Donations without Paypal/Credit Card?

@chrisg some Germans have credit cards, many have none, on many sites you can buy online by invoice and on most you can using paypal or something similar.

ā€œPayPal or something similarā€ is all very well, but you still need a credit card to open a PayPal account!

@anahata: this is not true, at least not universally (for example, it is not true in the US or in the UK)

@anahata: sorry, but in this case you are misinformed.

sorry for the doublepost.

@anahata I can use PayPal in Germany by sending money from my regular bank-account. Still PayPal demands to register a credit card if I wish to subscribe for payments on a regular basis.

OK, apologies for the misinformation. I also use a UK payment service: nochex, and that does insist on a CC for initial registration, even though you can link it to a bank account for all transactions thereafter.

To pay with a credit car, it seems that I have to create a Paypal account, which I do not want to.

What about this ?
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).

And do you plan to make it possible to use bitcoin payment ?

programLyrique: you do NOT need to have a paypal account to use a credit card. You simply have to give PayPal an email address as part of the credit card transaction. You will end up on the PayPal website, but they are simply acting as card payment processors, and you do not need an account there.

The alternative subscription service is mostly ready to go but ā€¦ the company providing it was purchased by ā€¦ PayPal. I am waiting to see what happens to their services over then next few months before I decide whether or not to deploy it.

I have no plans at present to accept bitcoins. The currency fluctuation of bitcoins relative to the currency I need to use to eat and pay for clothes and heating fuel is currently too great for me to deal with.

Thanks for the quick answer.

Are you sure of that ?

When I arrive on paypal, I have two options :

  • pay with you paypal account (Iā€™m translating it from French, so it may be not exactly that sentence)
  • create a paypal account (and below, in little characters, and pay with a credit card). In that option, I have to choose a password, fill in my name, my adress, and so onā€¦
    So it seems like I have to create a paypal accountā€¦

Apparently French law/rules and/or business practice are different. Those things are not required for the US PayPal site.

I just found a site which seems to indicate it is possible to do in France (http://www.magavenue.com/blog/prestashop/prestashop-paypal-carte-bancaire in Frenchā€¦) and some people were successful with it as recently as the 8th of October.

And the doc on Paypal about direct credit card payment exists also in French and indicates it is possible.

Thatā€™s strangeā€¦

@Boesmann: I think the point Paul was trying to make over the last few years is that the best compromise in regard to efficiency, practicality and integrity is currently Paypal. If you know a better alternative to finance this project, your ideas will be certainly welcome. As an acknowledgement, I might even drop you a case of beer.

@Boesmann: I heavily differ from your opinion and your evaluation about Ardour 3.x. . But if interpreting your lines correctly, I find it great that you have high expectations of Ardour and the obtaining process. Although your take on things seems a little harsh at first sight, I guess it shows that you are taking this project seriously, which is good. I could assume that many of the ardour developers secretly embrace the idea of challenging your expectations and gradually the ones of the proprietary DAW market. However, ideal and reality are still to be matched, as they always are. From this viewpoint your thoughts are very motivating.

Iā€™m currently also in the situation that I want to donate to the project but cannot do so, because I have no PayPal-account or a credit-card. It would really be nice if Paul could create a bank-account in an EU-country (I live in Germany), so payments from any EU-country can be done with a simple bank-transfer.

Please donā€™t tell me to create a PayPal-account. This will never happenā€¦

Thanks.

And I am yet another german who doesnā€™t want to (and wonā€™t) use PayPal. I would donate some money using my credit card but unfortunately this doesnā€™t work without PayPal in germany or am I wrong?

So please if there is another way: tell me. I really want to support this project!

Hey Paul, I really appreciate that you made an effort to allow payments without a PayPal account lately, but unfortunately (here in Austria) I too am being asked to create a PayPal account just to get the payment via my credit card processed. (Which is kind of strange though because I thought I have encountered ā€œprocessed by PayPalā€ credit card forms not asking me for a password before, and in fact I just checked how the Blender Foundation handles its donations - see http://www.blender.org/foundation/donation-payment/ - and in their PayPal form I donā€™t see any password fields ā€¦ Not sure whatā€™s going on there, maybe itā€™s a different form and the account creation prompt is hidden in a subsequent step?)

In any case, hereā€™s two pieces of information I can provide specifically addressing online payment in europe:

ā€œSOFORTā€ seems to be a big thing here (although I havenā€™t used it myself so far) - They support 11 countries in europe and their fees seem to be much lower compared to PayPal. (that is, if my quick research on that is correct - some 3.5% fees for PayPal and only 0.9% for SOFORT)
https://www.sofort.com/eng-INT/
https://www.sofort.com/eng-INT/merchant/sofort-banking/costs-and-fees/

And also ā€¦ As of February 1st, Europe has introduced the SEPA payment system, which unifies money transfers among 34 european states ā€¦ If you could get hold of a bank account in one of these countries, you would reduce the barrier for european donators a big deal! (even allowing people without a credit card to support you!)


http://www.readyforsepa.ie/

seems like its now the case in the UK. I just checked and now you can to create an account. you used to be able to use paypal without an account.

If you could get hold of a bank account in one of these countries ā€¦ ah, but that is the if, isnā€™t it? A decade or two ago, it might not have been so hard to get such an account without proof of residence, etc. These days, not so much. Iā€™d be happy to hear clues from anyone who has them.

well if that is an issue i am more than happy to open up a bank-account here in switzerland and transfer any donations once a month via paypal or whatever to paul.