withdrawals outside the US, a.k.a. international payouts #126
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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. |
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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. |
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Here's the Balanced ticket for this: |
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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 |
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How about Stripe? |
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Strip allows transfer to non-US accounts? |
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@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. |
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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. |
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Braintree(1) just expanded their list of supported countries. Might be worth checking up. Supported countries: |
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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. |
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@RafaelReinehr The "neomecenate" concept is intriguing. I wish my Italian were better. Google Translate doesn't do the best job either. |
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@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. ;-) |
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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? |
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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. |
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+1 For Bitcoin |
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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. |
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Bitcoin is definitely the most convenient, safest, and most logical method. |
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Honestly, bitcoin is not great for recurring payments. They are possible, not just that handy. |
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Maybe using Flattr as the infrastructure would be possible, https://twitter.com/gaiapunk/statuses/242536453140250624 |
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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/ |
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I would also love Bitcoins. And think of the people that doesn't use american dollars, add euroes in that case would be great. |
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Let me see if I can find one of our integration partners to take on this project. I personally have very little time available. |
Recap So FarOkay, so here's the state of the options as I see them, sorted from least work for Gittip to most:
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BrainTree is now open for international payment too: https://www.braintreepayments.com/tour/international - Do you think that could be a possibility too ? |
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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. |
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@kangasbros: am in. python programmer From India. just went through your github account. any specific ones you're planning to merge with bittip? |
@rkh We don't allow closing accounts that still have a balance. If sending to a bank account or PayPal isn't an option, then you can still redistribute it as a final gift or contact support@gittip.com to receive a bitcoin payout. In any case you don't need to worry about accidentally losing the money. :-)
Actually, we don't strictly need an address for US bank account payouts either. It's a historical artifact that we require identity verification for bank payouts, and we're looking to relax that requirement in #987. |
This ticket is the best place for info. The description has a summary of our current status.
Can you be more specific? |
Developer and management time. :-)
Give us a PR to add multi-currency support. That's a pre-req regardless of the solution we go with.
What do you mean by "individual solutions"?
As mentioned, options are in the description, with links to tickets where each is discussed further. I've made a new ticket for exploring the Stripe option: #2680. |
@mvdkleijn Thanks for taking initiative! :D The lack of an API and their pricing structure indicate to me that Transferwise is a consumer product and isn't really set up for whitelabel usage. We're going to hear the same thing from them that we heard from Stripe back in the day (and more recently Venmo): our terms of service don't allow for third-party usage. TransferWise is great if you want to send money to a friend, but it doubt it will work for sending money to someone through Gittip. Let us know if you discover differently. :-) |
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Heard back from Transferwise and it would suggest @whit537 is right unfortunately...
An API seems to be in the works though it'll The lack of proper international payouts is bothering me more and more... especially since there appear to be several possible avenues but no action on them. For me at least its also keeping me from advising people to use Gittip. (eurgh... Gratipay) |
Why is it a prerequisite? A solution could auto-convert funds on the fly. Maybe not ideal in terms of getting the most bang out of your Euro / Dollar / whatever... but would be a lot simpler. |
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@mvdkleijn Yeah, I guess you're right. If we escrow in USD only then we don't need multi-currency support in the database. Sure seems like escrowing in USD only is not going to be ultimately satisfactory, though. |
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@whit537 I suggest international payouts is made the top priority since a lot of people are waiting for it. It'd also give gratipay a scoop / edge over competition since I believe that no one else has "native" international payouts. (Non paypal etc) Escrowing only in US dollars is suboptimal, I agree, but I respectfully suggest getting the feature out there now is more important than having it optimized. We can always optimize the feature at a later date. (Ie escrow in more than justvus dollars) |
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@mvdkleijn We already have suboptimal non-U.S. payouts, via PayPal and bitcoin. Of the options (listed in the description), Balanced and Stripe aren't under our control. We can't really do more to make either of them move faster than they are (though the fact that neither of them has really solved this either yet should be an indication of how hard this is). That leaves MangoPay and Trans-Pay. I'm currently pursuing the Trans-Pay + Jumio option (#417 + #2449), because that would take us into almost all countries, whereas MangoPay (#891) only gets us into Europe. |
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What are the exact fees associated with the paypal option? Paypal lists a fair few fees: I also assume there will be currency conversion fees on top of this perhaps? Knowing the BTC exchange rate that is used would also be great. |
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@balupton If I'm reading you correctly, and you're wondering why PayPal isn't the solution here: PayPal is suboptimal not on account of the fees, but rather because they won't underwrite Gratipay's model. We've only been permitted to use them by slipping under the radar, which has only been possible by making PayPal's usage a somewhat unwieldy manual effort :) (Correct me if I'm wrong though, folks) |
That probably depends on the country. In Netherlands it is free to withdraw from PayPal for example. I'm a bit surprised to read that PayPal's fee is just 2% though. Due to receiving donations I guess I have been classified as business user and am being charged 3,4% + €0,35 on them. Maybe this also depends on the country... |
@bjorn Yeah, that hits after the 2% fee. If you look on your Gratipay history page you should see the PayPal fee that hits on our side. |
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@whit537 Ouch, so that sums up to over 5% in fees. I didn't request any PayPal withdrawal yet so far, but when I'd ever have significant amount of funds to withdraw I'll certainly go for the Bitcoin option instead. |
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@bjorn good to know, I suspected that the 2% was likely only gratipay's side, and that the standard receiver fees as linked in that link I did also applied. It is pretty costly form of withdrawal. Gratipay, how about the bitcoin exchange rate? @patcon Just trying to figure out which method provides the maximum return on the lump that I have in Gratipay, anything less would be a waste. |
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@balupton We are using Coinbase for our bitcoin wallet, and their fee is 1% + 15¢ (as mentioned above and on the FAQ), which, as usual, we pass through to you with no markup. Assuming you have your own wallet, this should be a more reasonably-priced option. |
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I just learned about http://www.earthport.com/ via Twitter. |
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@whit537 thanks, turns out there is coinjar in australia that allows withdrawels - unfortunately coinbase doesn't |
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+1 for Canada from FD1545. |
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So, are international SWIFT transfers supported currently or not? |
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We have upgraded PayPal from a stop-gap to a first-class payout method—in fact, it's now our only payout method (#3567). While not perfect, PayPal does provide more or less global coverage. Therefore, I'm going to take the opportunity to close this old and venerable ticket. Looking at the other options in the description: the Stripe and MangoPay tickets got closed as part of the Balanced shutdown, because we ended up charting a roll-your-own course instead of using a prefab solution (see #3324 (comment) for discussion). Transpay is still on the table, to be revisited once we have a proper in-house anti-money laundering (AML) program. IAT and SWIFT are also options; those were in the works downstream of #3366, which fell through for (again) lack of AML. Thanks, everyone! :-) |
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(Thanks, fixed.) |
and others
Balanced will work for withdrawals to U.S. bank accounts, but not outside the U.S. What do we do here? Suggestions?
Current Status
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 migrate back to Stripe #3245.Want to Help?
Give us a PR for multi-currency support. That's a pre-requisite no matter which direction we go.
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