Thursday, January 8, 2009

Just Found: Paypal Donate Button Takes Out Fees!

I was absolutely BLOWN away by this. Just to make this short and sweet (well, I guess not so sweet), Paypal takes a third of your donations.

So, someone who donated $.01 (one penny) will have a Paypal fee, which I believe it to be one third of the total donation (1/3 or 33.333...%).

I am not a mathematician, but .01-.01=0

Hmm... I'm kind of speechless.

I was chatting with someone, and it got me to think of this equivalent situation. Imagine someone on the street asking for a dollar, and you give them that dollar... but then you see some business man walk up next to him and take a third of that (I picture seeing the business man ripping a third of that dollar off) dollar donation.

I know I am not here to make money from the experiment, but I am not here to make money for Paypal either!

Doen't seem right, huh?

Well, what I NEED NOW are people's suggestions as to alternative methods for making donations!

Thanks!
Jeff

3 comments:

  1. Hi Jeff, for the exact answer you can look here (http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-fees-outside)

    For your type of account PayPal takes 4.9% + $0.30 for every transaction you receive. If you are only getting $1.00 at a time than PayPal will be taking about 35 cents a pop.... also unless you upgrade to a premier/business account you will only be allowed 5 transactions per month.

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  2. You must have a premier/ business account. I have both premier/ business (for credit card transactions, eBay, etc.) as well as a personal account. You MAY have one of each. There are no fees whatsoever on money received in a personal account. There is not a transaction limit either once you life your limit by verifying your information.

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  3. Thanks everyone! I really appreciate it. I still am in disbelief that Paypal would take fees from donations. I understand that they need to make money somehow, but do they really need to do it through donations?

    Anyways, thanks again! :)

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