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Kickstarter launches in the UK with hundreds of new projects ready for funding
- groktor 14y agoso who is the mystery "third party payment provider"?
- samwillis 14y agoI'm hoping they are the first test of Stripe in the UK..... Maybe.... I will admit I checked to see if they were using stripe.js but they're not.
- thisone 14y agoI wish I knew. I was hoping that this signaled Amazon was opening payment processing in £'s. The only reason I don't use S3 is because, as a very small time user, I don't want my foreign transaction fees to be larger than the S3 fees. However, brilliant news for people who weren't able to circumvent the system. Still surprised (and happy) it came to the UK before Canada.
- xxpor 14y agoHow bad are foreign transaction fees in the UK? For me in the US, it's just 1% flat rate (which I get back in cash back anyway).
- citricsquid 14y agoAfter sleuthing I located the provider: http://www.cybersource.com/ http://www.cybersource.com/ which people here will know as authorize.net!
- Nursie 14y agoI'm kinda-sorta starting to go off the kickstarter model. They're not a shop, as the things are not ready yet (and may never be), and you're not really investing because you don't get any ownership of the company (however small). So selfishly I've started to wonder what's in it for me. It benefits me if I just wait to see if the thing comes to market, then I can buy it without the possibility of it never surfacing. As it is I feel a bit torn about the idea of acting as a crowdsourced bank for a business but not getting the returns of an actual investor. I can see why it's appealing for the business though.
- mikecsh 14y agoI don't know why you've been downvoted - this is a completely reasonable comment and something I agree with. I've backed a few projects on Kickstarter which have both been successful and provided the given "rewards" but I agree that it's a very one sided risk/reward profile stacked in favour of the project and not the backers.
- Nursie 14y agoI'm wondering if there's a niche here for some sort of micro-float service which gets people to invest in a company as micro-investors, with a small percentage of the business up for grabs. I have no idea if there is already such a thing or how the legal stuff would work though. It's also probably a bit less exciting than pledges and gifts.
- k-mcgrady 14y ago>> "what's in it for me" You get more for your pledge than you would just purchasing the product. e.g. the product is offered cheaper to pledgers or comes in a limited edition. Kickstarter will only continue to work if project creators offer something extra to pledgers. A lot of people seem to be using it as a pre-order service to help fund development. They need to offer more, realising that people are taking a risk by funding them.
- SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago> You get more for your pledge than you would just purchasing the product. I agree- a pledge is not a purchase. But you need to do the mental math for the project. e.g. I would get 20% more. But I think the project is only 80% likely to ship. And the project founder is cool so I'd give them a few bucks anyway.
- Osmium 14y ago> A pledge is not a purchase. They should make this their motto. The Kickstarter model is fine, they just need to better communicate just what that model is to their users.