[HN Gopher] Liberapay
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Liberapay
Author : nanna
Score : 182 points
Date : 2025-03-18 12:21 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.liberapay.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.liberapay.com)
| 3x3m3 wrote:
| No way to donate Bitcoin?
| schlauerfox wrote:
| If the end user wants to accept bitcoin, they will publish an
| address one can directly transfer to. It is peer-to-peer, so no
| need for a service.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| No and it isn't on their roadmap. Projects who want to accept
| crypto should probably just put a wallet address on their pages
| rather than trying to rely on systems like Liberapay that
| aren't setup to facilitate transfers.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > However, we do not handle any crypto-currency.
|
| Thankfully not.
| culi wrote:
| What value would that add? Recipients accepting crypto usually
| just put up a wallet address. Why add a middle person
| SamWhited wrote:
| No, Liberapay only takes donations in real money.
| patcon wrote:
| I love Liberapay. I wish more people in the EU used it or
| contributed to it (it's FOSS) instead of using Patreon or GitHub
| Sponsors.
| daghamm wrote:
| I like librapay, I wish more people would use it.
|
| I also hope they can reduce the ratio paid to paypal/stripe. More
| money should go to devs.
| yawndex wrote:
| I don't think that would be possible, as Liberapay is
| essentially just a UI for accepting donations directly into the
| developers' Stripe/PayPal accounts.
| m00dy wrote:
| good catch, it is not a payment processor.
| daghamm wrote:
| But maybe they can negotiate a better deal for their
| payments?
| m00dy wrote:
| Payment processing is dominated by a massive monopoly,
| leaving no room for negotiation. The industry is
| controlled by global elites and financial powerhouses who
| gatekeep access. Only stablecoins have the potential to
| disrupt this cycle and offer an alternative.
| culi wrote:
| Doubtful. It's 100% funded by its own Liberapay page.[0]
| It's the second-most donated to recipient but at about
| $650 a week, that's not even enough to hire a full time
| dev let alone the business skills needed to pull
| something like that off
|
| [0] https://en.liberapay.com/Liberapay/
| psychoslave wrote:
| That's more than median dev salary for most European
| country.
|
| https://helloastra.com/blog/article/average-software-
| develop...
| culi wrote:
| That's about $33.8k a year. Before taxes and with no
| benefits
|
| The numbers in your source also contradict your
| statement, but point taken that European dev salaries are
| much nominally lower than American ones. It's still
| obviously not enough to pay a dev and business expert
|
| EDIT: wow I just checked and the weekly amount they
| receive just went up to ~$875!
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| They don't even have the ability to group transactions
| together for US payments (or payments in Australia,
| Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Hong Kong, New Zealand,
| Singapore, and others [1]) to lower fees, so I think any
| hope that a project like this would have any leverage is
| misplaced.
|
| [1]: https://liberapay.com/about/global
| simjnd wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Giving 97% of the money to devs is pretty amazing. They also
| don't take a cut from donations made.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| ooo curious how hard it is to integrate this with Ghost. It's a
| perfect CMS for non-profits who are good at blogging and email
| marketing.
| rpgbr wrote:
| Ghost integrates directly with Stripe, no need to have an
| intermediary like Liberapay.
| culi wrote:
| I follow a lot of very small youtube creators. I can often
| convince them to start a liberapay just for me to donate. They
| get 100% of the cut* (Patreon takes 12-16%) and I am supporting
| both the creator and Liberapay's popularity
|
| The main downside is lack of integrations with the tiered perks
| Patreon offers. Most of the creators I follow don't really rely
| too heavily on the feature but I can see it becoming a larger
| hassle if a creator has to manage two platforms
|
| * less fees
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| I think a notable feature of patreon's cut is that they only
| take it on withdrawal. I don't know how that works for
| individual's tax exposure, but it does serve to inflate the
| cash amounts on the site from people using their patreon income
| to patronise others.
| culi wrote:
| Ah that is interesting. I didn't realize that. Is Patreon
| then allowed to basically act like a bank? Where they can
| invest the cash that's currently sitting in a Patreon
| account? Essentially, everyone leaving money in Patreon is
| giving them a micro-loan
|
| A somewhat related feature of Liberapay is there's a lot of
| flexibility in the frequency of your payments. You can enter
| in $5/week but it will suggest a payment frequency that
| minimizes fee. E.g. paying $21.43 every 30 days instead.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Not necessarily. Not every entity can do whatever they want
| with deposits from others, you need to be an actual bank
| and regulated as such to have the right to invest other
| people's money
| bilekas wrote:
| Just out of interest because it sounds a little too good to be
| true, but it the content creators keep 100% of the donations,
| how are LibrePay funding the operation itself ?
