(Except that I closed my Patreon account since they decided to get all arbitrary and political over the Sargon of Akkad thing, but I suppose a good alternative will prop up eventually, which is why I'm looking into donating directly to the source)
In the above example:
12 donations of $1/month: organization sees about $6.50.
1 donation of $12/year: organization sees about $11.20.
- creating complications on social media because they claim they have some stake in your project
- requesting custom legal documents to prove that their donation is tax-refundable (ridiculous for such a small amount, but people still do it, especially if the donation comes from a bureaucracy machine)
- asking for refunds
- arguing when you say the policy disallows refunds
- considering your organization a paid service and asking for special technical support
- thinking of an organization as having less moral standards due to the idea that it has lots of money
All of this becomes difficult to handle for a single part-time employee funded at $8,000/yr by those $1 donations. From experience, all of this happens to charities. Even if you don't believe it, the fear of these risks is often greater than the salary earned by it.
This is due to the unwritten law that "all transactions have a minimum and unavoidable customer support cost."
At around $5, the above risks suddenly become worth the salary.
One of the reasons we don't have widespread micro payments is payment processor's fixed fees on small payments
Agreed. None of it seems malicious.
Overall I find hn to be quite quick on criticizing the technical implementation (fees paid math), without considering the reality of it: This guy is donating. Nobody that isn't has a right to criticize the mechanics in my eyes.
And that's not me preaching - I consider myself to be on the wrong side of this fence :(