are the rounding error but they are the ones who allow to pretend it's "freedom"
nathell 1y ago
They also at one time blocked the author on Twitter. https://x.com/zverok/status/1823757570240340466 https://x.com/zverok/status/1823757570240340466
- croisillon 1y ago
  what's up with that Jijo Sunny guy doing 10 min long videos from his car
  - stronglikedan 1y ago
    Probably a long commute with nothing better to do. I'd do it in that situation, too.
mwilcox 1y ago
[flagged]
florbnit 1y ago
The did it silently because they know what they are doing and wanted to get by without the natural consequences of their actions. I’m now going to silently never tip another “cup of coffee” through their services, hopefully others will follow.
- johnisgood 1y ago
  Unfortunately it is the people who contribute for free that gets fucked up by that, unless they have other means for you to donate.
EZ-E 1y ago
Potentially unpopular opinion but ultimately it's a private service and they decided to disable payout methods which negatively affects Ukrainian users for the sake of integrating new changes/avoiding legal risk. They don't have to support all countries. I feel sorry for the users though, especially I imagine by asking supporters to move to another platform will result in some of them dropping which is the result of platform lock in..
- cryptonym 1y ago
  You are right, they probably don't have to, or that would be basis for legal action. Customers should also be allowed to expose shady stuff done by such private services, warning other people.
  - EZ-E 1y ago
    Right, just that from the article I get the vibe that the author makes the case Ukraine got blocked while it's the result of dropping a payment provider, not policy that singles out Ukraine
- noduerme 1y ago
  Sure, it's a private service and they can do whatever they want, but why block Ukraine? I spent an inordinate amount of time and resources over years blocking Americans from the casino I ran, so I can somewhat sympathize with the point of view that one wants to avoid legal issues. But the only reason I spent the energy to do that was that I needed to be on the right side of the law, personally, if I ever found myself physically back in the US. The only reason I blocked certain other countries (like Myanmar and Iran) was on moral principle because I didn't want to potentially help launder money to revolting dictatorships. I did not, for instance, research or give two fucks about online gambling laws in Malaysia, or a dozen other countries I'd never step foot in where I had players from. I certainly wouldn't have cut off a country that was under siege and partially eaten by a nasty dictatorship. If I were running it now, I'd have probably set up filters to block anyone conceivably in Russian territory, and that would be that. If one guy can do it against an onslaught of thousands of Americans trying to fake their IP addresses daily, I'm sure a good sized company can handle blocking Russian money laundering through a tip jar.
Nebbit123 1y ago
It's fascinating that neither the article nor the comments here include a single mention of "stablecoins" which seems like the obvious solution to this problem.
- BoredPositron 1y ago
  Yeah, not as easy to cash out as you make it out to be.
  - fastball 1y ago
    Still easier than cashing out from a platform that doesn't support your country at all.
  - Nebbit123 1y ago
    That's fair, but it's probably an improvement in regions blocked by more traditional financial services. In many of those regions, people may not even want to cash out to local currencies as holding a digital dollar is often more stable.
    - lazide 1y ago
      That requires a rather unusual confluence of events. Almost everywhere there needs to be a on AND off ramp, or only the most diehard hobbiest or desperate economic actor will consider it. This stuff is just too new, and there is too small an ecosystem for all but a small handful of coins for them to actually act as a useful exchange medium.
      - Nebbit123 1y ago
        Genuinely curious, what alternative solutions do you see to the underlying problem highlighted in OP's post?
        lazide 1y ago
        The ones they usually use right now - holding physical USD, bartering, physical gold, real estate, etc. depending on the use case and degree of wealth. Local currency does still get used, it’s unavoidable, and causes losses. There is no perfect solution. One economy which fits the description is India - check out the boxes of cash hah! [https://www.livemint.com/Politics/eGzzHAcOe5VePoyCd7n0EN/Income-tax-raids-in-Delhi-Chennai-yield-large-cache-of-blac.html https://www.livemint.com/Politics/eGzzHAcOe5VePoyCd7n0EN/Inc...], and [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/mumbai-raid-unearths-rs-10-crore-cash-from-35-sq-ft-office-floor-wall/amp_articleshow/91017082.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/mumbai-raid-...]. (FYI, a cr or crore == 10 million, a lakh == 100k. Even at current exchange rates, that is a lot of money anywhere, and an absolutely massive fortune in India). But there is an element of this in ALL economies, including the US. It’s a matter of scale/ratios, not a yes/no thing.
rwarfield 1y ago
We have normalized the treatment of the financial and payments systems as things that exist primarily to perform law enforcement surveillance functions. It's the same dynamic that leads to debanking of small accounts - payments firms exist on thin margins and the potential fines for inadvertently servicing a bad actor are stratospheric, so it's entirely logical to play it safe by refusing to service anyone whose profile looks even the slightest bit risky.
- lazide 1y ago
  It’s the ‘greedy coward’ leadership model - tends to work pretty well for most businesses, until it does’t. usually all at once.
- ngruhn 1y ago
  The alternate is crypto. That will service anyone for ANY reason.
  - sabas123 1y ago
    Which is not necessarily a good thing.
    - coolcase 1y ago
      It's like a kitchen knife. Can be good or bad.
      - close04 1y ago
        Correct in principle but not all that insightful because it's something almost universally true. "Fentanyl! Ads! Widespread surveillance! Can be good or bad". You have to look at the reality. Crypto has been used overwhelmingly for scams and crime.
        CelestialMystic 1y ago
        > Crypto has been used overwhelmingly for scams and crime. So has regular currency.
alex1138 1y ago
BuyMeACountry
- coolcase 1y ago
  Minus the tree
tzal3x 1y ago
Using a crypto wallet for donations is always a convenient alternative.
- Shatnerz 1y ago
  until someone runs their funds through TornadoCash and dusts your wallet, thus putting it on many sanctioned lists and making it impossible to offloads funds into fiat by legal means.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    I still don't understand how anyone expects "sanctioned lists" to actually work. The same logic applies to the wallet of the exchange you might use if you were using an intermediary. A sender doesn't need the recipient's permission to transfer funds and wallet addresses containing funds are all public. If $0.0001 in tainted funds can taint a wallet containing a billion dollars then everything will end up tainted immediately, whether a result of trolls or just funds being transferred by ordinary users in jurisdictions that don't enforce the same sanctions. But if nothing is tainted because everything is then the sanctions are meaningless because someone with sanctioned funds would just deposit them at a major exchange in a foreign jurisdiction and then withdraw them again as untainted funds.
    - Shatnerz 1y ago
      > I still don't understand how anyone expects "sanctioned lists" to actually work. Well one of the problems here was the sanctioning of a technology, which AFAIK has never happened previously. Exchanges have the means to work with regulators, demonstrate good faith, and get themselves removed from any accidental sanctioning. This doesn't exactly apply to small tips akin to BuyMeACoffee.
- ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
  But it's pretty hard to actually spend that crypto without going through a traditional fiat account which is subject to the same restrictions.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
winterbloom 1y ago
Is there a startup idea here? Do what buymeacoffee won't do and forget about regulations (that's what Uber does yeah?) If you are interested in building this, I have product and engineering experience
- casenmgreen 1y ago
  The problem is how to not become just like every other large company, once you grow from being a startup and become a large company.
  - notpushkin 1y ago
    The solution is not to become a large company :-) Start small, stay lean and just focus on the problem.
- notpushkin 1y ago
  I would gladly join! Love the fintech space and open to slightly “shady” stuff like this.
  - itake 1y ago
    Whats your take on why they did this? My guess is their payment provider forced them to it. and so the solution is what? support crypto?
    - notpushkin 1y ago
      For Payoneer, I’m not sure but they’ve wanted to deprecate it a long time ago (and I think Wise was supposed to replace it). From how clunky Payoneer was the last time I used it, I think the API must be pretty horrible, so no wonder BMAC wants to get rid of it. For Wise, it could be that, but also they’ve been putting out a ton of features lately, which aren’t supported by Wise. Not idea why they didn’t add a bunch of if statements. The solution is... uh, not sure? Crypto might work for payouts, but it’s too complicated for most users. For the donation page itself, we definitely need to accept cards somehow. There are payment providers that can accept cards and payout to these countries, so I think it should be possible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44002850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44002850
jimjambw 1y ago
I signed up for BuyMeACoffee recently. I did some work for free that’s important for the industry I work in and a few people donated money to me. That was almost 2 weeks ago and I’m still waiting for them to review my account. The only support seems to be just an email address? In regards to the fact they pulled out of countries that are hard to operate in, yeah it’s annoying but you know, can you blame them?
