To amplify:
Paying (business) taxes in The Netherlands now pretty much requires electronic payment to an IBAN Account; a.k.a. it is (now) the standard, default, baseline way to make payments at all.
After registering a business, the very next action is to open an (IBAN) account. All extant dutch accounts that predate IBAN have been converted to IBAN. All administration systems (must(!)) support IBAN.
If you want to do business in the Netherlands, you need to support IBAN.
Note that many (most?) dutch citizens do not have credit cards or paypal accounts.
Further, IBAN is standardized throughout the euro-zone.
iDEAL is nice to have and important. IBAN is a minimal baseline requirement.
sincerely, Kim
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 10:42:31PM +0100, Walter Vermeir wrote:
Op 17-11-14 om 20:28 schreef Lodewijk:
you back to the credit card page) or even via regular bank transfer (using an IBAN) in the Netherlands. The donation page
Historically the structure of bank account numbers are very different from country to country. And making transfers from one bank account to an other bank account, especially internationally, are/where complex and expensive.
There is still a lot of room of improvement but nevertheless it has never been so easy and cheap to do international transfers as now.
The IBAN system - International Bank Account Number - is active in a fair chunk of the globe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Number#Adoption
Inside the EURO-zone , 19 countries, ?? 337 million Europeans , people can make a bank transfer to an EURO-zone IBAN bank account without additional expenses.
Many more outside the EURO-zone can easy make international payments to an IBAN bank account. That is not free ... but paypal is certainly not free also. The costs are just deducted from your donation.
The WMF has always has been a huge fan of payment by credit cards. Understandable, the WMF is founded in the country of the Credit card.
But that can make you blind to the fact that other people are used to total other payment systems.
A couple of years ago I discovered that there where still people using cheques in France. That came as a total surprise to me. I remember my dad using cheques 30 years ago. I never came in to contact with a cheque since then. To my knowledge cheques where long gone. History. Extinct.
But ... when you have the financial business concept of the WMF - when you need money beg for it - the donation channel should be tailer made for the specific common way of payment used by the person who is so good to be willing to make an donation.
Walter
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe