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gratipay / gratipay.com

Here lieth a pioneer in open source sustainability. RIP
https://gratipay.news/the-end-cbfba8f50981
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withdrawals outside the US, a.k.a. international payouts #126

Closed chadwhitacre closed 9 years ago

chadwhitacre commented 12 years ago

Balanced will work for withdrawals to U.S. bank accounts, but not outside the U.S. What do we do here? Suggestions?

Current Status

  1. MassPay—As a stop-gap while we await the chance to prioritize implementing a more robust solution, we are offering automatic weekly payouts via PayPal. This is risky because PayPal is likely to freeze our account once we get on their radar. If you'd like to participate, email support@gittip.com with your Gittip username, PayPal email address, and the first eight digits of the API key from your Gittip profile page (to confirm your account). PayPal's fee is 2%, capped at $20.
  2. Balanced—Our automated payments provider, Balanced, is working to implement international ACH transfers (IAT). Please see their roadmap and voice your interest on this ticket. Balanced is shutting down, see #3245.
  3. Stripe—They've added payouts (à la Balanced), and are known to be working on expanding to the EU. See #3245.
  4. Trans-Pay—The ball is in our court to improve our KYC practices (via #2449?) and circle back. See #417.
  5. MangoPay—They're a European counter-part to Balanced. We would need a European legal entity and bank account. See #891.

    Want to Help?

Give us a PR for multi-currency support. That's a pre-requisite no matter which direction we go.

mitsuhiko commented 12 years ago

I'm starting to get the feeling the only real solution for international transfers is paypal. They however already burned open source projects in the past because paypal does not accept donations officially so it would make sense to get some clarification if paypal is acceptable for that.

RafaelReinehr commented 12 years ago

I'm also from Brazil and want to clarify this question. The objective of this "neomecenate" tool is do help develop a series of projects dedicated do common good. I suggest paypal.

chadwhitacre commented 12 years ago

Here's the Balanced ticket for this:

https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues/23

jdnavarro commented 12 years ago

Bitcoin could be a solution for this. If you don't want to deal directly in bitcoins, there are some merchant gateways that do the currency exchange between bitcoins and different currencies in the same transference. I don't think all currencies are supported and I don't know how reliable they are. BitPay looks like the most popular one, but there are more services listed in the bitcoin wiki: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Shopping_Cart_Interfaces

victorb commented 12 years ago

How about Stripe? https://stripe.com/

jezdez commented 12 years ago

Strip allows transfer to non-US accounts?

victorb commented 12 years ago

@jezdez no, the company that receives the money need to be based in the US, although it accepts international payments. I supposed that it worked international but it didn't, sorry about that.

ghost commented 12 years ago

I am all for the bitcoins idea. +1. Outside of it i don't really see any real solution. Paypal is one possibility, but not sure of their policies.

victorb commented 12 years ago

Braintree(1) just expanded their list of supported countries. Might be worth checking up.

Supported countries: the U.S., the U.K., Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Ireland, and Italy.

(1), https://www.braintreepayments.com/

chadwhitacre commented 12 years ago

Stripe, Braintree, and BitPay are non-starters because we're talking about paying out to people, and afaik those are services for paying money in to a single merchant.

chadwhitacre commented 12 years ago

@RafaelReinehr The "neomecenate" concept is intriguing. I wish my Italian were better. Google Translate doesn't do the best job either.

chadwhitacre commented 12 years ago

@RafaelReinehr I'm reluctant to go down the PayPal route because I'm afraid of getting burned by opaque APIs and policies. As mentioned on #63, if someone with strong PayPal experience wants to champion the implementation then step forward and let's put together your pull request. Otherwise I'm going to prioritize other matters for now, and keep encouraging Balanced to strike some non-US deals. ;-)

kangasbros commented 12 years ago

Bitcoin would be otherwise godd (unfreezable & fairly easy to convert to other currencies), but the problem is converting the monies from credit card payments to bitcoins. This should be done by gittip operator.

I would love to donate some money with Bitcoin to developers, is this kind of feature planned?

BladeMcCool commented 12 years ago

Gittip should allow donations in Bitcoin. Use bitpay to handle that aspect. Let recipients choose if they want to keep their received donations in BTC or have it autoconverted to USD. If they keep it in BTC then you just forward them their BTC. If they convert to USD then you jump through legacy bank system hoops as usual.

sebicas commented 12 years ago

+1 For Bitcoin

RafaelReinehr commented 12 years ago

The majority of people i know that could "fund me" do not have bitcoins. But they have credit cards. It would be wonderful if gittip could manage this transaction from CC to bitcoin.

colindean commented 12 years ago

Discussion about Bitcoin is best directed toward #14, where @gasteve, CTO of BitPay, has chimed in.

