Bad news about Patreon

Announcements
1

i just got this message from patreon which i’m going to quote below in its entirety.

TLDR:

  • payoneer is stopping operations in russia;
  • there are no other working methods to transfer money out of patreon at the moment (personally i doubt that patreon will figure something out);
  • i suggest everyone to pull out of my patreon in december and switch your patronship somewhere else so that your money won’t get stuck on my patreon account i’ve paused the whole patreon creator account, you shouldn’t need to do anything with the pledges;

thanks to everyone who supported my foss work over the years.

email from patreon

Dear Creator,

We are reaching out to let you know that we were recently informed by Payoneer that they will be suspending operations in the Russian Federation starting next month. What this means for you is that as of December 16, 2022, your Payoneer account will be closed and no longer able to facilitate payments for your Patreon page to your bank account. Any withdrawals from your creator balance to your Payoneer account after December 8th will be returned due to service limitations.

For now, we recommend the following:

  • If you no longer reside in Russia, please update your Patreon payout method to a non-Russian bank account as soon as possible in order to continue receiving payments.

  • If you have funds in your creator balance, we encourage you to initiate a payout as soon as possible. Go to your [Payouts dashboard] and follow the prompts to initiate a payout. You’ll find instructions in **[this help article].

  • We will be sure to keep you informed if we are able to identify an alternative solution, but should you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support through **[this form].

We will be sure to keep you informed if we are able to identify an alternative solution.

Thank you for your understanding.

The Patreon Team

2

The homepage has a Liberapay donate button which says its payments are processed through PayPal. Is that still working for you? I thought PayPal pulled this same horseshit move earlier?

3

nope, no paypal either. where’s the liberapay link? i remember removing it but i guess i wasn’t thorough enough.

4

Weird on my phone there is a Donate button at the bottom of the homepage but on my desktop there isn’t.

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So I’m guessing since you didn’t suggest anything in the original post you don’t have any suggestions on alternatives?

5

ah! it’s a mobile layout kinda thing, i forgot about it. i’ll remove it.

patreon people said in their email that they are working on an alternative but i’m not holding my breath.

maybe when this whole thing blows over (not holding my breath on that front either).

6

i think i’ve removed all donation-related links now.

7

Cancelled my pledge, will gladly reinstate when this whole thing blows over…

8

WTF!

Ok, cancelled my pledge for now, too. Hopefully this will get sorted out soon.
… :disappointed:

.

9

i’ve ‘unlaunched’ my creator page and paused the whole patreon thing, so you don’t need to cancel pledges manually anymore.

10

I’m sure it goes without saying but if you figure out anyway for us to get you some cash let us know. Or anything else we may be able to do instead.

11

thanks! if patreon figures out something i’ll post an update here. :slight_smile:

12

Just out of interest can you receive donations via Wechat/Alipay/Unionpay ?

13

can’t say for sure but my guess would be something between “nope” and “too much effort to bother”.

  • alipay i think requires a card issued by a Chinese bank;
  • one bank here emits unionpay cards but i think those aren’t fully functional somehow;
  • no clue about wechat;

technically i suppose crypto would work but ew. no.

14

I have all three and would like to make a donation so was just wondering. Its very easy to send funds between Alipay and Wechat users in China.

15

i’ve googled a bit and it seems that a proper Chinese bank-issued card is needed for wechat.

dealing with alipay seems to involve either having an LLC or using shady exchangers.

i appreciate the gesture but it’s a “too much effort” situation for sure. i’m sure you could instead donate to people actually suffering from this whole situation that i can’t call its proper name for legal reasons. :slight_smile:

1 Like
16

Cancelled my pledge, will gladly reinstate when this whole thing blows over…

17

I have all three and would like to make a donation so was just wondering. .

.

18

my suggestion would be donating - instead - to people who directly suffer because of this whole, uh, situation.

19

Something to be said, when citizens act in civilized fashion, but our governments do not,