nottorp 1y ago
Speaking of Stripe, when will they support 3d secure or however it's called this year? The card I mostly use for online impulses purchases is from a semi paranoid bank that turns down non 3d secure transactions by default. Sometimes they call you for confirmation. Needless to say, that means no impulse purchases from Stripe using merchants. And no buying coffees for anyone. Guess it's cheaper for me in the long run...
- ezfe 1y ago
  Stripe supports 3D Secure, it sounds like your bank isn't invoking it properly for it to trigger on the Stripe end. https://docs.stripe.com/payments/3d-secure https://docs.stripe.com/payments/3d-secure
  - nottorp 1y ago
    Heh, I skimmed through the docs. It looks like it's extra work on the merchant's end to enable it. So someone like BackerKit just didn't bother catering to EU customers. Plus I saw a chapter about "reducing friction" in the Stripe docs. Via such honest practices as charging automatically after a free trial if the customer has a credit card on file? This has been discussed on HN recently wrt to i-forget-what-service. I suppose not requiring the extra 3d secure step is also "reducing friction".
    - leejo 1y ago
      The "d" in 3d means "domain", so three domains: the merchant, the card issuing bank, and the card scheme(s). The first two have to opt-in to the process for it to be enabled, and most (all?) card issuing banks already have so it's down to the merchant. Not all merchants will opt-in to 3d Secure as they might see a greater loss in revenue due to the friction it creates versus the risk. They might be taking payments in a low risk sector and use other fraud checking factors, or it might not make sense for them - examples where you end up having to produce the same card in person anyway so "card not present" fraud doesn't factor in so much. Some merchants don't opt-in as it would lose them millions of dollars of payments an hour due to the friction: Amazon for example. I worked on the 3d Secure (and, formally, "Verified by Visa") integration at my previous job, and for a long time I was thinking I should write a blog post on what a complete mess of a protocol and implementation it [still] is. Haven't ever gotten around to that though.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
znanz 1y ago
I’ve been working many years in the banking and Fintech industry. These companies are driven by compliance before profit. Sometimes, compliance will order a country to be blocked because of the risk to service bad actors, and they can get this done bypassing every other department. This is also why it takes forever to get an account opened, the know you customer and know your business processes are long and tedious, use manual and semi automated process to establish a risk score and make a decision wether to service a customer or not. Most of the time, these processes are about ticking boxes and filing required documents to cover the institution. In the case of the article, servicing a zone at war, with a lot of parties under sanctions is a risk that either BuyMeACoffee and / or a few of their providers were not willing to take.
- simultsop 1y ago
  All people wanted was to give someone a coffee, not a fortune.
  - znanz 1y ago
    It’s not about the amounts unfortunately. Financial institutions look at who is the sender, the receiver and the recipient. If there’s a doubt to any of these 3 information, they block the transaction. And for Ukraine, they banned the whole country.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    It’s perfect for money laundering. Deliver someone drugs and they pay by buying you coffee.
    - kjkjadksj 1y ago
      So is literally every e-commerce setup
Kiro 1y ago
Dumb question but I don't expect any service to support all countries, so what makes BuyMeACoffee different? My service (which also involves money) only supports one country in the world.
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  The dropping part. It's not "fair", but people get pissed when you can compare before/after. And to a reason, it means some users relying on that support are now left SOL, when they could have made different choices if the service couldn't handle them from the start.
  - prmoustache 1y ago
    I have the feeling that most companies that are conducting businesses in both USA in EU are operating illegally anyway. It looks to me like US cloud act and EU GDPR and Data acts are making this incompatible and there is no way to offer a service to both area without breaking any law.
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      The way this is supposed to work is that you have a subsidiary in the EU that follows the laws in the EU and a subsidiary in the US that follows the laws in the US and then the US subsidiary isn't in the EU or vice versa, so there is no conflict because each entity is only subject to one set of laws or the other. But now we have governments opprobriously trying to impose laws on entities outside of their jurisdiction.
KronisLV 1y ago
> The money is still “there”, so probably no lawyer can say BMaC has “stolen them”—you just can’t neither receive “your” money nor, at least, give them back to those who sent them. Lawyering aside, really now? If someone holds money that should be mine with no way for me to get it out and me never getting a way to get it out, it’s not different to me no longer having that money. If the entire purpose of them having that money was for me to be able to get it out, it really feels a lot like theft. It’s no different than you having money on your PayPal account, it getting suspended for some dumb reason and them just taking your money. I have used Wise in the past to send money to some gaming friends abroad with weird banks, I really hope that it or some other option that supports as many countries as possible remains available. I hate to sound like one of those “crypto bros” but I’ve also used BTC in the past for similar use cases and it’s refreshing, you just need to have an exchange available in a given country and also not store too much money in crypto due to the high volatility, unless that’s what you’re going for. Not to badmouth some need for regulation or whatever is actually going on behind the scenes (assuming a charitable interpretation of whatever it is), but not being able to support a content creator or send pizza money to an acquaintance or whatever for reasons like that seems... dumb. Plus, a "proper" way to handle discontinuing the support for entire regions would be something along the lines of: 1. public announcement and timeline for upcoming changes 2. "Here's how you transfer out all of your money off of the platform before the change: ..." (with regular reminders) 3. "Here's how you migrate your follower base to another platform that supports your region: ..." (maybe a collab of some sort, at least offering each patron the ability to register on the new platform if they want to keep supporting the person)
- stevage 1y ago
  Does Bitcoin work for tiny amounts (eg $5)? Last time I looked (years ago) it cost like $25 do do any BTC transaction at all.
  - CelestialMystic 1y ago
    It depends on the wallet but it is possible now. There is a layer 2 protocol called lightning. People are sending people sats all day over Nostr. https://lightning.network/how-it-works/ https://lightning.network/how-it-works/
gadders 1y ago
A friend did some online usability/survey thing with a web development company just to get £20 or so. They were told that the US payments company couldn't send the money to their primary email address as (for vanity reasons) they have a .by domain from Belorussia. (They are a UK citizen living in the UK)
- wltr 1y ago
  Why would they buy a by domain? Solely for the name? Off-topic, but I believe that might be interesting to some readers: FYI Belorussia is a non-state. That’s how Russians call Belarus. Belarus is the official and correct name, the origins are from Rus. The medieval country, that was on the territories of modern day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus. Russia stole that name (Rus’ or Ruthenia), just recently — in the historical terms — a couple of hundred years ago. Their country was named Muscovy. About that time they invented their artificial language, which is mostly stolen from Belarus and Ukraine. During the occupation (1918—1991) period, they did their best to eliminate their (Belarus, Ukraine, but also all the other nations they enslaved) culture, language, most prominent people. The word to search for is genocide, if you feel like willing to explore this topic more. Belarus is still de-facto occupied by Russia, never recovering from Russia‘s barbarity of XX century, that’s why it’s a pathetic pro-Russian country now. Ukraine too was under huge Russian influence since 1991, and technically only since 2014 (the revolution of dignity, Russia seized Crimea) they do fight for their independence. In fact, current war is the independence war for Ukraine. If they won, they’re just another thriving European (EU) democratic state. If they to lose, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland are the next in line. And Ukrainian people would be forced to fight for Russia. Modern Russia in its current form cannot exist without Ukraine. Without Ukraine, there’s no Russian empire, there’s no USSR. That’s why Russia tries so badly to occupy Ukraine and name it Russia. Without them, Russia is just two cities, Moscow and St Petersburg. That’s why they desperately call them brotherly nations, Ukraine and Belarus. (And some other neighbouring states too.) During the XX century, Russia invented derogatory names for all the countries they enslaved. That makes Belorussia or Byelorussia (notice Russia, not Rus, which is completely different country, despite Russia trying to claim the name). Also, the names are ‘on the Ukraine’ (Ukraine has no ‘the’ article, and is ‘in Ukraine’), that way they try to mock the name into the name Periphery (this word sounds very similar to Ukraine in Russian language), that way they present Ukraine as some distant and rural periphery, while Russia itself is a periphery. (Basically everything Russia claims of others, is actually about them and about what they do to others. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror for that) Also, derogatory term for Baltic states is Pribaltics (in the same fashion to Ukraine, making it rather a territory), and also I know of Moldova, they call it Moldavia. And Turkmenistan, they call it Turkmenia (in the same fashion). Maybe there are other countries, but I’m unaware of them, since I haven’t been there. Russians claim that innocently, that that’s _just_ their language, that’s how they _always_ named these countries. So yeah, technically, we cannot tell other nations how they should name our countries. Except when we actually can. Recently (after 2020) some countries (I’m aware of Germany) renamed Belarus from being literally White Russia, to Belarus. Which historically can be translated as White Rusyns, but not White Russians, because Russia never existed by that point in history. Also see Turkey becoming Türkiye. It’s very similar thing, as far as I’m aware, and I believe calling them after the bird is disrespectful. Especially when they explicitly asked how they want their country to be called. Hope that’ll help someone who is unaware why some people call these countries wrong names. I’m not giving links, because everything I wrote is very easily searchable and makes sense only for those who are far from Europe and the context to understand and/or care.