maplesyrupghost commented 12 years ago

Bitcoin is definitely the most convenient, safest, and most logical method.

www.bitcointrading.com

kangasbros commented 12 years ago

Honestly, bitcoin is not great for recurring payments. They are possible, not just that handy.

jezdez commented 12 years ago

Maybe using Flattr as the infrastructure would be possible, https://twitter.com/gaiapunk/statuses/242536453140250624

DanielWeigl commented 12 years ago

Also thumbs up for bitcoin. And if the CreditCard from BitInstant becomes reallity, it will be even really easy for non-Bitcoiners to accept Bitcoin, but spend them just like USD: http://bitcoinmagazine.net/bitinstants-debi-card-the-final-push-to-critical-mass/

victorb commented 12 years ago

I would also love Bitcoins. And think of the people that doesn't use american dollars, add euroes in that case would be great.

gasteve commented 12 years ago

Let me see if I can find one of our integration partners to take on this project. I personally have very little time available.

chadwhitacre commented 12 years ago

Thanks, @gasteve! (I copied your comment to #14.)

chadwhitacre commented 12 years ago

Recap So Far

Okay, so here's the state of the options as I see them, sorted from least work for Gittip to most:

  1. Balanced - We are already integrated with them, so the easiest solution from Gittip's pov would be for Balanced to add support for non-US bank accounts. @matin, @mahmoudimus, @jkwade: Do you have any advice for us?
  2. PayPal - See #63. Needs a champion.
  3. BitPay - See #14. Needs a champion. @gasteve is paying attention. Need to solve the recurring issue.
  4. Flattr - See #284. We've started a conversation with them. I'm not sure yet how Flattr's revenue sharing program would interface with Gittip's open company model.
tito commented 12 years ago

BrainTree is now open for international payment too: https://www.braintreepayments.com/tour/international - Do you think that could be a possibility too ?

kangasbros commented 12 years ago

Accepting the payments worldwide is not the problem (I think that already works), the payouts are... I think that the only good solution to working international payouts is Bitcoin. Converting credit card-billed money to bitcoin is probably huge pain in the ass, but could be possible with some delay (like 1 month).

Payments to countries like India, Pakistan or Iran are never going to work using traditional payment instruments due to strict regulations. I would love to get open source developers from those countries on board.

ghost commented 12 years ago

@kangasbros: am in. python programmer From India. just went through your github account. any specific ones you're planning to merge with bittip? Gotta warn, new to bittip bitcoin apis though...

kangasbros commented 12 years ago

The problem is credit card fraud (credit card payments = reversible, bitcoin payments = irreversible). I'm going to research this problem some more time before I can propose a solution.

ghost commented 12 years ago

@kangasbros : I haven't researched thoroughly, but my understanding is that it is the whole point of bitcoin's anonymity. i.e: irreversibility and anonymity go together ideally. So it's rather a question of what gittip is risk stance is willing to adopt for anonymity. I would be happy if gittip adds a disclaimer about irreversibility of bitcoin transaction and get ahead with it. but i don't know whether that makes business/economic sense for them, i can understand if it doesn't. Can someone from gittip chime in?

kangasbros commented 12 years ago

anandjeyahar: the benefit is getting the payouts to anyone, anywhere in the world. Open source developers anywhere can benefit from the donations. Currently gittip payouts work (to my understanding) only in US and canada, not for example even in Europe. This severely limits the benefits for gittip. For example, I'm personally mostly interested in donating to developers in 3rd world countries, since there the developers need the money much more than the developers in developed countries.

On the payment side, I don't see much benefits, since recurring payments with bitcoin are problematic.

paddykontschak commented 12 years ago

@kangasbros commented Currently gittip payouts work (to my understanding) only in US and canada, not for example even in Europe.

gittip payouts work only in the US. Not in Canada, not in Europe and not anywhere else in the world.

victorb commented 12 years ago

@kangasbros "On the payment side, I don't see much benefits, since recurring payments with bitcoin are problematic."

Maybe you could offer Bitcoin single donation and credit card recurring payment (and also single donation). With BrainTree the payments could be made anywhere with credit cards and the cash out with Bitcoins for everyone.

kangasbros commented 12 years ago

And BTW, bitcoins point isn't Anonymity - it can be properly used anonymously, but that is not the "default mode" so to speak. To me, bitcoin point is unblockable, global, no-barrier-of-entry payment & payout processing. But yeah, anonymity is why it gets adopted later, and the other benefits will follow later.

ianb commented 12 years ago

At Mozilla there was some research into this issue, with regards to the Mozilla Marketplace. Some of the issues are similar. One issue is that Mozilla didn't want to be an intermediary. That could mean in the US, for instance, that we'd have to submit 1099s for people who got a large enough payout. And who knows what it would be in other countries – paying people is fraught with local bureaucracy. PayPal made it possible for us to facilitate the transfer of money from a customer directly to the app developer. PayPal is still the one who actually "pays" the other person, and so they handle all the paperwork.

