PayPal is still working well for me. For Canadians, a wrench has been tossed into the works. As of October 10th, 2017 (if my research is correct) PayPal issued a $3 CAD (Canadian Dollar) fee to PayPal users sending money across to recipients outside of Canada. Canadians can still send money to each other, via the friends and family option, without a charge. Also, US users can still send money via the family and friends option, without incurring a fee. So, if I send a $1 USD tip to a Canadian blogger, they’ll receive the amount it equals in Canadian currency. Now, in reverse...If a Canadian reader (and I have several) wants to tip me $1, and do it via PayPal’s friends and family option, it will cost them $3 CAD to send $1 CAD, totaling $4 CAD. The fee is more than the tip, which can be as little as .03 US cents. Fallout
Readers have been participating by tipping just $1 per month for three consecutive months, or by issuing a one time, $3 tip to the site, via PayPal. At the end of the quarter, a winner is drawn and they receive a sizeable cash-back prize via their PayPal account. Vicki, the site’s owner and blogger, is also an avid reader and very active in the indie biz community as both a customer and business owner, for many years. She’s well known to be consistently supportive of indie photojournalists who blog for a living, by tipping them via PayPal on a monthly basis. One reader’s tips isn’t enough to support a blogger, but a few hundred or thousand, who tip only $1 a month makes for a quality income, allowing photojournalists to work in the field their chosen field and manage their business from their own website with minimal overhead. Now, with PayPal incurring a $3 transfer fee for even minor tips, many pro bloggers in the US and other countries are likely to see a marked decrease in tips due to the transaction fees costing PayPal users even more than the average monthly tip of $1. Viable alternativesAnd so, as Vicki’s webmaster, colleague and friend, I’ve been on the hunt for a quality alternative to PayPal for the Canadians to use as a virtual tipping platform. I’ve found several and already had established accounts with a couple of them. Of those, the three I’ve actually used are Google Wallet, NetSpend and Payza. Google Wallet wins my preference. It’s come a long way since I first used it, which was mostly for EBook and app purchases. It’s easy and secure to use from my smart phone or my laptop and if I’ve ever incurred a charge for using it, it was so minimal I’ve forgotten about it. There’s also no fee charged to send money from the USA to someone in Canada and vice versa. You don’t even have to do it via a friends and family option. Google’s made it easier still in that we don’t have to sign into a separate app when sending money to a recipient. We can do it in a snap, right in our Gmail. Yet another and maybe even bigger perk is, the recipient doesn’t have to have a Google account. They’ll just get instructions in the email on how to get their money. Sweet! It’s a super-simple process. Have a look...
Wanna see more? Click the following: Send & receive money with Gmail. AppsGoogle Wallet also provides easy to use apps for Android and iPhone users. It can be accessed via a laptop or desktop web-browser by going to google.com/wallet. Whether you use it from your laptop, desktop or mobile device, it works much the same way on all three. I haven’t yet done a test drive on sending money via gmail, but I plan to as soon as I have my newest bank account set up for the transaction process, which should be complete by this afternoon. Google Wallet accounts set up pretty much identically with PayPal, so it’s an easy, painless process that doesn’t take long. In case you’re wondering...Why not Patreon? I’m not loving Patreon due to my dislike for it requiring a recurring monthly amount to be auto-withdrawn from user accounts. What if I have more money to spend on tips one month than I do in another? What if I tipped a site $5 one month and wanted to tip $10 the next? I’m not just referring to the bloggers’ sites I follow and tip regularly. I’m talking about any operation in the indie biz community. On the flip side, although I won’t use Patreon for tips, I do think it’s an excellent resource for those who provide a static amount of monthly, monetary support to charities such as animal rescues and disaster relief programs. Patreon allows for withdrawals as small as $1 USD and charges no fee for the transaction. That, at least, is how it was listed when I established an account with them last year. For monthly supportive that’s the same amount each time, it works perfectly. You can set it and forget it. If you and 50 friends want to support a local animal rescue fostering farm (Hint! Hint!), the foster-farm owner knows they can pretty much count on about $50 monthly to arrive in their accounts, helping them with expenses, such as feed, vetting and a myriad of other things that cost them money. It makes it much easier for them to budget knowing how much they’ll have to work with. Okay, how ‘bout you?Are you a Canadian (or other country's resident) PayPal user who’s been displeased with the new $3 transaction fee? Are you an American, or indie biz owner in another country who has, or risks, losing income due to some (or all) of your Canadian associates, clients or fans diminishing their use of PayPal, or stopping with it completely? Let us know in the comments, or via email. The flashPress readers and I are sincerely interested in your take on this, and how it might be affecting your work. ShoutOuts The wrap!That’s it for this one!
God bless you! Thanks for the tips! Thanks for the read and hope you’ll come again for the next Tuesday edition of the Pumpkin Run Pulse.
10 Comments
10/24/2017 03:11:22 pm
Hi Angelia:
Reply
Angelia S. Phillips
10/24/2017 03:21:06 pm
Rolly,
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Hi Angelia,
Reply
Vicki,
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crazyhorseladycx
10/24/2017 06:43:05 pm
howdy, ms. femme!
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Angelia S. Phillips
10/30/2017 10:21:32 am
Hi CHL!
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So, the Capitalists have annexed Canada's PayPal, and, of course, the rest of PayPal users in the world will also be milked soon. Unless all users drop PayPal like a hot potato. Let it sink. One can understand that they would like to make some money, but $3 CAD for even a $1 CAD is ridiculous. And even more ridiculous when you compare it to the value of the SA's Rand.
Reply
Angelia
10/30/2017 10:26:11 am
Martie,
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Angelia S. Phillips
10/30/2017 10:29:24 am
Prof. Mahreer,
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