Stripe – It was Fun While it Lasted

Remember last week when I told you a long and happy story about adding a new way to donate to support the shows at the Podfeet Podcasts? Paul Nielan had mentioned that having to create an account to use either Patreon or PayPal was just enough friction to keep him from donating for a long time. He said that if I’d had an Apple Pay button he would have done it long before.

The happy story was how I created a Stripe account which let me do exactly that. It was wildly successful with a lot of donations flowing in during the first 24 hours after I announced my fancy new podfeet.com/donate page.

I basked in the joy of the generosity of others throughout Monday. And then on Tuesday, I got an email from Stripe entitled, “Closure of your Stripe account for Podfeet Podcasts”. The message said,

We’re writing to let you know that we have determined that your business, Podfeet Podcasts, is in violation of the Stripe Services Agreement. Specifically, we are unable to accept payments for donations to unregistered charities, as mentioned on our Restricted Businesses list. As a result, we will have to close your Stripe account on December 26, 2024.

I couldn’t believe it. I used the provided link immediately to explain that I was not running a charity and that I fully expected to pay taxes on this income. A few hours later I got a response that said,

Unfortunately, following an additional review of your account we’re still unable to support your business as it falls under one of our restricted businesses categories.

I read all of the terms and conditions I could find and nowhere could I find any restrictions I’d violated. I asked ChatGPT for help and it gave me a link that talked about donations and in there it repeated what they’d been trying to explain – that donations == charity.

I thought it was worth one more try so I wrote a new email in which I asked them how I could use Stripe’s services. I told them I didn’t run ads and how I’ve been using PayPal for one-time donations and was there some different distinction I could be under that would let me give Stripe money instead of PayPal. Again they responded very quickly:

Thank you for providing additional information about your business.

Unfortunately, following an additional review of your account, we’re still unable to support your business as it falls under one of our restricted business categories ( ~https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses~ – Processing where there are no bona fide goods or services sold, or donations accepted ).

 We’re sorry we can’t be of more help, but these restrictions are firm.

I think what they mean is that a voluntary donation to a podcast isn’t considered a bona fide good or service sold. I’m not holding anything back from you if you don’t pay, so I’m not really selling you anything. I suspect if I’d set this up as a premium podcast for restricted content, it might have worked, but I don’t want to do that. I went to sleep very sad on Tuesday night.

In the middle of the night, I had an epiphany. Stripe isn’t the only game in town. What about one of those tip jar-type services? I went back to sleep and a bit later woke up again with a whole new epiphany. I have seen (and donated) to people via something called Buy Me a Coffee. This service is widely used for shareware software, which IS a bona fide good, but they never really connect the two. It’s more like after the bellperson brings you your luggage and they make it obvious that if you dropped a few dollars in their palm they wouldn’t sneer at you.

When I was fully awake, I went to buymeacoffee.com and created an account. It asked to connect to my bank so it could pay me and… it opened to a Stripe login. My first thought was that I’d hit another brick wall but I kept going. It fed me into a different section of Stripe.com called Stripe Express and it was branded with Buy Me a Coffee. From what I can tell, I have two different accounts in Stripe, both under the same login credentials. One for my soon-to-be canceled Podfeet Podcasts account and one to my Stripe Express account through Buy Me a Coffee.

Before going much further, I did a pre-emptive strike and wrote back in my original thread to my incredibly responsive friends at Stripe. I said,

I’m setting up an account at Buy Me a Coffee, but it says they use Stripe for payment processing. Can I assume that Stripe won’t block me from using Buy Me a Coffee?

In a much wordier answer than the other folks who had succinctly said no, Simran, amongst a lot of other information said,

I see that you have another Stripe express [sic], connected to Buy Me a Coffee. This account is active and set to receive payments and payouts. You can use this account to collect payments from your customers.

Additionally, I would also like to inform you that, currently, your Express account doesn’t require any further verification.

