Hi!

I'm chiming in on a related (read to 3rd paragraph) note, related to the Swedish (Nordic) situation. Through fairs, expos and other areas of contact with Wikipedia readers, I've learnt that a lot of people here in Sweden would like to be able to make donations through their Internet bank.

Most bank payments in Sweden (and in other Nordic countries as well?) are made through one kind of "giro" system or another. In Sweden we currently have two systems – bankgiro and plusgiro – and payments can be made from any Swedish Internet banking account.

And when payment cannot be done through giro, we can always transfer money to a receiver's bank account. Inside Sweden that's done via a bank clearing number + bank account number. To receivers _outside_ of Sweden that's nowadays mainly done through the BIC/IBAN system.

So it's not just the Dutch that would benefit from the possibility of making BIC/IBAN transfers available for WMF donations.

My two cents, /Per A.J. Andersson Göteborg, Sweden

2014-11-22, 13:01, skrev wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org:

Message: 2 Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 08:42:01 +0100 From: Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why is bank transfer no longer possible? Message-ID: CACf6BeuqLiZa-Ay0ki7Vbijwy-HrBNqSUkh-=KCoSg--7sjJ2w@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

It seems everyone agrees it is an important method (although I'm not 100% sure that the US based people running the fundraiser fully comprehend - I am assuming this is the case), but there seems to be some reason why the WMF chooses to not make this option easily available. A reason they choose not to disclose, but to be fuzzy about. I'm very sorry about this, and as Liam says, this fits in a trend with the Russian people no longer being allowed to donate. Maybe the two are connected, but this is all speculation.

I'm sorry to see these steps back from the more open attitude there was a few years back. It feels very much that we are, as a community, being fed canned press answers. But then, maybe there's a real need for that and there's a huge legal threat to making it easy to donate through bank transfer that cannot be disclosed...

Best, Lodewijk