- How is Liberapay funded? Are there fees?
- Liberapay does not take a cut of payments, the service is funded by the donations to its own account. However there are payment processing fees.
- Who can use Liberapay?
- Liberapay can be used by anyone who wishes to fund their work by collecting recurrent donations.
- Can creators of NSFW content use Liberapay?
- The payment processors Liberapay supports have unfavourable policies towards sexual content. PayPal requires pre-approval, and Stripe prohibits it entirely. So, while it is possible to use Liberapay for some adult-only content, it is usually better to use a platform specialized in such content.
- Can I modify or stop my donations?
- Yes, you can stop your donations or modify their amounts, periods and renewal modes at any time through your “Giving” page. Stopping a donation doesn't trigger any refund, it merely cancels future renewals.
- Can I make a one-time donation?
- Liberapay is designed for long-term stable funding and only supports recurring gifts.
- What are the differences between Liberapay and other recurrent crowdfunding platforms like Patreon?
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- Liberapay is only for donations, meaning that transactions must not be linked to a contract nor a promise of recompense.
- Liberapay is an open project structured around a non-profit organization, which sets it apart from commercial platforms like Patreon and Tipeee.
- We care about internationalization, our service supports multiple currencies and is translated into many languages (you can contribute).
If you'd like more details, the Snowdrift.coop folks have compiled a big list of crowdfunding platforms and the differences between them.
- Is this platform secure?
- Liberapay has been running for 9 years without any significant security incident. We do everything we can to keep your data safe and comply with the laws of the European Union (GDPR, PSD2, et cetera).
- Does Liberapay respect financial regulations?
- Yes. Liberapay is based in France and complies with the European Union's financial regulations. Our payment processors are all properly licensed, and they help us block fraud, money laundering, and terrorism financing.
- How do I know that my donation won't go to an impostor?
- You can usually check the authenticity of a Liberapay profile by looking at the social accounts connected to it. Only someone who controls a social account can connect it to a Liberapay profile, because the process includes an authentication step. You can also look for a link to a Liberapay profile in a project's official website. Finally if you have doubts about a specific account you can ask us and we'll look into it.
- How do I know that my pledges won't be claimed by an impostor?
- A pledge is linked to an account on another platform (e.g. GitHub) and it can only be claimed by someone who controls this account.
- Which countries and currencies are supported?
- See the “Global” page.
- What payment methods are available?
- The available payment methods depend on which payment processors are supported by the recipient. If a payment is processed by Stripe, then most credit and debit cards (American Express, Cartes Bancaires, Diners, Discover, JCB, Mastercard, UnionPay, and Visa) are accepted, as well as SEPA Direct Debits (only for donations in euros to recipients in SEPA countries). If a payment is through PayPal, then it's possible to pay in various ways, however the donor needs to have or create a PayPal account.
- What are the payment processing fees?
- The fees vary by payment processor, payment method, countries and currencies. In the last year, the average fee percentages have been 3.1% for the payments processed by Stripe and 5% for the payments processed by PayPal.
- Why do I see partial refunds in the Stripe dashboard?
- Partial refunds are how we recover Stripe's fee on single-recipient payments. These refunds are from your Stripe account to Liberapay's, not to the donor.
- How are chargebacks handled?
- If despite our fraud prevention efforts you receive money whose origin is revealed to be fraudulent, it falls on you to pay it back.
- Is there a minimum or maximum amount I can give or receive?
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The minimum you can give any user is $0.01 per week, but in order to minimize processing fees you will be asked to pay for multiple weeks in advance.
The maximum you can give any one user is $100.00 per week. This helps to stabilize income by reducing how dependent it is on a few large patrons. - Do I have to pay taxes on the income I receive from Liberapay?
- We don't know, it's up to you to figure out your country's tax rules.
- Are donations through Liberapay tax-deductible?
- Probably not, but it depends on the tax rules of your country.
- Is a Liberapay account a wallet?
- Not since mid-2018. Money sent by a donor immediately goes to the recipient. Previously, funds were held in the donor's account and disbursed little by little to the recipient every week. That system was definitively abandoned due to its very significant drawbacks.