Changaco
commented
6 years ago Interesting idea, one step further than #456. Unfortunately I don't think it's technically and legally doable at present.
Open vlopezj opened 6 years ago
Changaco
commented
6 years ago Interesting idea, one step further than #456. Unfortunately I don't think it's technically and legally doable at present.
Summary: Allow Liberapay users (donors) to donate money not only to other Liberapay users, but also to external accounts (e.g. PayPal).
Current state of affairs:
Very often I want to support projects which accept donations via Paypal. But doing a monthly donation via PayPal to each them of just 1 or 2 € is both cumbersome and expensive. Currently, in Liberapay one can promise money to f.ex. a Github account or a Twitter handle, without the owner of that account being a Liberapay member (yet). But those payments will not be made effective until that person registers with Liberapay.
Proposal:
Potentially, one could also "promise" money to the holder of a PayPal account, without that person being registered in Liberapay. But in this case, Liberapay can make that promise effective by transferring the promised money to that PayPal account (so, it wouldn't be a promise anymore, but more of an "external donation"). In principle, this doesn't require the owner of the PayPal account to register with Liberapay (or to even have heard about it).
Use cases: This is useful to Liberapay users, as they can keep track of their monthly donations even to organizations who are not using Liberapay.
On top of that, it also promotes Liberapay to those receiving the money. If a Paypal user is receiving a big amount of money from Liberapay, they can create a Liberapay account and thus avoid the Paypal fees.
Implementation details: To keep costs down, the money can be "accumulated", and then only paid out when it reaches a certain threshold (or. if the threshold is not reached, after a fixed period of time, say 6 months). If more than one Liberapay user is donating to the same PayPal account, these payments could be batched together, further driving down costs.
Possible issues: I think the main challenge behind this are the legal issues, as i) the people receiving the money might not be legally bound to pay it back in case its found out to be fraudulent (because they have not agreed to Liberapay's terms), ii) it might be used for money laundering if not implemented properly (although it helps that PayPal will already have done their due-diligence) and ii) PayPal may or may not approve of it.
Further improvements: Finally, there is nothing special about PayPal here; one could also transfer money to bank accounts, or any other payment provider that accepts payments programmatically. But, if this is going anywhere, I think PayPal would be a good place to start.