[Wikimania-l] Wikimania bank account

[Delphine Ménard]

On 2/28/07, Jakob Voss <jakob.voss at nichtich.de> wrote:
> Any File wrote:
>
> >> It might be a good thing to add the ability
> >> of bank transfer, maybe even through a WMF-account that they transfer it
> >> together to you? (to reduce costs for international and inter-valuta
> >> traffic)
> >
> > This may be a good idea, but it may have some legal implication. Who
> > would be the entity that collect the money and at what title would do that.
>  > [...]
> > If such a thing would be set up,  not only the people in that country
> > could benefit, but also the people in many other countries in Europe
> > since the transfer fee to another EU country would be minimal compared
> > to an EU/Taiwan transfer.
>
> In 2005 Wikimania Foundation was given access to a bank account held by
> Wikimedia Germany. I don't know whether Wikimania Germany can offer this
> for Wikimania 2007 but I'll ask our treasurer. A bank account within the
> EU would at least help EU citizen because transfer fee within EU is zero
> (of course there is transfer fee between EU and taiwan but it's probably
> less if money is transfered collected). Maybe we could set up a
> procedure where you weekly send Wikimedia Germany the list of people
> with keywords and Wikimedia Germany checks whether money has been
> recieved or not.

No need to ask the treasurer, we can't do that :-)

"opening an account in the name of" is not as trivial a thing as it
seems. There are many considerations involved. In Germany, for
example, you need to have a representative, ie. a subsidiary or some
such. It also involves tax questions and such weird things that are
not easy to straighten out just "for an event" (they're already not
easy "for an organisation" -- believe me, it's not like I haven't been
trying ;) )

On the other hand, bank transfer is not always the means of payment of
choice. My point being, the Italians may want bank transfer, as the
Germans would, but the French or the Americans would simply never use
it. In the end, we will never be able to accommodate, at least in the
near future, everyone. Paypal with its credit card solution might not
be the *best* solution *for everyone*,but at this stage, it is
definitely the best solution available to us, with the means we have
and the possibility we've explored.

Cheers,

Delphine
PS. Ah, and using 5 different accounts to track donation
money/wikimania fees/whatever else is *not* a good idea. The Belgian
account is not a satisfying solution at this stage, for other reasons.


-- 
~notafish
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