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Comment by thisisit | Hacker News Reader

It seems that will depend on their payment processor and the bargaining power of Patreon. If no processor wants to lower their charges there is not much Patreon can do. Similarly, if Patreon are not a big ticket fees generating customer they don't have much leverage.

How to do a profitable micro transaction is still a mystery.

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It shouldn't depend on the payment processor; if the credit card payment is going to Patreon, they can batch up the charges however they way (e.g. they could batch up all of one customer's donations for a week to 50 different artists, and process a single transaction with their payment processor for the whole amount. They would then only be charged for a single transaction)

This is assuming that everyone is paying $1 across 50 different artists.

The question here really is - What is the distribution of backers and payment amount on Patreon?

If majority of their customers are, 1:1 ie one patron to one artist for $1. Then it is an issue which payment processor needs to look into.

But, if it is 1:50 ie one patron to 50 artists for $1 then I am sure Patreon will be creating a batch transaction.

Patreon's problem surely stems from the fact that 1:1 is more likely true.

Even if it was 1:1, actually charging the payment processing fee for the payment processed would be fine. The person with one pledge for $1 to one creator would be charged $1.38. The person with one pledge for $100 to one creator would be charged $103.80. The person with 100 pledges for $1 to 100 creators would be charged $103.80. Fine. With the rules they're putting into place, the person with 100 pledges for $1 to 100 creators will be charged $138.00 - with the other $37 going to Patreon. Not cool.

They should really let me charge up my account by $10 and then take it out of that until it gets below $1 and do it again etc.

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