Yeah, all of the other payment processors have settled on somewhere between 2-4% fees to handle fraud. See PayPal. So either Patreon has an order of magnitude more fraud going on or is massively wasteful in its business operations. Probably both.
Having never paid patronage, I don’t really know, but doesn’t patreon host a lot of content? Or where are all the paid-only content hosted?
In my limited experience the Patron only content that Patreon hosts is in the form of blog posts. The actual content is often an unlisted YouTube video or something.
Right, shoplifting doesn't exist. Movie theaters run around profitably by getting people to pay whatever they want. They even let them bring their own food. And banks give you a mortgage just because you look like such a trustworthy dude.
How does crypto solve shoplifting? Banks do credit worthiness checks as part of business. Movie theaters actually do keep a banned list and enforce it.
My comment was just meant to show the absurd of "not making business if you don't trust the customer"
> If I pay for a good or service via crypto and it is not delivered satisfactorily In this vague hypothetical situation, what a lot of crypto folk would tell you is that you should use a smart contract, and not a regular transaction, to pay. Hypothetically the contract/network will act as an escrow agent, and would only complete the transaction when all input parameters are true AKA all parties are "satisfied". The s…
That only works if all "input parameters" involved in the transaction are verifyably on chain. If I'm buying a physical good with crypto there's no way you can write a smart contract that verifies I did indeed get the good I paid for. Oracles don't count because that's just kicking the can to a different level (how do I dispute the oracle saying something happened that didn't).
Many Patreon payments are simple donations, or gated access to digital media. These can be achieved with smart contract functionality to mitigate the need for costly payment processing.
> The crypto bros totally miss the point in understanding this too. The crypto folks are pretty cognizant of it, which is why they built an entire technology that isn’t reliant on intermediaries, banks, and payment processors to manage transactions. A crypto Patreon in stablecoin like DAI on an L2 would basically be able to remove most of the high fees creators see in Patreon.
That doesn’t address the criticism. If I pay for a good or service via crypto and it is not delivered satisfactorily, what is my remedy? Who even decides what “satisfaction” is? Yes, the dispute/chargeback process for cards is cumbersome today, but it is a solution - albeit inefficient. What is the crypto answer? I don’t mean to put you on the spot for this question, but I would love to understand how decentralized s…
In a hypothetical crypto Patreon, if you send $1 to an artist, your only recourse to get that back if you are displeased with their art is to ask them politely, or ask the platform or protocol creator. Most likely you will not get your funds back, but this is assumed to be the case.
What many people don't realize is that the operational and customer service costs of payments don't scale with payment amount. Customers will cost almost just as frequently dispute, have questions, have problems, ask for help, attempt to defraud etc with a $1 transaction as they will a $100 or $1000 transaction. This is the real killer with micro payment schemes. Customer service costs scale more with number of payme…
The reason to have fees as a percentage vs a flat fee isn’t because costs scale with payment amounts, it’s because it’s a more fair way to levy fees. I can either charge everyone $3/transaction, even if the transaction itself is less than or equal to $3, or I can structure it as a percentage to encourage smaller transactions. If people think Patreon is making a killing with their fee structure, they should build a co…
If each transaction has a fixed cost but as a payment processor you're charging a percentage fee that seems like a risky business. What happens if the mix of payments on your platform tends towards lots of small transactions?
What I think is something people easily overlook with Patreon and similar platforms is that it's quite hard to make a decent profit on $1 or $5 transactions that most of Patreon's income seems to come from. They're definitely overcharging for more profit, but your margins won't be much lower if you handle payment yourself. Your 3% bank cut to receive money doesn't always work because often there's a minimum fee per t…
The thing about Patreon is that it sucks for users too (as in, the consumers). Both the website and the app really suck. They look horrible, have few features, and often work poorly. It essentially serves as a notification platform that I then try to bounce out of into YouTube or wherever as soon as possible. It's kind of mind boggling that they seem to leave so much engagement on the table when even a mediocre websi…
What features should Patreon have? I'm not paying for website features. I am paying to support creators I like. I'd actually be happier if the platform did even less. Just get the money to the people I want to support in a low-friction manner, and get out of the way.
Your experience with Patreon will depend on what kind of thing you're supporting. For example, if you support a Youtube channel you might continue watching on Youtube and rarely need to visit Patreon's website at all. But if you support an author who is releasing a book, three pages per day? And you're paying for early access? You'll notice there's no bookmarking / next page features. And if that author has three pri…
What features should Patreon have? I'm not paying for website features. I am paying to support creators I like. I'd actually be happier if the platform did even less. Just get the money to the people I want to support in a low-friction manner, and get out of the way.
How can they "get out of the way" when you need to use the app to play the content? The player sucks, episode search sucks.
Crypto presents a real solution to this problem despite HN’s hate for it. Users who want to achieve Patreon style donations and gated access to digital media can use stablecoin payments on a high-throughput layer two network. Cost per transaction would be minimal, allowing micropayments without cutting into artist profits. The protocol could be fully open source as well.