|
| Edit : My lazy self actually went and read up on it :
|
| > 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.
|
| This is a great example of dogfooding.
| culi wrote:
| Yup, liberapay is funded by donations on liberapay
|
| https://liberapay.com/Liberapay/
|
| They're the second largest recipient
| sneak wrote:
| 100% less fees is not 100%. that's like saying a bacon
| cheeseburger is vegetarian, except for the meat.
| internetter wrote:
| Liberapay is my platform of choice! It lacks a lot of flashy
| features but it feels like the closest thing to an 'exchange
| between friends' instead of a commercial sort of relationship.
|
| For the type of works I link my LiberaPay to, I don't have nor
| want tiers and rewards associated with them, as that forms a
| social contract where I am expected to perform more labour. I
| only want money from people who are thankful for what I've
| already provided, and I only want what they're willing to
| provide.
|
| I suspect microscopic rewards like discord roles, a news letter,
| ect. _do_ increase revenue, but then again you 're managing a
| community.
|
| I encountered issues with Stripe so that's been disabled, PayPal
| only, but PayPal doesn't auto renew. Again, I suspect I lost a
| considerable amount of money because of this. But again, taking
| money from people who wouldn't explicitly click 'renew' when they
| get the email doesn't feel right.
|
| I also began offering Ko-fi as an option, however, because some
| people are uncomfortable with unfamiliar platforms.
| internetter wrote:
| Cont... To the best of my understanding and lived experiences,
| there is a strong correlation between 'ethical compromise' on
| the part of the content creator and how much they can expect to
| be compromised for their work
|
| 1. A donation link in the footer... people only see it if
| they're looking for it
|
| 2. More overt reminders (when KDE added a single yearly popup
| notification, donations dramatically increased)
|
| 3. Adding tiers to step up the donations (e.g. maybe you could
| convince most of the $3.99 folks to do $4.99)
|
| 4. Adding rewards to fuel the funder's egos (I try to send
| personal emails thanking them but this isn't an explicitly
| mentioned 'reward' unlike, say, positions in the credits)
|
| 5. In addition to rewards, supplementing income with sponsors.
| The sponsors frequently are exploiting both the creator and the
| consumer (e.g. Honey), but nevertheless compensation does
| increase. Also, affiliate programs. Hard to do without your own
| integrity being compromised when recommending products.
|
| 6. 'Dangerous' monetization that plays with emotions. Onlyfans
| creators creating pseudo-relationships. Entire sponsored videos
| for stuff like gambling.
|
| Of course, it is hard to argue that the oft. underpaid content
| producers are really the ones making ethical concessions when
| they exist under a system that... underfunds them... but
| nevertheless it is undeniable that there are ethical
| concessions, and these concessions are made because they
| increase revenue.
|
| The really really sad part is that you really only see big
| creators throwing doing this stuff despite already having more
| than enough, and they always get away with it, whereas if a
| small creator were to pull this their audience would eat them
| alive.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > Onlyfans creators creating pseudo-relationships.
|
| Twitch, as well. I've stopped watching streamer after
| streamer when it became clear they were only responding to
| people throwing money at them constantly.
|
| I've watched people spend $50-100 _a night_ with a streamer.
| It 's insane. Well over $10k a year.
|
| The same people probably write a $100 check to the local food
| pantry.
| internetter wrote:
| Yeah it's hard for me to watch. I feel sorry for the people
| so attention deprived that they need to throw dozens of
| dollars at a streamer who makes 10000 a night for any sort
| of acknowledgment
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Have you considered self-hosting a payment page? I'm asking
| because I've been building Open Payment Host[1] a self-hosted
| FOSS payments host supporting multiple payment gateways; still
| very much a WIP but I hope soon it will be viable enough for
| someone like you.
|
| P.S. Please ignore the AI autocomplete feature, I included it
| as part of Google hackathon to raise funds for the project;
| I'll be removing it in the upcoming release.
|
| [1] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host
| culi wrote:
| What does your app do differently than something like
| coindrop[0] which is essentially a linktree page linking to
| all donation platforms for a creator
|
| [0] https://coindrop.to/
| gaadd33 wrote:
| Open Payment Host seems to connect to credit card gateways
| (Stripe/Square) whereas coindrop seems to link to P2P style
| payment methods where you are sending funds to an
| "address".
