On 16 Dec 2004, at 18:12, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

We also need to try to find out how to get a European bank account so that method of payment can be done.

Due to me having lived in various EU countries during the past few years, I am a customer with an Irish, a British and a German bank, all of whom offer online banking as part of the package. I also regularly do these newfangled ''EU transactions'', ie. IBAN+BIC transactions, which per EU law must not cost more than national transactions inside the bank's country, so they'd be a boon in terms of accepting donations from inside the EU, especially as eg. Germans commonly don't have credit cards (for some weird reason they're regarded as snobbish and elitist in Germany).

Should I make preliminary enquiries and ask them what's required/what's on offer? Presumably you want a current account in the name of not an individual person but rather the foundation (if that's possible)?

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 18:36:49 +0100, Jens Ropers ropers@ropersonline.com wrote:

...

Germans commonly don't have credit cards (for some weird reason they're regarded as snobbish and elitist in Germany).

On 17 Dec 2004, at 10:54, Robin Shannon wrote:

So how do germans usually pay for stuff online?

paz y amor, [[User:The bellman]]

It varies. (I'm not an expert here, as my online "coming of age" took place while I was living in Ireland and later England. Even now that I'm again based in Germany I rarely deal with German online businesses.)

eBay for instance has developed something called "Überweisung Plus" (which translates to "bank transfer plus"). Similar with paypal, you can do an Überweisung from and for a German paypal account. I also learned that it's for example standard practice with all German hosting providers to require customers to print out and snail mail in confirmation forms.

The complete insanity with this this daft German credit card aversion is that it doesn't make effin sense: The German public considers credit cards a privilege of the rich -- when the opposite is the case, really. The way I remember things from Britain, while credit cards were a currency of convenience to well-off people, the folks who really DEPENDED on them were the less well off who did not always have the cash on hand and really could use the credit (with the attached risk of being hit with extortionate rates if they didn't pay back the money within a month, but that's another issue). If I'm using my VISA in Germany I get funny looks ("Gee, he must be a rich bastard. Who would've thought?!") due to my now being a student. PEOPLE JUST DON'T FECKIN UNDERSTAND. It's called "CREDIT card". _CREDIT_ card, GEDDIT!!! If I HAD the money ready I wouldn't NEED to use a _credit_ card. Yet somehow the perception that credit cards are snobbish is so ingrained in German public consciousness, it's mental, really. The retailers don't help things by often not accepting credit card because of the tiny fraction that the card companies keep. And worst of all, German banks treat requests for credit cards as if you were asking for a complimentary limo ride. They are really selective about who gets a credit card, because even they suffer from the above delusion (all the worse for their business) and try to let you feel that to be granted a credit card is a massive privilege which should inspire your perpetual loyalty. The only bank in Germany that's not as much a moron about credit cards is citibank. I wonder why that is? ;-)

Without knowing any inside info, I'm pretty certain e.g. that German iTunes sales will be below expectations, because you need a credit card for the thing and Germans just ''don't have credit cards'' (even well-off people often don't).

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com

Several of these subsequent posts, in my biased opinion of course, have made the case quite eloquently for offering an alternative payment mechanism for those benighted souls worldwide that lack plastic.

One comment was to the effect that people without credit cards probably lack Internet access or the wherewithal to make charitable donations. The German sub-thread is an interesting counter-argument. Do Germans use e-gold? Sample data for one week (admittedly our best recorded week), in terms of number of visits broken down by country of origin:

top 20 (out of 165 countries total that visited the e-gold site that week):

United States 243,408 China 63,390 Canada 34,565 Australia 31,826 Indonesia 27,994 Netherlands 20,272 United Kingdom 19,022 Germany 17,595 Poland 17,496 Hong Kong 16,308 Russia 15,531 India 9,005 Sweden 5,633 Japan 4,853 Singapore 4,753 Taiwan 4,508 Italy 4,249 Uruguay 3,877 Ukraine 3,287 France 3,235

In most Asian countries, and to a lesser extent Africa and South America, there are many more Internet users than credit cards. The stats for China, for example are 87 million Internet users, vs. perhaps as many as 52 million cards (not credit card users - the typical user has several and uses them rarely - they are more of an urban status symbol).

Are people external to the formal economy all lacking in wealth? Not according to Hernando de Soto, who estimates the composite wealth of this majority of humankind to exceed $9 trillion.

The bottom line, though is the insightful comment by Mav. It is true that simply adding e-gold with the intent of garnering donations from existing e-gold users wouldn't lead to much additional income for the Foundation any time soon. The only way it might ignite something phenomenal would be if combined with actual soft promotion, on the order of an endorsement and some explanation/interpretation. My theory is that many of the people who find the various Wiki resources compelling and valuable are the same type of people who are intrigued by the possibility of a privately issued alternative global currency. My guess, and I have no data to support this (since Mozilla and EFF barely expose their e-gold option, let alone help to explain it), is that some subset of them would be grateful to the foundation for bringing e-gold to their attention in a favorable light and would go out of their way to assure that the Foundation was the beneficiary of their incentive-related revenues, similar to affinity card programs.