gsky 1y ago
The way i support content creators is by signing up for services through their sponsor/referral links. Tip for content creators: Please use services like https://UseCode.net https://UseCode.net to host all your sponsor/referral codes in one place, as this will be very helpful for users. Remember all could not afford to pay a zillion content creators out there
rckt 1y ago
Well, I'm glad that this kind of thing got in the spotlight. This stuff is very common for "second-class" countries. It's happening all the time with all kinds of services. Most of them just don't want to be bothered (spend resources on) with figuring out how to work with those countries. I guess the payment systems provide convenient frameworks for them via which they do money related stuff. If there's no easy way to reproduce something in several unfortunate countries that was super easy to achieve in developed countries, then it's not worth it. The profits there are not gonna meet the expectations in relation to the spendings. So while these are really shitty situations for people from those countries, these decisions are dictated by the market. And I don't think this is gonna change. But one of the great points in the article is that services should be very clear, up to date and explicit about their policies.
- BlueTemplar 1y ago
  Isn't there quite a demand in "the West" to send money to Ukraine, meaning that they will be quickly replaced (and by a company that might later become their direct competitor). And is been nearly a year since the events described in the blog : HAS a new company popped up ?
  - rckt 1y ago
    Well. There's always a demand in all the disadvantaged places. Not only Ukraine. As for the supply, money will always find a way. Crypto, shady banks etc. I think the established businesses which are common to EU and US people just don't want to deal with the government. It's easier for them to comply in a preventive way. Many immigrants in the EU face issues with banks (virtual and real) blocking or not willing to open accounts. Just to be safe.
- gosub100 1y ago
  Why hasn't crypto jumped in to the rescue? Sounds like a textbook case of "code is law"
  - nitwit005 1y ago
simultsop 1y ago
I believe everyone starts a thing with ambition: "I will fix the world". They get fixed instead! Unfortunately, "things" begin nicely until it gains major attention. Then it loses most of the nice things.
Havoc 1y ago
>nobody cares I get the impression that those buttons don't exactly get many clicks anyway
f4c39012 1y ago
"we are sorry that we don’t care" is wonderfully succinct corporate double-speak/sarcasm
at0mic22 1y ago
Lets be honest - the amount of fraud coming from UA makes it unwelcome for payment processors. As long as UA authorities keep ignoring this problem, the situation will get worse. Baltic states report a horrendous amount of phone scam coming from UA, no surprise Wise just does not want to deal with claims.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
ionwake 1y ago
would creating a smart contract other parties use to pay eachother fall under financial regulation?
ZoomZoomZoom 1y ago
Donation/small payment situation for small artists/content creators is abysmal. You're forced to one of the following: 1. Offer multiple choices for payment => people need to sift through to find what works for them and give up after first fail. 2. Use a payment [processor] aggregator => unreliable (as with this case) and takes a cut (sometimes chained). 3. Use crypto only => the only thing that works reliably, but severely cuts your audience to those comfortable with it.
drysine 1y ago
"The money is still “there”, so probably no lawyer can say BMaC has “stolen them”—you just can’t neither receive “your” money nor, at least, give them back to those who sent them." This reminds me of something. Russian foreign reserves, perhaps? The irony.
christkv 1y ago
Every three months I have to fill in a bunch of bs busywork paperwork for the bank due to having an independent contractor in the Ukraine so I can pay him.
AStonesThrow 1y ago
Honestly, I feel the need to address the elephant in the room for this issue. BuyMeACoffee seems to be a service based on an extremely flawed premise: that of exchanging money for nothing tangible in return. That is normally known as a "donation", but this is not charitable giving; this is more like tipping. But even tipping is customarily associated with receiving some kind of service in the first place. This is more like tossing $2 bills at a stripper in a dark room, but 3,000 miles away. Now most of these buttons were traditionally labeled "Buy Me a Beer" and I found them oftentimes on the web pages of starving F/OSS authors. The hackers would definitely be seeking to monetize their free and open-source software by any means necessary. It certainly stood to reason that they deserved a beer (or a coffee) for fixing bugs or simply providing a nice app to me that does something I want. Fair's fair. [Let's not forget that alcohol and caffeine are drugs, though!] But essentially, if BuyMeACoffee is a payment platform that's disconnected from any tangible product or service being received, it could be warped to any use at all. Can I buy you a coffee if you show me one boob please? Can I buy you a coffee if you unalive my boss? Oh look, a package of (ammunition|fentanyl|CSAM) has arrived on our doorstep, let me buy you ten kilos of coffee to celebrate this unrelated event? So I think that typically for capitalism to work, we should be scrupulous about correlating goods and services received to the monetary transactions we make for them. Or we should establish a good way to at least correlate a "creator" of software or content with the in-kind payments of "coffees" that they'll receive for actually doing work. Because if this is not properly regulated, we really do end up supporting a lot of shady stuff. Who knows if we're buying coffee for terrorist cells or a human trafficking ring. I really feel like coffee money can be better spent on legitimate businesses with aboveboard ways of making transactions for tangible things. Sorry if I am being a real stick-in-the-mud about this, but this seems to be the main issue for regulators and law enforcement, and we need to admit that it's not an ideal way to do business.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  It's unclear how you believe the label attached to something to be useful. Suppose there is an "artist" and you like their "art" and want to commission a piece. You send them money for "art", they email you some doodle or AI-generated image and simultaneously mail you some drugs. Assigning the label "art" or "code" to the payment doesn't provide any information more than having no label whatsoever, because the label is a lie but the only way to prove the lie is to uncover what the transaction is actually for, which the existence of the fabricated label doesn't help you to do any more than having no label at all. Establishing what a payment is actually for is not something the payments system is suited to do and attempting to use it for that causes only problems, because the honest users who put down something legitimate that makes the bank skittish are unjustly harmed, whereas the actual illicit users simply lie because there are several easy lies with no viable way to verify the contrary.
Koshima 1y ago
It’s a reminder that financial inclusion isn’t just about tech – it’s about creating systems that can handle the messy reality of real-world transactions. It’s disappointing that a platform like BuyMeACoffee, which is supposed to empower creators globally, is now cutting off entire regions.
Abishek_Muthian 1y ago
The payment gateways are subject to the whims of govt. and the payment hosts are subject to the whims of the payment gateways and due to which they're often overzealous and come up arbitrary rules. I've had YCombinator funded leading Payment Gateways in India asking me to remove links to Hacker News claiming it to be 'redirection' or thinking I'm some kind of "Hacker man" for having the text "Hacker". I've had trouble enabling subscription payments because I'm a govt. registered self-proprietor and these Payment Gateways decided they will support subscription payments only for Companies. In fact I've become so versed in hopping between different payment gateways that I'm now building a self-hosted FOSS payment host[1] with support for all major payment gateways so people can have better control over their payments. [1] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host
workfromspace 1y ago
Am I the only one who thinks BuyMeACoffee's defense always mentions keep paying to "Ukrainians", but not "Ukraine", potentially meaning the Ukrainians outside Ukraine, not in?
epa 1y ago
One of the main issues with the margin business model (Profit of 5% of a payment for example) is that fraud is leveraged. This means that when you lose 100% of a transaction due to a chargeback or fraud loss, it takes you 20 non-fraud loss transactions to make up for it. The fraud leverage is a huge issue for platforms like this, and in certain countries half the transactions can be fraudsters.
- mvdtnz 1y ago
  How is this relevant?

