Donations without Paypal/Credit Card?

Hi Paul,

is there a way to support the development without using Paypal and a Credit card?

As I understood right, you are actually in Germany, is there a way to transfer the money directly?

As a small background, i just don’t like Paypal and the Ardour donations would be the only reason for me to have a credit card.

I think, i am not the only one in Germany/Europe thinking this way…

Greetings,
Beowulf666

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Its hard. Paypal is the only online company I know of to offer this service. I understand that many people have decided that they do not like Paypal. Notice that you do not need a credit card to use Paypal. I would love to find some alternative(s), but at the moment I simply do not know of any.

As for me personally, I have not opened a bank account while here in Germany, so direct bank-to-bank transfer is not possible.

I did look into taking credit card payments directly, but it costs a minumum of US$35/month, which is too much overhead at this time to be worthwhile.

Whats wrong with paypal?

I just don’t like it.

I have no need to give this company my banking information. There are too many rumours and statements about misusage and unmotivated blocked accounts.

I don’t thrust them, so i won’t give them money from me.

I would have subscribed long ago, when there would be a better way of payment.

seconded, i would have been able to donate a bit more with a cc merchant.

Totally agree.

With merchant accounts, you can put donations more with security. No need to worries on fraud.

seconded, i would have been able to donate a bit more with a cc merchant.

You can of course send directly to their bank accounts.
http://www.merchantaccountsllc.com/

Hi,

Just wanted to say that I live in France and a while ago I wanted to make a donation to Ardour and since I don’t have a paypal account (because paypal is run by a bunch of thieves) and since I can’t make a donation with my french credit card (don’t know why, maybe because it’s a crappy one), ardour loses money from me and probably from others who are in the same case as me.
Now I want to buy Ardour 3, and, for the same reasons (I can pay only with paypal!! even credit cards are not allowed!!), I can’t get it…

Please Ardour, you seem to be a honest, creative and humane company, so please let me give you some money!!! Please! And don’t work with criminals! Paypal are run by worthless scums! They close accounts without warning and keep your money, they don’t respond to emails and phone calls, etc etc!

@612miles: if you have a suggestion on how to do this, please do tell me. Capital flow between countries may now be allowed by international treaties, but international small scale financial transactions are still tightly controlled by the financial services industries of all our countries.

I hope to add new credit card processor within the coming weeks, which should eliminate problems with using credit cards.

I don’t agree with your assessment of PayPal, even though I agree that their services do leave a lot to be desired, and they have definitely behaved in a manner that I think should probably be illegal in several cases.

Simply to make payments thorugh PayPal you don’t have to have one, you just need a credit card.

In the UK we have a service called Nochex which is cheaper and (as far as I know) better behaved. It can’t accept payments from outside the UK, which is why I do have a Paypal account also - seen as a necessary evil but used as little as possible.

anahata: unfortunately, that seems not to be the case worldwide. several people have reported an inability to use their credit card via paypal from certain countries.

For a single donation you can also ask your friends if one of them has a supported credit card or a Paypal account and is willing to forward your payment…

(You need to have at least one friend for this to work, of course :slight_smile:

Hi, I subscribed (now “maestro” credit cards can be used) and was forced to create a paypal account… but that’s just beacause I’m weak, there really should be an alternative to paypal.

Anyway, Paul Davis, thank you infinitely for your wonderful work, keep it up! Good night

I tried to subscribe today in the hope, the trouble wit PayPal has been fixed by now but still PayPal does not allow me to subscribe because I have no credit-card registered with PayPal.

Anyway I could pay the amount of money, the subscription would cost for 12 months in one chunk(if it gains me the much reverend role of financial supporter). Would that be possible?

It is certainly possible, but the whole goal of subscriptions was to create an ongoing revenue stream (its great to have a month that exceeds the goal, but it doesn’t help much if it is followed by 5 months of lower income). this is why i attempted to differentiate between people who make one-time payments and those who start up a subscription.

do you have a credit card but just don’t want to give the details to PayPal? if yes, then i will be unveiling a new subscription service in the near future that does not use PayPal (but does involve credit cards).

@paul I do not have a credit card.
I can perfectly understand your wish to get payment on a regular basis but anyway: a subscription can be cancelled by the subscriber and thus to me it seems to be only gradually more regular as a one-time donation worth a 1-year subscription…

@zettberlin: hehe, I suppose you are from Germany aswell? I have the same problem. We don’t seem to use credit cards as much over here. And I agree with you that paying at once, or in steps is in this case more of a psychological thing.
@paul: I don’t know how big this problem with credit card numbers actually is for the project; I guess you have a bit more oversight than the rest of us. But assuming zettberlin an me are somewhat the tip of an iceberg, wouldn’t it be reasonable, or even possible to offer a subscription-span purchase, or even an option to choose amongst a few? Ardour could then have a reminder screen of some sort asking the user to renew his subscription if the time since download has expired.
Or would these thoughts destroy the donation concept? Please correct me if I’m too naive here.

So how do Germans make online purchases, if not with Credit Cards ?

I can certainly not speak for all people living in Germany, but many of the people I know and counting the few discussing this openly on the forum, it seems that automatic debit transfer systems and or direct debit systems are the most common ones also for online purchases, e.g. Ebay, Amazon, etc. .
If there were ‘enough people’ out there with this situation, couldn’t one have a sort of seperate bucket account with über-subscriber status, which collects and feeds bits of the revenue into the subscription system?.. And yes, it may sound a bit ridiculous, but it would still be a way to avoid revenue chunks and separate subscription from donation processes.
I also assume that it is more likely and inviting for someone to subscribe for half a year with update and service benefits, as being lured in to buy Ardour for a dollar and riding the old horse for several years.
Nevertheless my point was, if there were enough people withouth credit cards wanting to have the benefits of a subscription maybe one could introduce an option for buying a subscription to avoid the hassle of asking for exceptions.