I’m sure you have all received the notice from Patreon which details the shift in credit card processing fees from creators to Patrons. Unfortunately, Patreon made this momentous business decision without consulting with creators. We were informed of the change only one day before our Patrons, which left us with no opportunity to provide input on this change or protest it in any way.
As someone who is very familiar with how businesses normally structure their credit card merchant accounts, it is standard for the business (i.e. the entity receiving the benefit of the credit card payments) to absorb these processing fees as a normal cost of doing business. This is not something that is routinely passed onto the customer. I was aware of Patreon’s processing fees from the time I opened my account, and had no problem absorbing those fees as a normal course of business. If I had been asked by Patreon, I would have been adamantly against passing this cost onto you - regardless of the benefit I would have received by the policy change.
I understand how hard you work for your money, and I understand how tight some of your budgets are. I also know that many of you support multiple artists which means this policy change affects you even more. In an effort to ensure none of you have to leave because of this, I am adjusting my tier structure to account for these fees. I will be setting up three new tiers to replace the existing ones. None of the tier rewards will change, but the minimums will now be $4.50, $9.00, and $14.00. This will ensure that you can continue with your monthly pledge, pay the 2.9% processing fee and the $0.35 transaction fee, and still be at your old pledge level.
I cannot apologise enough for this short-sighted, ill conceived policy change by Patreon, and hope that the action I am taking on my side will help in some small way. Thank you once again for your support, it means the world to me!