A lot of these places (paypal/amazon) make money on the sum held in escrow. Basically, their only interest (every pun intended) is holding your money as long as possible. Exactly the opposite of what you want. Burning Man had a huge blowup with paypal (for holding an undisclosed amount of megabucks), and I suspect they may not use them this year.<div>
<br></div><div>PayPal is scraping for cash, because they know they are going to be regulated soon.</div><div>--Matthew Goodman<br><br>=====================<br>Check Out My Website: <a href="http://craneium.net" target="_blank">http://craneium.net</a><br>
Find me on LinkedIn: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/d6wlch" target="_blank">http://tinyurl.com/d6wlch</a><br><br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 12:01 PM, Ben Brown <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ben@kwartzlab.ca">ben@kwartzlab.ca</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
Kwartzlab originally started with just post-dated cheques and money
orders, but we setup on Paypal shortly after. About 1/3 of the
membership (including myself) uses their recurring subscriptions.<br>
<br>
I'm totally aware of the un-excellent politics/policies that is
Paypal, however we figure it's more important to make it easy for
members to pay online. We also looked at merchant services (but
vetoed them for the expenses involved), and the other online payment
systems we checked out at the time didn't allow Canadian bank
accounts as a payment source.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br><font color="#888888">
Ben</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
On 12/13/2010 11:51 AM, Matthew McCabe wrote:
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>The ATX Hackerspace uses a Bank of America merchant card processing
service to accept credit cards. We also use an online payment gateway
that works with our merchant account. All in all, it works well
though BOA charges a lot of fees.
It is also fun to talk to a credit card representatives when they do a
fraud audit on my personal account: "oh, what is this charge for the
ATX HACKERSPACE??" That must be fraud, right? lolz.
-Matt
On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Adam D Bachman <a href="mailto:adam.bachman@gmail.com" target="_blank"><adam.bachman@gmail.com></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Baltimore Node (the space Matthew was talking about) was frozen out of
Amazon too, for the same reason. Accepting "donations" while being a
non-profit (as recognized by the state of Maryland), but not a 501c3
non-profit. Amazon also had terrible customer service. It took us a month or
two to get almost $850 back from them.
We're on Google Checkout now.
- Adam
On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Tim Saylor <a href="mailto:tim.saylor@gmail.com" target="_blank"><tim.saylor@gmail.com></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Strangely, we had that same problem with Amazon and we switched to Paypal
because they told us not having 501c3 wasn't a problem. I guess you can't
trust anybody.
On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 9:42 AM, Matthew Forr <a href="mailto:matthew.forr@gmail.com" target="_blank"><matthew.forr@gmail.com></a>
wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>We've had problems with Paypal far before Wikileaks and had our account
frozen twice. Apparently if you ask for donations anywhere on their site and
Paypal finds out they freeze your account and ask for proof that you're a
501c3. There customer service is terrible and I can't recommend against
using them enough, that said, I'm not surprised they froze Wikileaks account
and I feel their pain.
On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Tim Saylor <a href="mailto:tim.saylor@gmail.com" target="_blank"><tim.saylor@gmail.com></a>
wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>We had a minor drama bomb on our mailing list about using paypal and our
general conclusion was that the space shouldn't get distracted with politics
and take an official stand on the matter. If people want to pay us with
paypal, great. If they want to use another method (and if enough people
want us to support something else) that's great too.
On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 9:26 AM, Christopher Pilkington <a href="mailto:cjp@0x1.net" target="_blank"><cjp@0x1.net></a>
wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Don't hackerspaces use actual bank or credit union accounts? I would
have never considered using PayPal, even before the wikileaks fiasco.
On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Alexandre Girard
<a href="mailto:alx.girard@gmail.com" target="_blank"><alx.girard@gmail.com></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>We've remove the paypal button on homepage for monthly membership
subscription, and since we meet once a week, it was not so useful.
We've got the bi-annual financial meeting next wednesday, we've got
accounts on Flattr or WePay it people need this
online-membership-payment feature back.
Alex - <a href="http://tetalab.org" target="_blank">tetalab.org</a>
On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Barry Coughlan <a href="mailto:barry@091labs.com" target="_blank"><barry@091labs.com></a>
wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Has any space switched from Paypal due to Wikileaks? If so, what
alternative
are you using and how do you find it?
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<pre>--
-Matthew
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