If you are curious, all the related code is in an open source repository (somewhere deep in https://github.com/mozilla/zamboni).

maplesyrupghost commented 12 years ago

Bitcoin!

lyndsysimon commented 12 years ago

This makes more sense as a payout method than as a payment method, in terms of ease of implementation.

Profitably, Lyndsy Simon

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. On Sep 25, 2012 9:51 PM, "Richard Vialoux" notifications@github.com wrote:

Bitcoin!

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/126#issuecomment-8877381.

tj commented 12 years ago

canada :(

chadwhitacre commented 12 years ago

+1 for Bitcoin via HN.

markvdb commented 12 years ago

Totally batshit mad idea:

A low tech solution could be a SEPA enabled EUR denominated account in an EU country. There are many 100% free ones, for both incoming and outgoing payments. Filter out the ones with interesting internet banking APIs.

Farm out the outgoing payments administration work to volunteers. Respect donor and receiver privacy by cleverly using hashing to prepare batches of outgoing electronic payments.

Tada: free outgoing gittip payments within the European Free Trade Area!

If this sounds mad, that's probably because it is. But maybe, just maybe, this actually is a viable mechanism!

d2s commented 11 years ago

Not sure how viable it is, but SEPA payments could make things work for many inside EU area. Still, there are various problems that need to be solved (both legal and technical) to make it an option.

cavebeat commented 11 years ago

I am from Europe, and i hope SEPA should still work. NON-US Euro User are not that small. But i want also the possibility to use Bitcoin. Connection with flattr would also be nice, to receive some amount of tips on flattr.

Paypal is the big player, but i don't like it very much.

ironchefpython commented 11 years ago

Disclaimer: I am not recommending xe, as I know nothing about about them except people I know use it to gamble... er "trade" currency, and the have been around forever.

Why not use a currency trading service to move money? You avoid the massive cut that banks will take to convert currency (since currency traders compete on price), plus the actual transfer is free.

Looking at http://xe.com it appears ideal. We could turn US dollars into nearly any currency, and send disbursements for free to EU, UK, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Plus we can wire the money almost anywhere in the world (for a fee).

Again, this is NOT an endorsement! I have not yet looked deeply at xe, and have no idea where the pitfalls will be.

mrjoes commented 11 years ago

It is quite possible that Payoneer (http://payoneer.com) is one of the options. Anyone can get card for free and I'm pretty sure they have some kind of API to load funds to the card.

skopp commented 11 years ago

While I like all these fancy and cool ideas (especially Stripe), I'm afraid in reality the most feasible option is PayPal (like them or not, they have a solid track record)

sigmavirus24 commented 11 years ago

@skopp their track record is also terrible in shutting down accounts arbitrarily.

skopp commented 11 years ago

Well, @sigmavirus24 - I get your point (really I do - most big companies, and especially financial service providers, tend to stray. Sometimes often. At best, not that often). The world is real, not ideal, unfortunately. Realistically, I see them as the most stable of online payment mgmt account thingys. Bitcoin amuses me (I took it seriously at first, no more). So does Google Wallet with the NFC gimmickry. Not because they don't work, not at all. Because they don't nad will not work here (South Africa) and not for a long time to come. A Barclays owned SA bank, FNB, was sharp enough about 5 years back to invest in Paypal services. We're talking global here, keep that in mind.

I'm open to options/suggestions on (in fact I dislike monopolies, so I actually am hoping for) solid alternatives.

skopp commented 11 years ago

Just an aside too, @cavebeat ... I despise banks in general. And I'm being modest in my wording here. Alas, I am not powerful enough to take the global Plutonomy on. The least I (and anyone else for that matter) can do to say phunc you to them is by not taking loans, overdrafts etc. and trying to capitalize interest on my money invested with them as close as possible to the rate at which they me. But now I'm getting into socio-political economics. Just an aside, as I said.

kangasbros commented 11 years ago

I actually find it quite surprising that someone finds Bitcoin "amusing" at this point. It is very a serious concept, with potentially very far-reaching socio-economical implications.

However, bitcoin doesn't work very well with the concept of gittip.com. Bitcoin works best for one-time transactions, not so well with recurring.

kangasbros commented 11 years ago

"For the last year, Bitcoin has been kind of like the kid who moves to a new town right in the middle of high school. Sitting alone at lunch. Quiet, but proud. Widely suspected of dealing drugs. He doesn't have any friends and he's not sure he wants them.

Well, that's all over, because this week Bitcoin started hanging out with one of the most popular kids in school."

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/wordpress-now-accepts-bitcoin