343 points by beeburrt 1y ago

“20% and subject to changes” yikes what a way to say “you’re losing territory and you’re not in the news enough for us to bother”. That’s probably one country that needs the help from a place like that.

notpushkin 1y ago

So they’re disabling Wise/Payoneer because they can’t implement some optional features on top of it? Why not just gate the features based on the payout platform instead?

bayindirh 1y ago
Too expensive to implement (in developer salary), and AI can't code it in five minutes and ship it yesterday?
- notpushkin 1y ago
  They are a small company, yeah, but that also means they are extremely agile, and this feels like the kind of a feature that would take me (a single developer) maybe a couple days to implement.
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    I mean, if spending 16 hours to implement a future proofing feature is not acceptable, I don't know what is.
noeltock 1y ago
Or maybe that's simply their public-facing reason.

ascorbic 1y ago

[2024]

olalonde 1y ago

[flagged]

pbhjpbhj 1y ago
Don't you pay more in transaction costs than the cost of a coffee? And then pay in environmental costs.
- olalonde 1y ago
  No, on-chain transaction fees aren't higher than the cost of a coffee. They're currently around $0.15 per transaction - cheaper than typical credit card processing fees. Plus, you could always build an off-chain transaction system with zero fees. As for the environmental impact: individual Bitcoin transactions don’t directly increase energy usage. Miners consume electricity regardless of whether any given person transacts. And while mining is energy intensive, it doesn't have an environmental impact in itself.
  - pbhjpbhj 1y ago
    I must have misremembered? Last time I looked (maybe 2 years ago) I thought actual bitcoin transactions took maybe an hour to confirm and cost a couple of dollars -- am I just short more marbles than I thought I was or has something changed with how they do transactions. The context I was looking at related to storing data in the bitcoin ledger. I think I commented here, I'll have to look back and see.
    - olalonde 1y ago
      It's a dynamic market so fees can vary depending on congestion, BTC price, etc. Expected time to first block confirmation is around 10 minutes assuming your fee is high enough to be included in the next block (when blocks are full, miners prioritize transactions with higher fee). When you send a transaction, you get to pick what fee you'd like to use. For this kind of service, transaction speed isn't really important so you can get away with setting a low fee. Here's a 0.15$ fee transaction that was mined just 6 minutes ago: https://mempool.space/tx/2e66ba1758e233ff1b2395c7db55f8327deeae4f05f55b3af5c9c6ccdd358e81 https://mempool.space/tx/2e66ba1758e233ff1b2395c7db55f8327de... By "off-chain", I meant something like BuyMeACoffee letting users top up a wallet via an on-chain deposit, and then handling tips internally (e.g., in a SQL database). That way, small payments don't each require a blockchain transaction.

