Can we _please_ add Transferwise to payout options?

Patreon Feedback
1

PayPal is robbing non-USD Creators like us when it comes to exchange rates. We are already charged a fee to withdraw to PayPal; then PayPal takes another huge cut from us when we have to convert USD into our local currency (in our case, AUD). And we can’t do anything about it, because Patreon gives us no other option. So we are effectively captive customers. Payoneer is not much better in terms of their exchange rates.

Simple solution: please add Transferwise to our payout options. They offer much better exchange rates because they use the median market rate, and they have great support. We’ve been using them to bypass Paypal and to convert USD to AUD for the past year and we’ve literally saved hundreds of dollars each month. But now PayPal has placed a 3% fee on transfers to the US, so we can no longer go via Transferwise. I guess they realised people were finding ways to bypass their racket.

TLDR: PayPal charges ridiculous exchange rate fees and Patreon is forcing us to use them, thereby reducing our hard earned monthly income. Please cut out this parasitic middle-man (PayPal) and let us withdraw directly to Transferwise.

12 Likes
2

While I dont have any input on the rest of it, for clarity in case anyone lives in a country serviced by payoneer , they absolutely -do not- have that limit if you are using them with patreon. Maybe they do if you were to sign up and use their service stand alone for your business but if you connect your patreon to it, it doesnt matter how much you make. I have been using them for my patreon for many years and no one I know, including myself, who uses them, makes that much through patreon.

If it is an option for you in your patreon account, you should be able to use it through patreon with no income restrictions. I’ve yet to hear of such a requirement for patreon creators and current evidence of those I know in various countries using payoneer have no such restriction.

3

Hey Temrin, thanks for clarifying that part of my post - I’ll edit to avoid confusion. (FYI: I read about Payoneer’s $20k monthly minimum online, but perhaps as you say this doesn’t apply if you’re using them via Patreon. Patreon should probably also clarify this on the payout page, as it can be confusing for anyone like me who might decide to do some research about Payonner online)

My point still stands however: whether you’re using PayPal or Payoneer, the exchange fees are extremely uncompetitive. For Creators transferring small amounts each month, it probably makes little difference. But when you’re transferring pledges from 3000 Patrons each month, those mercenary exchange fees really add up into the thousands.

If Patreon doesn’t want to add Transferwise as a payout option, it would be good to know why - as it currently feels like we’re being jipped of our income for no good reason…

5 Likes
4

Key point - Please cut out this deadly parasitic PayPal and let us withdraw directly to better solution.

4 Likes
5

Totally agree, I hate this thing!

6

My experiences with Transferwise have been top notch. I highly recommend them to anyone and everyone. I hope this post gets some traction!

4 Likes
7

Just wanna add that I use Transferwise every month, and the service is really great. Would be superb if Patreon adds support for it!

3 Likes
8

Hi all - thank you for providing your input. We currently do not have plans to add other payout options but I’ve made a note that Transferwise is a reliable and familiar to creators, and will take this to the team.

3 Likes
9

Hi @reyna thank you for your reply to this topic.

We get that Patreon doesn’t have plans to add other payout options. The point of the post is to let Patreon know that it really needs to have a plan for this.

I think this request ought to be treated differently to a simple ‘feature request’. Patreon has a duty of care here because it is currently placing us in an untenable position where we have no choice but to use PayPal - which is costing non-US creators like us very dearly. It’s unethical.

Don’t get me wrong, we are happy to pay fees to Patreon for all the work Patreon does to provide this amazing platform. And we get that we must pay fees to banks and PayPal when they process Patron’s pledges. And yes, PayPal is entitled to charge another fee when we withdraw from Patreon to PayPal.

But to then let PayPal take another huge chunk of our remaining income when it comes to transferring it to a non-USD currency, simply because there’s no other payout option, is one step too far - by any measure.

I mean please take a minute to consider how bad it is: PayPal is taking 3% of our monthly income - on top of the processing fees and Patreon fees we’re already paying. That’s the fee we’re charged to withdraw to a USD account (which is the extra step we’re forced to take so we can use Transferwise to transfer to AUD and get a much better exchange rate). Yes, we could withdraw directly from PayPal to our AUD account, but that way we still pay about 3% of our income because of the exortionate exchange rate PayPal forces us to use. And PayPal constantly increases their fees, too: they increased the fee from 2% to 2.5% earlier this year. And last month they’ve upped it to 3%. It’s nuts :exploding_head: :exploding_head: :exploding_head:

So I hope you can understand why it’s galling to read that “Patreon doesn’t have any plans for other payout options”. To me this says: ‘we’re okay with this situation. We’re ok for PayPal to keep ripping you off and giving you no option to avoid it’.

In lieu of an explanation about why Patreon has no plans for other payout options, one might well ask what Patreon has to gain by allowing PayPal to maintain a monopoly on non-US creator income. At best, Patreon is ignoring our interests and allowing its own Creators - who it should be backing up and supporting - to be preyed upon by a massive corporation like PayPal.

I hope I’m not coming across as an annoying Karen. Our work is our livelihood, it supports our family and employees; so I’m not writing for the sake of arguing; or just to request a new ‘feature’. But rather to ask Patreon to look after our best interests.

And if there is a valid reason for why Patreon doesn’t want to let us withdraw to Transferwise, it would be good to know what that reason is. Because we are paying very dearly for that choice.

TL/DR: What we would really like you to please take back to the team, @reyna , is a request to add other payout options - Transferwise being one that has an excellent reputation. The main point is that we desperately need to have a way to avoid PayPal asap because we’re being robbed of our hard-earned income with every month that passes.

Thank you Reyna, we appreciate your help! <3

7 Likes
10

100% agree here.

