BuyMeACoffee silently dropped support for many countries (2024)

Is there a startup idea here? Do what buymeacoffee won't do and forget about regulations (that's what Uber does yeah?)

If you are interested in building this, I have product and engineering experience

The problem is how to not become just like every other large company, once you grow from being a startup and become a large company.

I would gladly join! Love the fintech space and open to slightly “shady” stuff like this.

> Do what buymeacoffee won't do and forget about regulations (that's what Uber does yeah?)

My guess is buymeacoffee isn't the problem, but their payment provider. They maybe can't justify the resources to switch providers and so its easier/cheaper to just drop those countries.

If you can find a payment provider that will service a "buymeacoffee-like" business in the open countries, then I'd be interested.

The solution is not to become a large company :-) Start small, stay lean and just focus on the problem.

Whats your take on why they did this? My guess is their payment provider forced them to it. and so the solution is what? support crypto?

I think the problem is the jurisdiction.

Many of Telegram payment-related services use https://smart-glocal.com/, which is registered in Hong Kong (with a UK company handling EEA operations). They don’t say it on the website, but I believe they do work with Ukrainian (and apparently even Russian) citizens and can handle payouts there. (Note, however, that Smart Glocal is owned by a pro-Kremlin guy from Russia: https://en.zona.media/article/2022/08/08/premiumdonate-trl)

Someone will use your service to "donate" to a drug dealer, or to buy shady sexual material, or to sponsor some religious nutter somewhere or other. And you'll be held liable.

There is a reason why the system is as shit as it is.

For Payoneer, I’m not sure but they’ve wanted to deprecate it a long time ago (and I think Wise was supposed to replace it). From how clunky Payoneer was the last time I used it, I think the API must be pretty horrible, so no wonder BMAC wants to get rid of it.

For Wise, it could be that, but also they’ve been putting out a ton of features lately, which aren’t supported by Wise. Not idea why they didn’t add a bunch of if statements.

The solution is... uh, not sure? Crypto might work for payouts, but it’s too complicated for most users. For the donation page itself, we definitely need to accept cards somehow. There are payment providers that can accept cards and payout to these countries, so I think it should be possible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44002850

would you want to just start building or apply for ycombinator summer batch

Wow, that’s a nice thought – I’d give it a try, sure!

Wanna chat about it for a bit? hn@ale.sh or https://cal.com/notpushkin/45m