casenmgreen 1y ago

From mid-2024. I regard all FinTech-type companies as unreliable, after incredible (in the literal sense of the word) experiences with Revolut (seven years to get an account closed and the money in it returned, and that actually happened only after I made a GDPR request, and they got it done - seems its less work for them to close than meet the request) and Transferwise (who shortly after the UA war started, blocked donations to the UA State bank military support account - yes, really, if you didn't know). By all means have an account with them, but never, ever, ever, rely on it, and plan on the basis that the next morning you wake up to find the account, and everything in it, has gone, and that customer support is a defensive shield the company uses to keep customers at arms length. If you want almost no-cost currency conversion (2 USD minimum, but you have to convert like 100k USD I think it is to go above that), use Interactive Brokers LLC. They won't let you have an account purely for currency conversion, but as long as you do a few trades now and then, it seems fine.

notpushkin 1y ago
> Transferwise (who shortly after the UA war started, blocked donations to the UA State bank military support account - yes, really, if you didn't know). Oh wow. Well, at least donations to NGOs / individuals seem to work. Agreed, IBKR are a nice bunch. I wouldn’t rely on them either, but it’s always better to have more options, in case everything else fails. And of course, when banks can block your accounts at any moment just because they don’t like your passport, crypto is king.
- apples_oranges 1y ago
  Of course who would ever doubt that
- throwaway290 1y ago
  Ironically crypto is also what helps fund and survive (bypassing sanctions) the warmongers and dictatorships which make banks not like our passports In the end poor peasants shouting "crypto is king" are the ones owned from both sides. They are used for profit by their local oppressors/gangs and by western cryptobros. The peasants transactions are the rounding error but they are the ones who allow to pretend it's "freedom"

nathell 1y ago

They also at one time blocked the author on Twitter. https://x.com/zverok/status/1823757570240340466 https://x.com/zverok/status/1823757570240340466

croisillon 1y ago
what's up with that Jijo Sunny guy doing 10 min long videos from his car
- stronglikedan 1y ago
  Probably a long commute with nothing better to do. I'd do it in that situation, too.

mwilcox 1y ago

[flagged]

florbnit 1y ago

The did it silently because they know what they are doing and wanted to get by without the natural consequences of their actions. I’m now going to silently never tip another “cup of coffee” through their services, hopefully others will follow.

johnisgood 1y ago
Unfortunately it is the people who contribute for free that gets fucked up by that, unless they have other means for you to donate.

EZ-E 1y ago

Potentially unpopular opinion but ultimately it's a private service and they decided to disable payout methods which negatively affects Ukrainian users for the sake of integrating new changes/avoiding legal risk. They don't have to support all countries. I feel sorry for the users though, especially I imagine by asking supporters to move to another platform will result in some of them dropping which is the result of platform lock in..

cryptonym 1y ago
You are right, they probably don't have to, or that would be basis for legal action. Customers should also be allowed to expose shady stuff done by such private services, warning other people.
- EZ-E 1y ago
  Right, just that from the article I get the vibe that the author makes the case Ukraine got blocked while it's the result of dropping a payment provider, not policy that singles out Ukraine
noduerme 1y ago
Sure, it's a private service and they can do whatever they want, but why block Ukraine? I spent an inordinate amount of time and resources over years blocking Americans from the casino I ran, so I can somewhat sympathize with the point of view that one wants to avoid legal issues. But the only reason I spent the energy to do that was that I needed to be on the right side of the law, personally, if I ever found myself physically back in the US. The only reason I blocked certain other countries (like Myanmar and Iran) was on moral principle because I didn't want to potentially help launder money to revolting dictatorships. I did not, for instance, research or give two fucks about online gambling laws in Malaysia, or a dozen other countries I'd never step foot in where I had players from. I certainly wouldn't have cut off a country that was under siege and partially eaten by a nasty dictatorship. If I were running it now, I'd have probably set up filters to block anyone conceivably in Russian territory, and that would be that. If one guy can do it against an onslaught of thousands of Americans trying to fake their IP addresses daily, I'm sure a good sized company can handle blocking Russian money laundering through a tip jar.

Nebbit123 1y ago

It's fascinating that neither the article nor the comments here include a single mention of "stablecoins" which seems like the obvious solution to this problem.

BoredPositron 1y ago
Yeah, not as easy to cash out as you make it out to be.
- fastball 1y ago
  Still easier than cashing out from a platform that doesn't support your country at all.
- Nebbit123 1y ago
  That's fair, but it's probably an improvement in regions blocked by more traditional financial services. In many of those regions, people may not even want to cash out to local currencies as holding a digital dollar is often more stable.
  - lazide 1y ago
    That requires a rather unusual confluence of events. Almost everywhere there needs to be a on AND off ramp, or only the most diehard hobbiest or desperate economic actor will consider it. This stuff is just too new, and there is too small an ecosystem for all but a small handful of coins for them to actually act as a useful exchange medium.
    - Nebbit123 1y ago
      Genuinely curious, what alternative solutions do you see to the underlying problem highlighted in OP's post?
      - lazide 1y ago
        The ones they usually use right now - holding physical USD, bartering, physical gold, real estate, etc. depending on the use case and degree of wealth. Local currency does still get used, it’s unavoidable, and causes losses. There is no perfect solution. One economy which fits the description is India - check out the boxes of cash hah! [https://www.livemint.com/Politics/eGzzHAcOe5VePoyCd7n0EN/Income-tax-raids-in-Delhi-Chennai-yield-large-cache-of-blac.html https://www.livemint.com/Politics/eGzzHAcOe5VePoyCd7n0EN/Inc...], and [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/mumbai-raid-unearths-rs-10-crore-cash-from-35-sq-ft-office-floor-wall/amp_articleshow/91017082.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/mumbai-raid-...]. (FYI, a cr or crore == 10 million, a lakh == 100k. Even at current exchange rates, that is a lot of money anywhere, and an absolutely massive fortune in India). But there is an element of this in ALL economies, including the US. It’s a matter of scale/ratios, not a yes/no thing.

rwarfield 1y ago

We have normalized the treatment of the financial and payments systems as things that exist primarily to perform law enforcement surveillance functions. It's the same dynamic that leads to debanking of small accounts - payments firms exist on thin margins and the potential fines for inadvertently servicing a bad actor are stratospheric, so it's entirely logical to play it safe by refusing to service anyone whose profile looks even the slightest bit risky.