| bsnnkv wrote:
| Does Liberapay provide the various tax forms a receiver needs to
| file their yearly returns in the US?
| creer wrote:
| The receiver does not need any tax forms in the US.
|
| Payers are obligated to issue tax-related forms in certain
| circumstances. But the receivers don't even need those to file
| their own tax paperwork.
| internetter wrote:
| This is an oversimplification. More than likely, income from
| Liberapay can be categorized as a 'gift.' Often, gifts aren't
| taxed to the recipient, so long as its less than $18,000
| (this is not tax advice), Liberapay does not provide tax
| forms or tax advice. Its up to you to accurately categorize
| the income you receive based on the LiberaPay ToS, the
| expectations of your donors and the IRS, and your specific
| campaign.
|
| Your payment processors (PayPal and Stripe) absolutely _do_
| provide tax forms. Its your responsibility to make
| appropriate use of them. But Liberapay itself doesn 't have
| forms it needs to provide (and by god you don't want to
| provide tax forms or tax advice you aren't required by law to
| give)
| schlauerfox wrote:
| Pretty sure that is misleading, i'm no tax lawyer but gift
| rules only apply to friends and family. Buskers have to
| report income from performing, waitstaff have to report
| voluntary tips given to them and while there's probably no
| caselaw yet, I would suspect the IRS would fight you on
| income you receive entertaining other people not being
| 'gifts'.
| internetter wrote:
| A gift is defined by the IRS as "Any transfer to an
| individual, either directly or indirectly, where full
| consideration (measured in money or money's worth) is not
| received in return."
|
| Nowhere in this statement does it say "gift rules only
| apply to friends and family"
|
| If you reach the point where a substantial portion of
| your income is Patreon or whatever (and thus, you
| wouldn't be otherwise performing the entertainment
| service), I'm sure the IRS would view it differently.
|
| "a recipient generally can exclude from gross income for
| federal income tax purposes a donation from a
| nongovernment donor as a gift if the donation is
| motivated by detached and disinterested generosity and is
| not in anticipation of an economic benefit or in return
| for services."
|
| ref https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/03-0025.pdf and
| Commissioner v. Duberstein, 363 U.S. 278 (1960)
|
| perhaps, my categorization of "more than likely" could be
| incorrect. But given how relatively small[0] most
| accounts make on Liberapay, that is what I imagine most
| in the US would be calling it.
|
| https://liberapay.com/explore/recipients
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Last time I checked into this, the answer was no. This is very
| much a more EU-focused service, based on the stuff they offer.
| And even then, they don't pre-collect for VAT like Patreon
| does.
|
| (I just checked and couldn't get a definitive answer but since
| it's been 5 years [1] since there was any update on a ticket
| requesting the ability to offer invoices in PDF form of your
| monthly receivables, my gut instinct says the answer is still,
| "no")
|
| [1]: https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.com/issues/714
| mvdtnz wrote:
| One thing I like in a payments system is when the website goes
| down from a little bit of traffic.
| johnisgood wrote:
| They submitted it to HN to try out their new {hard,soft}ware.
| :D
| cozzyd wrote:
| -lerapay?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Hmm, the name seems a bit off. "Librepay" makes me think of a
| user-respecting service. Liberapay sounds like it is based in
| Liberia or something.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Related: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr flattr , which
| shutdown in 2023.
| brianzelip wrote:
| https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.com
| amryl wrote:
| Can it be compared in any way with GNU Taler payment system ?
| riffraff wrote:
| No, it's something like Patreon, not a currency infrastructure.
| nickpsecurity wrote:
| Has anyone done a review with the strengths and weaknesses of
| Liberapay vs common platforms?
| bullen wrote:
| I wish they had ways to setup fixed price recurring payment
| items.
|
| Right now I use gumroad but they take a very high fee.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > 745 new donations have been started in the past month,
| increasing total weekly funding by $899.10
|
| > 14 new pledges have been made in the past month, adding $35.79
| of weekly donations waiting to be claimed.
|
| > 20,426.66 was transferred last week between 14,076 users.
|
| Not really encouraging stats for a system that has been around
| for ten years, though maybe the PR from being mentioned on here
| will give it a boost.
|
| (It took considerable effort to copy that text, because they are
| using text-selection blocking tricks. Nowhere else on the page is
| this the case...)
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(page generated 2025-03-21 23:00 UTC)