Umm.... Where's your Donate button? Or am I just blind?

[rlaggren]

See above. You got worthwhile stuff. Hang out the sign.

[aaFn]

Hello @rlaggren, none so far .. was pondering adding one one day, never got there yet.
I need to search for a good donation system first I guess 😁

[CrazieIvan]

+1 on this suggestion

[elandorr]

I was about to ask and found this thread.

I need to search for a good donation system first I guess 😁

Please avoid gofundme, they're tyrannical abusers as we saw recently, and the fees are horrendous. All the donation platforms are nothing but middlemen who eat additional fees for doing nothing, ie. pure leeches.
Even liberapay is nothing but a frontend without purpose. Skip the middlemen, go direct. Post all options you have at your disposal, bank, pp, wecrap, anything. Cash in a letter if you don't mind giving an address. Donors just pick what they can.

I recommend a plain bank account number. Those who are in your region can often send for free, and if outside, then wise.com is the cheapest directly to your account.
If you have a paypal account you can just post that to reach more. But paypal is expensive too. Especially for 'coffee money' it's expensive because the fees have a minimum.

I don't have much myself, but I'd send you a coffee. In some regions PP is free by the way, internally, and if non-commercial.

[Andre-ADPC]

I agree completely. You guys are sharing gold here @aaFn and I would happily donate!
PayPal is an option, but there is also Payoneer and the best and cheapest, in my opinion, is Wise (Transferwise) as @elandorr mentioned.
Keep us posted and we'll take some action.
Thanks!

[Gitoffthelawn]

@Andre-ADPC Andre, you seem knowledgeable about different options. If you have time, would you mind posting a short pro/cons of the different options with which you have experience? If you don't have time, don't worry about it!

[Andre-ADPC]

@Gitoffthelawn I have never worked with any donation system as such. However, I'm a user of all three payment systems/banking systems mentioned: PayPal / Payoneer / Wise. Wise in my current opinion is one of the best, cheapest and easiest ways to transfer money across borders in legit ways.

As far as donation management goes, well there are hundreds of them out there, each holding their palm out to "skim-from-the-top". It depends on what the aim/purpose is, I suppose. @elandorr has covered the bases very well in my opinion. So All the developer needs to do is simply provide a link to their personal website, and have a very basic "donate" page or modal, where their Wise bank account detail is shared on request from a registered user.

Going "registered" might be a good option, as the developer then has some control over where their bank account details are emailed to. I suppose various SSO methods, in addition to registering via email, via GitHub/Microsoft/Google or other social media sites could be implemented, and then it is all automated from there on.

The requesting party gets an email with the correct Wise banking details of the developer and then pays the developer via any of the standard means they might have at their disposal. CC, Direct transfer/ Paypal, Payoneer etc.

Wise is FCA regulated and it rests on the receiving party to make sure their taxes are in order with whichever government they are paying taxes to. I recommend speaking to the people at Wise and be forthcoming with your request in detail. They are quite responsive and helpful when you ask for help from them. They would be able to guide you exactly on how you could go about receiving donations as an individual.

The best solution to receive payments and have all the tax issues sorted out as far as my current research shows, is to use Paddle. These guys are going to go very big, I think. But that is more for use cases where you are selling online. But there might just be some settings/configurations available to accept donations as well. They are not free though, but way cheaper and more powerful than Stripe and PayPal combined, seeing that they are a Merchant of Record (MOR), not just a payment system and manages all taxation regulations on your behalf.

Anyway, that's my penny's worth on the subject.

[Gitoffthelawn]

@Andre-ADPC Thank you Andre. Indeed, you are quite knowledgeable on the topic. I had never heard of Paddle, and only briefly heard of Wise, so your experiences and thoughts are valuable to expand my knowledge. Thank you again. 👍🏾

[Watt56]

👍🏼 Yeah, I can't believe Firefox doesn't have this feature natively.