lazide 1y ago
It’s the ‘greedy coward’ leadership model - tends to work pretty well for most businesses, until it does’t. usually all at once.
ngruhn 1y ago
The alternate is crypto. That will service anyone for ANY reason.
- sabas123 1y ago
  Which is not necessarily a good thing.
  - coolcase 1y ago
    It's like a kitchen knife. Can be good or bad.
    - close04 1y ago
      Correct in principle but not all that insightful because it's something almost universally true. "Fentanyl! Ads! Widespread surveillance! Can be good or bad". You have to look at the reality. Crypto has been used overwhelmingly for scams and crime.
      - CelestialMystic 1y ago
        > Crypto has been used overwhelmingly for scams and crime. So has regular currency.

alex1138 1y ago

BuyMeACountry

coolcase 1y ago
Minus the tree

tzal3x 1y ago

Using a crypto wallet for donations is always a convenient alternative.

Shatnerz 1y ago
until someone runs their funds through TornadoCash and dusts your wallet, thus putting it on many sanctioned lists and making it impossible to offloads funds into fiat by legal means.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  I still don't understand how anyone expects "sanctioned lists" to actually work. The same logic applies to the wallet of the exchange you might use if you were using an intermediary. A sender doesn't need the recipient's permission to transfer funds and wallet addresses containing funds are all public. If $0.0001 in tainted funds can taint a wallet containing a billion dollars then everything will end up tainted immediately, whether a result of trolls or just funds being transferred by ordinary users in jurisdictions that don't enforce the same sanctions. But if nothing is tainted because everything is then the sanctions are meaningless because someone with sanctioned funds would just deposit them at a major exchange in a foreign jurisdiction and then withdraw them again as untainted funds.
  - Shatnerz 1y ago
    > I still don't understand how anyone expects "sanctioned lists" to actually work. Well one of the problems here was the sanctioning of a technology, which AFAIK has never happened previously. Exchanges have the means to work with regulators, demonstrate good faith, and get themselves removed from any accidental sanctioning. This doesn't exactly apply to small tips akin to BuyMeACoffee.
ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
But it's pretty hard to actually spend that crypto without going through a traditional fiat account which is subject to the same restrictions.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

winterbloom 1y ago

Is there a startup idea here? Do what buymeacoffee won't do and forget about regulations (that's what Uber does yeah?) If you are interested in building this, I have product and engineering experience

casenmgreen 1y ago
The problem is how to not become just like every other large company, once you grow from being a startup and become a large company.
- notpushkin 1y ago
  The solution is not to become a large company :-) Start small, stay lean and just focus on the problem.
notpushkin 1y ago
I would gladly join! Love the fintech space and open to slightly “shady” stuff like this.
- itake 1y ago
  Whats your take on why they did this? My guess is their payment provider forced them to it. and so the solution is what? support crypto?
  - notpushkin 1y ago
    For Payoneer, I’m not sure but they’ve wanted to deprecate it a long time ago (and I think Wise was supposed to replace it). From how clunky Payoneer was the last time I used it, I think the API must be pretty horrible, so no wonder BMAC wants to get rid of it. For Wise, it could be that, but also they’ve been putting out a ton of features lately, which aren’t supported by Wise. Not idea why they didn’t add a bunch of if statements. The solution is... uh, not sure? Crypto might work for payouts, but it’s too complicated for most users. For the donation page itself, we definitely need to accept cards somehow. There are payment providers that can accept cards and payout to these countries, so I think it should be possible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44002850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44002850

jimjambw 1y ago

I signed up for BuyMeACoffee recently. I did some work for free that’s important for the industry I work in and a few people donated money to me. That was almost 2 weeks ago and I’m still waiting for them to review my account. The only support seems to be just an email address? In regards to the fact they pulled out of countries that are hard to operate in, yeah it’s annoying but you know, can you blame them?

nottorp 1y ago

Speaking of Stripe, when will they support 3d secure or however it's called this year? The card I mostly use for online impulses purchases is from a semi paranoid bank that turns down non 3d secure transactions by default. Sometimes they call you for confirmation. Needless to say, that means no impulse purchases from Stripe using merchants. And no buying coffees for anyone. Guess it's cheaper for me in the long run...

ezfe 1y ago
Stripe supports 3D Secure, it sounds like your bank isn't invoking it properly for it to trigger on the Stripe end. https://docs.stripe.com/payments/3d-secure https://docs.stripe.com/payments/3d-secure
- nottorp 1y ago
  Heh, I skimmed through the docs. It looks like it's extra work on the merchant's end to enable it. So someone like BackerKit just didn't bother catering to EU customers. Plus I saw a chapter about "reducing friction" in the Stripe docs. Via such honest practices as charging automatically after a free trial if the customer has a credit card on file? This has been discussed on HN recently wrt to i-forget-what-service. I suppose not requiring the extra 3d secure step is also "reducing friction".
  - leejo 1y ago
    The "d" in 3d means "domain", so three domains: the merchant, the card issuing bank, and the card scheme(s). The first two have to opt-in to the process for it to be enabled, and most (all?) card issuing banks already have so it's down to the merchant. Not all merchants will opt-in to 3d Secure as they might see a greater loss in revenue due to the friction it creates versus the risk. They might be taking payments in a low risk sector and use other fraud checking factors, or it might not make sense for them - examples where you end up having to produce the same card in person anyway so "card not present" fraud doesn't factor in so much. Some merchants don't opt-in as it would lose them millions of dollars of payments an hour due to the friction: Amazon for example. I worked on the 3d Secure (and, formally, "Verified by Visa") integration at my previous job, and for a long time I was thinking I should write a blog post on what a complete mess of a protocol and implementation it [still] is. Haven't ever gotten around to that though.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

znanz 1y ago

I’ve been working many years in the banking and Fintech industry. These companies are driven by compliance before profit. Sometimes, compliance will order a country to be blocked because of the risk to service bad actors, and they can get this done bypassing every other department. This is also why it takes forever to get an account opened, the know you customer and know your business processes are long and tedious, use manual and semi automated process to establish a risk score and make a decision wether to service a customer or not. Most of the time, these processes are about ticking boxes and filing required documents to cover the institution. In the case of the article, servicing a zone at war, with a lot of parties under sanctions is a risk that either BuyMeACoffee and / or a few of their providers were not willing to take.

simultsop 1y ago
All people wanted was to give someone a coffee, not a fortune.
- znanz 1y ago
  It’s not about the amounts unfortunately. Financial institutions look at who is the sender, the receiver and the recipient. If there’s a doubt to any of these 3 information, they block the transaction. And for Ukraine, they banned the whole country.
- deadbabe 1y ago
  It’s perfect for money laundering. Deliver someone drugs and they pay by buying you coffee.
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    So is literally every e-commerce setup

