[Payment Method] Accept PayPal

[Thyriaen]

• Will it be possible to pay with PayPal further down the line ?

• What do you think about the possibility to pay for an app even though it is currently installed ? ( The way i see it currently - once it is installed there is no option to pay for it anymore - i can imagine people would want to check it out and if they like it, pay some money for it )

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[cassidyjames]

Second half reported separately at elementary/appcenter#281

[danirabbit]

Until Stripe supports this payment method, we're unable to implement it

[lennarthlion]

So as now also the paypal option on your homepage is gone, and just as i also don't know why i am the only German telling you all this, let me give you some further reading. Because i am certainly not the best person to explain German financial system to anybody. I am just part of it.

Here are the links:

https://www.businessinsider.com/you-have-to-understand-germanys-long-standing-fear-of-debt-2012-7?IR=T

(quote "The German aversion to debt also translates to credit card use — or non-use. Only 36 percent of Germans over the age of 15 even possess a card, compared with 62 percent in the U.S., according to World Bank figures. And even when Germans do have a card, the limit is usually tied to a customer's bank balance and the bill is automatically paid off — in full — from the customer's account within a month or so.

"If I pay with my Visa, then Visa takes it from my account — I don't get any real benefits," said Rainer Hoedt, a Berlin high school teacher. ")

https://www.german-way.com/germanys-cash-culture-geld-stinkt-nicht/
(quote "Germans love cash and are averse to credit cards.")

[davidmhewitt]

@lennarthlion I wasn't involved in this conversation, nor did I really want to be, but as an elementary developer, I unavoidably got an email for each of your comments here, so I'll add my thoughts.

The issue with implementing PayPal or any other payment method other than what Stripe provides isn't some sinister conspiracy to get people into debt with credit cards, it's simply a matter of lack of development effort and legal risk. The Stripe platform provides a lot of useful, complicated functionality that would be a considerable amount of effort to replace. In the case of AppCenter, it handles the split of payments between elementary and the developers and provides a legal framework for doing so. PayPal does not provide such functionality out of the box, and elementary implementing it would be a large undertaking, would potentially have security risks and would take up already far-stretched developer that could be better used elsewhere.

elementary, and all of the apps in the app store are "pay what you want", so there is always the option to pay $0 for them. Then if you still wanted to support the projects, you could find other methods of supporting either elementary or the app developers (either financial or non-financial). For example, elementary allows funding in 3 different ways on the website (https://elementary.io/get-involved#funding), and as far as I know, all 3 probably support PayPal. Or, you could help with supporting other users, improving documentation, reporting bugs, or even writing code. I'm sure if you reached out to any of the app developers to ask if you could support them financially with paypal, they'd be more than happy to receive such a payment too.

I believe what you're doing is "throwing the baby out with the bathwater", which is an English expression about an avoidable error where something good is eliminated when trying to get rid of something perceived to be bad. You say elementary and the apps are exactly what you're looking for, you have options to support them financially or non-financially, but choose not to and go to another distribution.

This is a pattern the open-source community are subjected to a lot (e.g. "I don't like this particular thing about elementary, so I'm moving to distribution X/Y/Z!!!"). I think it's intended to try and make developers feel bad about a particular thing and work on it. But most of the time, it makes me personally feel less motivated to consider working on that particular feature or bug, rather than more likely to work on it. Getting 3 emails about it in a day is also mildly annoying.

PayPal support may come to AppCenter eventually, but as you've seen, there are no current plans to do so, unless Stripe suddenly supports it (which I think is also unlikely).

For the record, I think PayPal support in AppCenter would be a good thing, as I have applications that accept payments in the app store, and I'm sure I'd receive more payments if PayPal was supported. But I also understand the reasoning why PayPal isn't supported and I'm happy that my applications are currently receiving more payments than they would be on other Linux platforms. The AppCenter is truly a brilliant thing as I'm sure you've realised.

I hope you find happiness in whatever PayPal supporting distribution you choose to go with.

Regards,
David

[lennarthlion]

@davidmhewitt throwing the baby out with the bathwater is a German saying too.

I wouldn't even wrote one word if this would be true:
"elementary, and all of the apps in the app store are "pay what you want", so there is always the option to pay $0 for them. Then if you still wanted to support the projects, you could find other methods of supporting either elementary or the app developers (either financial or non-financial)."

So with the app Agenda i can't type in zero. I take this as a sign that other apps will follow.
So if this is a bug, please fix it. As soon as i can update Agenda with just typing in zero i am perfectly happy. The app is not that important for me. I use it often, but really, if it is broken for me i don't care. Which it is not yet also, it just don't get updates.

But if Agenda - can - have a minimum price, other apps can aswell, and i found it important to tell you, that i won't be able to use elementary without a credit card than.

Maybe one day elementary will have a minimum price like 1 dollar as well.

I don't support paypal at all. Give me another option than credit card and i will make happily an effort to use it.

My problem with credit cards isn't the whole debt thing and i don't see any evil conspiracy. I just have none for reasons. I also never will need one. Or if i do, i will cancel the credit card as soon as i am back in Germany. So Whatever amount of money i have to spend on the credit card i really see as a waste.

So your text has been an interesting insight and now i understand better the reasoning behind this.
As i don't support paypal maybe i might find a fitting prepaid credit card for me. I searched for one already and i am not a super fan of this option.

I am also angry as elementary is my distribution of choice if some one want an Linux installation for his old laptop. Or his new one. So if he has to have a credit card i won't be able to sell him this whole elementary idea at all. Also for me to expect him or her to get a prepaid credit card ... i won't even try.

This is not a question of personal taste. I thought you might care about the fact that not everybody in the world has a credit card.

If the minimum price for Agenda is just a bug. Go on fix it and everything is solved for me.

[davidmhewitt]

@lennarthlion That sounds like a bug, please open a separate issue and provide a screen recording/screenshots showing the issue if possible.

There is no functionality within the code of AppCenter to enforce a minimum payment for any app, and although I'm not a decision maker within elementary, I don't think there is an intention to ever do that. The whole point of the pay what you want model is that $0 is a valid option.

[lennarthlion]

@davidmhewitt Nice to hear, i will do so.

[lennarthlion]

@davidmhewitt okay this is really embarrassing, but while i recorded i realized that Agenda was up to date.

So the first three sections have been obviously available updates, nvidia drivers and than came agenda. So I couldn't type in zero there because it has been already up to date and the field is simply for people that want to pay later.

In my defence no one questioned my initial problem on Stack Exchange that there is a minimum price and so they send me to git hub.

Yhea but there isn't really any more defence. ^^ I am an idiot and i going to delete some of that spam i produced. I am very sorry. ^^

[all64bits]

I just wanted to add my personal experience here.

I've recently managed to get my parents on Elementary OS on a Lenovo laptop, which they use for certain tasks in parallel with an M1 Macbook they recently picked up.

My father wanted to purchase an app in the AppCentre. I've previously discussed with him that it is possible to pay $0 for the apps there, but that it is important to support the developers & the cause of Elementary in general. However he had some hesitation when he needed to provide credit card details in the store. He's paranoid about such things. I gave him some background on Stripe and their apparent trustworthiness & he eventually relented, but he wouldn't have had any hesitation if PayPal had been an option.

Understand the reality of making a change like this is likely beyond the scope of your current resources, I'm just keen to see that the payment process in the AppCentre is as buttery smooth as possible.