It is quite possible that the Wiki community is more of an OECD country demographic and you simply don't have many users from third world countries. I guess I'm just having trouble seeing the downside of offering this non-correlated alternative. It doesn't cost anything. Its instant. Its the only payment option that is truly global and does not require the payer to be credit-worthy. In less time than it takes to discuss, the e-gold interface could have been implemented and tested (literally in minutes - you can paste a button for instance that does the whole shebang in simplified form).

Andre Engels wrote:

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 12:28:00 +0100, Jens Ropers ropers@ropersonline.com wrote:

...

And worst of all, German banks treat requests for credit cards as if you were asking for a complimentary limo ride. They are really selective about who gets a credit card, because even they suffer from the above delusion (all the worse for their business) and try to let you feel that to be granted a credit card is a massive privilege which should inspire your perpetual loyalty.

Well, I think that's logical. Granting you a credit card means giving you a credit. I don't know about American and British banks, but European banks tend to give credit only to those who are expected to be able to pay it back.

Andre Engels _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

What e-gold article?

Dori wrote:

...

The bottom line, though is the insightful comment by Mav. It is true that simply adding e-gold with the intent of garnering donations from existing e-gold users wouldn't lead to much additional income for the Foundation any time soon. The only way it might ignite something phenomenal would be if combined with actual soft promotion, on the order of an endorsement and some explanation/interpretation. My theory is that many of the people who find the various Wiki resources compelling and valuable are the same type of people who are intrigued by the possibility of a privately issued alternative global currency. My guess, and I have no data to support this (since Mozilla and EFF barely expose their e-gold option, let alone help to explain it), is that some subset of them would be grateful to the foundation for bringing e-gold to their attention in a favorable light and would go out of their way to assure that the Foundation was the beneficiary of their incentive-related revenues, similar to affinity card programs.

The Foundation has yet to endorse anything commercial. If it did, there are probably plenty of more lucrative deals out there, but it would lose a lot of faith in its users. Sorry, but the measly *profits* would not be worth the loss of the community IMO. Although you're could expand/create the e-gold article as long as you keep it NPOV and factual.

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 20:54:15 +1100, Robin Shannon robin.shannon@gmail.com wrote:

So how do germans usually pay for stuff online?

Bank transfers. You get the data from the receiver and make a bank transfer. Or you give your data to the receiver, and they do the bank transfer themselves.

Andre Engels

If you've signed the representation agreement Jimbo, Foundation has an official agent in France : Wikimédia France. As soon as you've signed and returned the bylaws, the association will be registered. It will be then extremely simple for Wikimédia France to open a Euro bank account in the name of Foundation. villy

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 6:12 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] e-gold proposal

|I agree with Mav's recommendations and concerns. | | I think the priority is going to be getting us set up with a merchant | account to be able to accept Visa and Mastercard and JCB. We also | need to try to find out how to get a European bank account so that method | of payment can be done. | | | Daniel Mayer wrote: | | > --- Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote: | > > A proposal follows that is commercial in nature. I am posting it to this | > > list per the instructions of one of the Wikimedia Foundation Board members. | > > ***************** | > > I would like to encourage the Wikimedia Foundation to: | > > | > > * Accept e-gold www.e-gold.com donations, | > > * Post a prominent link to the e-gold site, using syntax that would | > > enable the Foundation to capture referral incentives. | > > | > > | > > .... | > > | > > Not knowing e-gold and aware of the imperfection of the paypal system, I read | > > with interest all comments offered on the matter before making my opinion. | > > | > > Since he is in charge of the matter, I think Mav opinion on the topic will be | > > of primary impact. | > | > I've looked into it a bit, but am still very confused on how this would work | > and whether the pool of people using e-gold is large enough to warrant our | > attention yet. I'm also very hesitant to add yet another third party handling | > our donations (presenting too many choices to people turns them away and having | > yet-another-account makes things more difficult for me to keep track of things | > - PayPal is very good at making this easy). | > | > What we need is a way by which the great majority of likely donors can donate | > easily. IMO, the PayPal/Moneybookers/mail donation set-up allows for that | > already. But I'm willing to listen and learn. | > | > -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) | > | > | > | > __________________________________ | > Do you Yahoo!? | > Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search. | > http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 | > _______________________________________________ | > foundation-l mailing list | > foundation-l@wikimedia.org | > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l | > | | -- | "La nèfle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org | _______________________________________________ | foundation-l mailing list | foundation-l@wikimedia.org | http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l |