I use a “banking” app called Revolut that would allow me to put Patreon funds in USD and then transfer to GBP (I’m in the UK right now) when/if I want. Further, I can make accounts in any currency I want so it would be such a “natural” fit for Patreon to partner with Revolut. Creators that have to travel about would be able to quickly and easily navigate currencies and the fees could be so much less.

It is so painful to see money just disappear because I HAVE to move through a third party.

I have no experience with TransferWise and wouldn’t be upset to see it added, but I feel that Patreon and Revolut are both of the right size to make a very, very comfortable deal with each other that could benefit all 3 parties (Patreon, Revolut and content creators).

I understand that Patreon doesn’t have any plans to fix this - but they seriously need to. Patreon may be US based but I’m guessing the non-US folk creating are a decent source of revenue for the company.

5 Likes
11

I’d LOVE a Patreon-Revolut / Patreon-Transferwise agreement!

1 Like
12

@thejuicemedia - I apologize if I sounded dismissive on the topic! Please know I’ve passed your feedback along to multiple teams, and context like this is extremely helpful. We’re always discussing different updates, options, and ways to make a better experience for our creators. Thank you so much taking the time to share your experience with me.

3 Likes
13

Pushing this post back up to hammer the point home.

As of today, Paypal is charging me 3% of any USD money I wish to transfer to another account. This means that all of my Patreon income is held hostage in my Paypal account until I convert it using their extortionate fees - which more or less equal a loss of 150 gbp a month at this point. That’s an important chunk of my mortgage, to put it in tangible terms.

150 gbp is also almost 2 months of convincing people to join my Patreon. It’s hours and hours of work, stolen for nothing in return. Despite me working myself sick to sustain my business, it feels like every month I make less thanks to Paypal’s extortionate fees and the whole thing is starting to feel disheartening and worthless. I often think about how much easier it would be to have a 9-5 job where I know how much I’m getting paid at the end of the month.

Transferwise is genuinely a good platform. It’s clear, it’s honest and it’s easy to use. I don’t know what goes into making these kind of deals - that’s not my job to figure out. But I do know that as long as Patreon refuses to even acknowledge this plight - as well as most of the other stuff that’s asked for FOR YEARS - in these forums, it cannot say in good faith that it has its creators best interests at heart. Creators are losing thousands of dollars a year for absolutely no reason other than pure negligence.

You guys are literally making money hand over fist off of our work, off our marketing. I appreciate we’re not shareholders, but we are the people working FOR you- without creators, Patreon does not exist. It’s incomprehensible to me that every time creators come to Patreon asking them to look after them and their livelihood, the answer is a stock “We’re not planning on this at the moment” or “we’ve passed it onto the team for consideration”. At this point I feel like “the team” is a codename for the shredder in the back of the office.

4 Likes
14

I am sorry to hear you are being affected by this problem with the Patreon platform too, Cynthia.

I suspect this problem is now affecting all non-US creators, since PayPal now charges a 3% fee for non-US users to withdraw USD to a US bank account (which used to be free) before exchanging it into a local currency with a better processor.

Some people reading this might think they’re not affected by this because they withdraw from PayPal directly to their local bank account in a local currency - and there’s no “fee” for that. But in fact the fee is hidden in the crappy exchange rate PayPal forces you to use when you exchange your USD into other currencies. This exchange rate is equivalent to you paying approx 3% of your withdrawal.

So either way, PayPal is now taking 3% of the income of non-US creators on top of what it already takes in fees from Patrons to support Creators; and for Creators to withdraw from Patreon.

Normally, when you’re being scammed like this you take your business elsewhere; you turn to another processor. But the painful reality is that we can’t. We can’t because Patreon forces us to withdraw to PayPal (and Payoneer is only marginally better).

The annoying thing is that Patreon is treating this like some kind of feature request. When in fact it needs to treat it as a new vulnerability on its platform that’s leaving many users exposed to financial exploitation by PayPal; and deal with it accordingly, ie: as a matter of priority.

Because every month that passes, it costs Creators like us and Cynthia lost income.

5 Likes
15

Paypal’s behavior has gone crazy in order to earn on the exchange fee.

I live in Italy but I have a dollar account at my Italian bank, when I try to transfer the dollars from Paypal to my dollar account it happens that Paypal first converts them into Euros, taking the 3% commission, then sends them to my bank . So my bank is forced to convert Euros into dollars, and this for amounts that were originally dollars. This is absurd.

I love Patreon but it is time for you to offer more options to withdraw our money, for example direct transfer to our banks.

6 Likes
17

I couldn’t agree more, Payoneers fees are way too high and we shouldn’t be forced to use them! It’s crazy they receive 2% of our earnings for doing nothing when there’s much cheaper alternatives. For example my bank only charges a 0.4% conversion fee, this may not sound like a big difference but Payoneer’s fees add up to thousands of dollars so cutting them out would save me a ton. Even if you withdraw to a USD bank account they STILL charge you 2% which is infuriating!!

Please let non US creators withdraw to a USD bank account like Transferwise!

1 Like
19

You’re a lucky man, PayPal takes even more and I really hate this!

20

This. I’m in exactly the same situation as you. I live in Italy, I have a multicurrency bank account but I still can’t receive my payments in dollars because PayPal forces me to convert dollars to euros anytime I’m withdrawing money to a bank account in the Eurozone, thus applying their crazy conversion fees. I really hope Patreon adds Wise as a payment option or direct transfer to bank accounts. Patreon is my main source of income and it’s frustrating to see how much money PayPal is making off of my hard-earned income.
Please please please, Patreon team, take this into account.

1 Like
21

I hope Patreon will seriously consider adding TranferWise as a payout option. As I am now, I have to choose between Payoneer’s very high fees, or Paypal’s terrible customer service.
I’ve used TransferWise many times in the past, and it’s a great tool with low fees.

2 Likes