[Cabal] Credit Cards

[Sean Egan]

On 11/21/06, Daniel Atallah <daniel.atallah at gmail.com> wrote:
> I really don't care what we use, but from a cost standpoint, PayPal
> seems to make more sense.

Paypal definitely has higher rates, the issue is whether we have
enough volume cover the monthly fee. Evan says Adium has gotten so far
this month, 15 donations of about $5 to $10. Gaim would likely get
more than that. But, by any measure, 87 transactions a month is a lot.

The monthly fee is only $10. Even if we get only 25 donations a month,
we'll wind up paying more than that on postage for thank you letters.
$10/mo is cheap; if it's an issue, I will pledge to personally donate
$10/mo.

I think the important thing is opportunity costs. Paypal is ghetto. I
think it adds some "legitimacy" having our own payment form, not
requiring people to go to paypal.com. Paypal is renowned for having
terrible customer service, and we've all heard stories of them locking
people's accounts and not releasing them. I think it's worth $10/mo to
have actual *banks* deal with our money... not ebay.

Additionally, since this will be only the second time we've ever
accepted donations in 8 years, and then it was only for a week, and
Gaim had much fewer users than we have today, I suspect our first
month will be very atypically high volume. Perhaps not $20,000 in
credit card payments, but certainly more than $2000. The $28 savings
over Paypal in that instance affords two months of fees, and the
$20000 figure saves us enough for four years of it.

The $250 cancellation fee is also waived by the card processing, so I
think it makes common sense to use them while our initial volume is
high, and until we reach a point where they're no longer
cost-effective.

> I remember hearing about Google Payments at one point - what is the
> deal with that?

https://checkout.google.com/seller/why.html

It's similar to paypal in most of the reasons I don't like, but it
looks cheaper than PayPal, and even cheaper if we spend money
advertising on Google.

Stu: Visa and Mastercard rates are different for different
transactions, based on how much risk they take by allowing it. For
instance, Internet transactions, like ours, happen at a higher rate
than transactions where the card is swiped (they're riskier).
International transactions are, presumingly, more expensive than
domestic transactions, but I left the spreadsheets at home. The
$30/transaction fee I mentioned as the most expensive is for
international Mastercard transactions exceeding $10,000. The
processing fees don't change, regardless of the transaction.