They didn’t technically answer my question but I figured it was worth a shot to keep going. In Buy Me a Coffee, they asked for a banner image so I supplied one that has Chit Chat Across the Pond, Programming By Stealth, NosillaCast, and Taming the Terminal logos on it. Technically it says Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite so I’ll have to fix that branding but for now, it gets the point across that I have a pile of podcasts. They asked for an avatar, but my Podfeet didn’t fit nicely in the circle provided so I used a photo my grandson Forbes took of me.

Believe it or not, that’s all I had to do on Buy Me a Coffee to get the page up and connected to Stripe. Just like before, if you’re using Safari, you’ll see an Apple Pay logo and an option to pay with any credit card. If you use Link you can autofill your credit card as well. As I explained last week, sadly non-Safari browsers don’t show the Apple Pay option. I didn’t have to do any work at all to have these options available for you. I guess that’s what the “Express” part of Stripe Express means.

Now let’s talk about how smart I am. Remember last week when I said I wanted to use podfeet.com/donate as the URL instead of podfeet.com/stripe just in case I ever wanted to change my payment processor? That decision sure became useful much sooner than I expected!

I went back to Digital Ocean (my server provider), logged into my console, opened my NGINX configuration file, and changed the redirect of podfeet.com/donate from Stripe to buymeacoffee.com/podfeet. I reloaded the NGINX webserver, and now my donate link goes right to my Buy Me a Coffee donation page instead of Stripe. Dang, I’m brilliant.

Here’s a little more info on Buy Me a Coffee. From your perspective, while you do get to choose how much to donate, it’s in the number of $5 coffees you want to buy me. You might think $5 is a lot for coffee (and it is), but that’s about what my grande non-fat, no-whip, no-foam 180° mocha costs at Starbucks. You won’t be able to donate $38 or $27 but I don’t think anyone has ever done anything but a multiple of $5 anyway.

It defaults to one cup and has options for 3 or 5 cups, or you can type in any number of cups you want to donate. Then it suggests you say something nice and add your name or social handle. I think it’s sweet.

On the flip side, having Buy Me a Coffee and Stripe involved means the financial cut is taken by two companies instead of just one. I still have to pay the 2.9% + 30¢ to Stripe and Buy Me a Coffee takes another 5%. That’s pretty steep! In US dollars, it means $20 turns into $18.12. That’s still great though because everyone who didn’t want to open an account has an easy way now.

Of the three services, the best deal for me is Patreon because I got in on it before 2019 so I’m considered a “founder”. Founders only pay 1.6% + 30¢. The next best deal for me is PayPal at 2.99%, and then Buy Me a Coffee at 7.9% + 30¢. I don’t mean to discourage you from using the new Buy Me a Coffee option if you don’t want to create an account, I’m just saying if you already have a PayPal or Patreon account, it’s ok by me to keep using it!

There’s one more great thing about Buy Me a Coffee. They have a very obvious toggle in the interface to let people see the donation amounts in their own currency. I had Steven Goetz in Canada check and he confirmed that he can see it in Canadian dollars rather than US. Now I need Tom Mattock to verify that the interface is accessible (without actually donating this time!)

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that I had a sad couple of days after such a great victory, but now I’m happy again since I found a really good solution. Fingers crossed that Stripe stands by what they told me and leaves my Buy Me a Coffee account alone! And of course, I’m patting myself on the back for my brilliance in naming the URL generically to podfeet.com/donate.

One More Thing (edited)

One more thing about the change from Stripe to Buy Me a Coffee. After Ian Prinssen made a donation via Stripe, I wrote him to discuss one thing that gave me pause about the service. I could see his home address, and in fact, the physical address for each kind donor. I don’t want access to that kind of information. I was asking him if he thought it was an intrusion on your privacy right around the time I got the notification from Stripe that they were cancelling my account.

I’m happy to note that Claus Wolfe donated to the podcasts using my new Buy Me a Coffee method and I just checked – the supporter page I can see gives me no personal information about him other than the email address he provided. He was kind enough to add a little note where it says “say something nice” and added his social media handle. This little note shows on the main page at podfeet.com/donate under “Recent supporters” so you can see it too.

I’m glad to be using Buy Me a Coffee so I’m not responsible for knowing anything about you that you didn’t choose to share with me.