Kiro 1y ago

Dumb question but I don't expect any service to support all countries, so what makes BuyMeACoffee different? My service (which also involves money) only supports one country in the world.

makeitdouble 1y ago
The dropping part. It's not "fair", but people get pissed when you can compare before/after. And to a reason, it means some users relying on that support are now left SOL, when they could have made different choices if the service couldn't handle them from the start.
- prmoustache 1y ago
  I have the feeling that most companies that are conducting businesses in both USA in EU are operating illegally anyway. It looks to me like US cloud act and EU GDPR and Data acts are making this incompatible and there is no way to offer a service to both area without breaking any law.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    The way this is supposed to work is that you have a subsidiary in the EU that follows the laws in the EU and a subsidiary in the US that follows the laws in the US and then the US subsidiary isn't in the EU or vice versa, so there is no conflict because each entity is only subject to one set of laws or the other. But now we have governments opprobriously trying to impose laws on entities outside of their jurisdiction.

KronisLV 1y ago

> The money is still “there”, so probably no lawyer can say BMaC has “stolen them”—you just can’t neither receive “your” money nor, at least, give them back to those who sent them. Lawyering aside, really now? If someone holds money that should be mine with no way for me to get it out and me never getting a way to get it out, it’s not different to me no longer having that money. If the entire purpose of them having that money was for me to be able to get it out, it really feels a lot like theft. It’s no different than you having money on your PayPal account, it getting suspended for some dumb reason and them just taking your money. I have used Wise in the past to send money to some gaming friends abroad with weird banks, I really hope that it or some other option that supports as many countries as possible remains available. I hate to sound like one of those “crypto bros” but I’ve also used BTC in the past for similar use cases and it’s refreshing, you just need to have an exchange available in a given country and also not store too much money in crypto due to the high volatility, unless that’s what you’re going for. Not to badmouth some need for regulation or whatever is actually going on behind the scenes (assuming a charitable interpretation of whatever it is), but not being able to support a content creator or send pizza money to an acquaintance or whatever for reasons like that seems... dumb. Plus, a "proper" way to handle discontinuing the support for entire regions would be something along the lines of: 1. public announcement and timeline for upcoming changes 2. "Here's how you transfer out all of your money off of the platform before the change: ..." (with regular reminders) 3. "Here's how you migrate your follower base to another platform that supports your region: ..." (maybe a collab of some sort, at least offering each patron the ability to register on the new platform if they want to keep supporting the person)

stevage 1y ago
Does Bitcoin work for tiny amounts (eg $5)? Last time I looked (years ago) it cost like $25 do do any BTC transaction at all.
- CelestialMystic 1y ago
  It depends on the wallet but it is possible now. There is a layer 2 protocol called lightning. People are sending people sats all day over Nostr. https://lightning.network/how-it-works/ https://lightning.network/how-it-works/

gadders 1y ago

A friend did some online usability/survey thing with a web development company just to get £20 or so. They were told that the US payments company couldn't send the money to their primary email address as (for vanity reasons) they have a .by domain from Belorussia. (They are a UK citizen living in the UK)

wltr 1y ago
Why would they buy a by domain? Solely for the name? Off-topic, but I believe that might be interesting to some readers: FYI Belorussia is a non-state. That’s how Russians call Belarus. Belarus is the official and correct name, the origins are from Rus. The medieval country, that was on the territories of modern day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus. Russia stole that name (Rus’ or Ruthenia), just recently — in the historical terms — a couple of hundred years ago. Their country was named Muscovy. About that time they invented their artificial language, which is mostly stolen from Belarus and Ukraine. During the occupation (1918—1991) period, they did their best to eliminate their (Belarus, Ukraine, but also all the other nations they enslaved) culture, language, most prominent people. The word to search for is genocide, if you feel like willing to explore this topic more. Belarus is still de-facto occupied by Russia, never recovering from Russia‘s barbarity of XX century, that’s why it’s a pathetic pro-Russian country now. Ukraine too was under huge Russian influence since 1991, and technically only since 2014 (the revolution of dignity, Russia seized Crimea) they do fight for their independence. In fact, current war is the independence war for Ukraine. If they won, they’re just another thriving European (EU) democratic state. If they to lose, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland are the next in line. And Ukrainian people would be forced to fight for Russia. Modern Russia in its current form cannot exist without Ukraine. Without Ukraine, there’s no Russian empire, there’s no USSR. That’s why Russia tries so badly to occupy Ukraine and name it Russia. Without them, Russia is just two cities, Moscow and St Petersburg. That’s why they desperately call them brotherly nations, Ukraine and Belarus. (And some other neighbouring states too.) During the XX century, Russia invented derogatory names for all the countries they enslaved. That makes Belorussia or Byelorussia (notice Russia, not Rus, which is completely different country, despite Russia trying to claim the name). Also, the names are ‘on the Ukraine’ (Ukraine has no ‘the’ article, and is ‘in Ukraine’), that way they try to mock the name into the name Periphery (this word sounds very similar to Ukraine in Russian language), that way they present Ukraine as some distant and rural periphery, while Russia itself is a periphery. (Basically everything Russia claims of others, is actually about them and about what they do to others. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror for that) Also, derogatory term for Baltic states is Pribaltics (in the same fashion to Ukraine, making it rather a territory), and also I know of Moldova, they call it Moldavia. And Turkmenistan, they call it Turkmenia (in the same fashion). Maybe there are other countries, but I’m unaware of them, since I haven’t been there. Russians claim that innocently, that that’s _just_ their language, that’s how they _always_ named these countries. So yeah, technically, we cannot tell other nations how they should name our countries. Except when we actually can. Recently (after 2020) some countries (I’m aware of Germany) renamed Belarus from being literally White Russia, to Belarus. Which historically can be translated as White Rusyns, but not White Russians, because Russia never existed by that point in history. Also see Turkey becoming Türkiye. It’s very similar thing, as far as I’m aware, and I believe calling them after the bird is disrespectful. Especially when they explicitly asked how they want their country to be called. Hope that’ll help someone who is unaware why some people call these countries wrong names. I’m not giving links, because everything I wrote is very easily searchable and makes sense only for those who are far from Europe and the context to understand and/or care.

gsky 1y ago

The way i support content creators is by signing up for services through their sponsor/referral links. Tip for content creators: Please use services like https://UseCode.net https://UseCode.net to host all your sponsor/referral codes in one place, as this will be very helpful for users. Remember all could not afford to pay a zillion content creators out there

rckt 1y ago

Well, I'm glad that this kind of thing got in the spotlight. This stuff is very common for "second-class" countries. It's happening all the time with all kinds of services. Most of them just don't want to be bothered (spend resources on) with figuring out how to work with those countries. I guess the payment systems provide convenient frameworks for them via which they do money related stuff. If there's no easy way to reproduce something in several unfortunate countries that was super easy to achieve in developed countries, then it's not worth it. The profits there are not gonna meet the expectations in relation to the spendings. So while these are really shitty situations for people from those countries, these decisions are dictated by the market. And I don't think this is gonna change. But one of the great points in the article is that services should be very clear, up to date and explicit about their policies.

