Hi
Sponsorion caught my eye and I reached out to them with a few questions of the top of my head:
1: How will you handle vat for creators? Will you offer the same service as Patreon in this regard?
2: Will Payoneer be a part of your payment solution for transferring money from your site?
3: How about certain sexual fetiches, like incest, rape, mind control and such? Will they be allowed on Sponsorium?
4: Is Paypal going to be part of this?
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Here is their response:
1. The payment processor we're in talks with for receiving payments, EmerchantBroker, does indeed handle VAT, so it will likely be similar to the service Patreon offers (automatically taking it into account). EMB is a 'high risk' processor that openly works with the adult content industry. Its rates are also highly competitive, with the initial rate of 3.95% +0.35c for new partners that will eventually fall to ~2.95%+0.35c (which is nearly identical to the rate [2.9+0.35] Paypal is giving Patreon).
High Risk processing has gotten a great deal more competitive over the past decade in general, although most of them
aren't capable of handling crowdfunding platforms.
2. Although Payoneer is, in practice, a major processor for adult content of all kinds, it appears their corporate policy is to deny this and refuse to work with companies that admit to having any interaction with the porn industry (even if the company itself is not involved in the porn creation). This is based on the last time we tried to speak with them, and suggests that they'll only work with us if we deceive them. That strikes us as a poor, rather unstable choice for our processing needs. Our current plan is to handle payouts by directly utilizing bank ACH services. Which is done by competitive payout handlers as well, they just have the process expedited / automated.
This does mean that payouts will work more like they did when Patreon was getting started (a few days after the start of each month). They probably also handled the ACH process themselves back then, although we don't know that for sure. In the long run we'll need to fully automate the payouts, but in the long run we'll also be a sizable company which will open doors not readily available for a start-up.
3. They will be allowed, yes. Everything you mentioned is legal to depict in the U.S., which is what will be determining what is and is not allowed. We're incorporated in Illinois, to be specific.
4. Paypal is extremely hostile to adult content creators, we're not working with them. It took Patreon several years to get Paypal on board, and we don't know what kind of concessions they had to make to do it. At the very least we'd need to be a multi-million dollar company for Paypal to even consider working with us without demanding content restrictions.
Please feel free to email us any other questions you may have!
Best Wishes,
The Sponsorion Team
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Cheers - Kaffekop
