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Comment by arghwhat | Hacker News Reader

How dare they take creator income! That was Patreon’s job!

Patreon takes 8% fee + 2.5% currency conversion fee + 2.9%-5% and 0.1-0.3 USD transaction fee. That, and everything you create on any platform will need to live up to their requirements to not get kicked off.

Crooks, all of them.

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But clearly Patreon is the market maker here. Apple should only get 30% of Patreon's 8%.

I wouldn’t call Patreon a market maker - it’s closer to PayPal than being a content site. You don’t find creators on Patreon and interact with them there, you find them elsewhere and have them point you to Patreon for one-time or subscription payments.

The issue is not in how the fee is calculated, it is jusy that both Patreon and Apple have far too high fees. Having the EU shake this up at least the Apple side is great.

Except Apple doesn't take a 30% cut for every transaction in the PayPal app

Then you might wonder why they aren't subject to the in-app payment requirements. The joy of behind the scenes negotiations.

Personally, I've never found Patreon's fees to be unreasonable. Would it be nice if it were less? Sure, but the platform needs to make money too.

If you have a 1 USD tier, the fees become 25.5%, 26.5% for non-US paypal. At 3 USD, it's 20%. At 10 USD, it's 17.5%. This is all before VAT and income tax.

How is that not unreasonable for such a simple service, especially as there are alternatives without such fees like Ko-Fi and LiberaPay?

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