BlueTemplar 1y ago
Isn't there quite a demand in "the West" to send money to Ukraine, meaning that they will be quickly replaced (and by a company that might later become their direct competitor). And is been nearly a year since the events described in the blog : HAS a new company popped up ?
- rckt 1y ago
  Well. There's always a demand in all the disadvantaged places. Not only Ukraine. As for the supply, money will always find a way. Crypto, shady banks etc. I think the established businesses which are common to EU and US people just don't want to deal with the government. It's easier for them to comply in a preventive way. Many immigrants in the EU face issues with banks (virtual and real) blocking or not willing to open accounts. Just to be safe.
gosub100 1y ago
Why hasn't crypto jumped in to the rescue? Sounds like a textbook case of "code is law"
- nitwit005 1y ago

simultsop 1y ago

I believe everyone starts a thing with ambition: "I will fix the world". They get fixed instead! Unfortunately, "things" begin nicely until it gains major attention. Then it loses most of the nice things.

Havoc 1y ago

>nobody cares I get the impression that those buttons don't exactly get many clicks anyway

f4c39012 1y ago

"we are sorry that we don’t care" is wonderfully succinct corporate double-speak/sarcasm

at0mic22 1y ago

Lets be honest - the amount of fraud coming from UA makes it unwelcome for payment processors. As long as UA authorities keep ignoring this problem, the situation will get worse. Baltic states report a horrendous amount of phone scam coming from UA, no surprise Wise just does not want to deal with claims.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

ionwake 1y ago

would creating a smart contract other parties use to pay eachother fall under financial regulation?

ZoomZoomZoom 1y ago

Donation/small payment situation for small artists/content creators is abysmal. You're forced to one of the following: 1. Offer multiple choices for payment => people need to sift through to find what works for them and give up after first fail. 2. Use a payment [processor] aggregator => unreliable (as with this case) and takes a cut (sometimes chained). 3. Use crypto only => the only thing that works reliably, but severely cuts your audience to those comfortable with it.

drysine 1y ago

"The money is still “there”, so probably no lawyer can say BMaC has “stolen them”—you just can’t neither receive “your” money nor, at least, give them back to those who sent them." This reminds me of something. Russian foreign reserves, perhaps? The irony.

christkv 1y ago

Every three months I have to fill in a bunch of bs busywork paperwork for the bank due to having an independent contractor in the Ukraine so I can pay him.

AStonesThrow 1y ago

Honestly, I feel the need to address the elephant in the room for this issue. BuyMeACoffee seems to be a service based on an extremely flawed premise: that of exchanging money for nothing tangible in return. That is normally known as a "donation", but this is not charitable giving; this is more like tipping. But even tipping is customarily associated with receiving some kind of service in the first place. This is more like tossing $2 bills at a stripper in a dark room, but 3,000 miles away. Now most of these buttons were traditionally labeled "Buy Me a Beer" and I found them oftentimes on the web pages of starving F/OSS authors. The hackers would definitely be seeking to monetize their free and open-source software by any means necessary. It certainly stood to reason that they deserved a beer (or a coffee) for fixing bugs or simply providing a nice app to me that does something I want. Fair's fair. [Let's not forget that alcohol and caffeine are drugs, though!] But essentially, if BuyMeACoffee is a payment platform that's disconnected from any tangible product or service being received, it could be warped to any use at all. Can I buy you a coffee if you show me one boob please? Can I buy you a coffee if you unalive my boss? Oh look, a package of (ammunition|fentanyl|CSAM) has arrived on our doorstep, let me buy you ten kilos of coffee to celebrate this unrelated event? So I think that typically for capitalism to work, we should be scrupulous about correlating goods and services received to the monetary transactions we make for them. Or we should establish a good way to at least correlate a "creator" of software or content with the in-kind payments of "coffees" that they'll receive for actually doing work. Because if this is not properly regulated, we really do end up supporting a lot of shady stuff. Who knows if we're buying coffee for terrorist cells or a human trafficking ring. I really feel like coffee money can be better spent on legitimate businesses with aboveboard ways of making transactions for tangible things. Sorry if I am being a real stick-in-the-mud about this, but this seems to be the main issue for regulators and law enforcement, and we need to admit that it's not an ideal way to do business.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
It's unclear how you believe the label attached to something to be useful. Suppose there is an "artist" and you like their "art" and want to commission a piece. You send them money for "art", they email you some doodle or AI-generated image and simultaneously mail you some drugs. Assigning the label "art" or "code" to the payment doesn't provide any information more than having no label whatsoever, because the label is a lie but the only way to prove the lie is to uncover what the transaction is actually for, which the existence of the fabricated label doesn't help you to do any more than having no label at all. Establishing what a payment is actually for is not something the payments system is suited to do and attempting to use it for that causes only problems, because the honest users who put down something legitimate that makes the bank skittish are unjustly harmed, whereas the actual illicit users simply lie because there are several easy lies with no viable way to verify the contrary.

Koshima 1y ago

It’s a reminder that financial inclusion isn’t just about tech – it’s about creating systems that can handle the messy reality of real-world transactions. It’s disappointing that a platform like BuyMeACoffee, which is supposed to empower creators globally, is now cutting off entire regions.

Abishek_Muthian 1y ago

The payment gateways are subject to the whims of govt. and the payment hosts are subject to the whims of the payment gateways and due to which they're often overzealous and come up arbitrary rules. I've had YCombinator funded leading Payment Gateways in India asking me to remove links to Hacker News claiming it to be 'redirection' or thinking I'm some kind of "Hacker man" for having the text "Hacker". I've had trouble enabling subscription payments because I'm a govt. registered self-proprietor and these Payment Gateways decided they will support subscription payments only for Companies. In fact I've become so versed in hopping between different payment gateways that I'm now building a self-hosted FOSS payment host[1] with support for all major payment gateways so people can have better control over their payments. [1] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host

workfromspace 1y ago

Am I the only one who thinks BuyMeACoffee's defense always mentions keep paying to "Ukrainians", but not "Ukraine", potentially meaning the Ukrainians outside Ukraine, not in?

epa 1y ago

One of the main issues with the margin business model (Profit of 5% of a payment for example) is that fraud is leveraged. This means that when you lose 100% of a transaction due to a chargeback or fraud loss, it takes you 20 non-fraud loss transactions to make up for it. The fraud leverage is a huge issue for platforms like this, and in certain countries half the transactions can be fraudsters.

mvdtnz 1y ago
How is this relevant?