payment options

Hello,

sorry for spamming this list so heavily these days, but I try to work on some tasks during the Easter vacation. :wink:

I've been evaluating the payment options a bit, since from time to time, people drop us a note telling that they would like to donate, but cannot due to a lack of donation options.

Currently, we support these payment mechanisms:

- PayPal (payments via PayPal balance, credit card, and bank account)
- Flattr
- bank transfer to Germany
- bank transfer to the US (upon contacting SPI first)
- sending money or cheques to Germany
- sending money or cheques to the US
- click & pledge (payment via credit card)

I am currently awaiting an offer from a clearing company, i.e. a company that can directly charge a credit card without the need for the donor to open up an account.

I have been researching a bit what other projects do, and the following are possibilities TDF does not yet use:

- Monkeybookers/Skrill (IMHO similar to PayPal)
- debit from bank account
- SMS payment (vanity number)
- payment via phone vanity number

IMHO, we don't need any of these, but I still wanted to present you the results. If you think they would be helpful, I can investigate further.

There has also been the discussion about BitCoin, but so far, there have been technical issues, IIRC, so we decided to skip that for the moment.

Independent of the mechanisms, I plan two 1. make our donation page a bit more shiny, since it looks not so attracting at the moment 2. start another round of fundraising.

Florian

One more to add to your list is XE Trade (which is part of Western Union). I have used them for several years. They provide bank-to-bank transfers without any fees (apart from the usual exchange rate spread of course). I note that SPI uses them for payments too.

http://www.xe.com/xetrade/

S.

Hi Simon,

One more to add to your list is XE Trade (which is part of Western Union). I have used them for several years. They provide bank-to-bank transfers without any fees (apart from the usual exchange rate spread of course). I note that SPI uses them for payments too.

http://www.xe.com/xetrade/

thanks for reminding me of that - you mentioned that recently, but I forgot about it, sorry for that.

Do I get it right that XE trade is not for reciving donations, but rather for TDF making payments, e.g. travel refunds?

Florian

It's just a way of performing international transfers bank-to-bank, but it does require the originator to have an account so would be of more use for TDF to make outward payments without wire charges, yes. But in principle it would work for anyone, and for payments in the range $50-$5000 it's probably the lowest-cost option.

S.

Hi,

It's just a way of performing international transfers bank-to-bank, but it does require the originator to have an account so would be of more use for TDF to make outward payments without wire charges, yes. But in principle it would work for anyone, and for payments in the range $50-$5000 it's probably the lowest-cost option.

thanks! So, let's keep that in mind when TDF payments are due to outside Europe. It indeed seems to work like a charm with SPI. :slight_smile:

Florian

Simon Phipps wrote:

One more to add to your list is XE Trade.

And how about Google Checkout / Wallet? Potential catch there - last
time I checked, they had their special offer for charities only
available in US / UK. But maybe still worth looking into?

Cheers,

-- Thorsten