BuyMeACoffee silently dropped support for many countries, and nobody cares
156 comments
·May 16, 2025rwarfield
elric
Debanking small accounts isn't something that I'd heard of before. But debanking "undesirables" is certainly a problem.
Over here we have legalized prostitution, but it's very hard for sex workers to open a bank account. There's some legislation that forces banks to offer them a basic bank account (at a steep fee) if they can prove that they've been rejected by N banks. Which is a start, I suppose.
Banks have basically become an extension of law enforcement, tax collectors, anti-terrorist operations, and morality police. Which is ironic, given how many banks brazenly break laws on the regular, how absolutely depraved parties with bankers are, etc. They're hardly paragons of virtue. Yet they get to gatekeep "virtue".
roenxi
I agree; but if we're bank-bashing I'd like it to be comprehensive:
What with all the attention they have to put into cooperating with the authoritarians they also aren't particularly good at their theoretical purpose, which is pooling people's money and investing it productively. We're watching an ongoing capital crisis in the West where we've been out-invested by nominal communists; it is absurd. The banking system has sticky fingers all over that mess. Then they get political protection through financial crisises where they should be taken out by bankruptcy but the powers that be prioritise having reliable people in what is effectively law enforcement rather then putting good capital managers in charge.
So, y'know. Upside is the banks do a great job of shutting down sex workers and political activism. 10/10 mark for reporting what everyone is doing to law enforcement. Downside is that turns out to be a big distraction from all the wealth creation banking can enable.
dmurray
Banks are doing a relatively bad job of capital management, but they're also doing less and less of it.
Investment funds of all sorts manage the world's money. Your retail bank might originate mortgages, but it almost certainly sells them on.
The Fed doesn't want to see an overnight switch to narrow banking, where banks sell you checking accounts and money transmission services and never make decisions about investing the deposits. It has declined to approve banks that would do that. But it seems OK with presiding over a managed decline of banking into that state.
soco
If the entire picture was so dark nobody would have used banks for anything, all across history. The banks were created by those having the means to open banks, not by charities, so it should be obvious that they will serve primarily their masters. You could make a similar argument for crypto: it does help some people to send money to the back of Africa, but is mostly enabling scams. My point is, the more there's money involved the darker the picture. If only we cared enough to make it better, but it's all boiling the frog.
verisimi
> Banks have basically become an extension of law enforcement, tax collectors, anti-terrorist operations, and morality police. Which is ironic
Not ironic at all. This is the design.
ThePhysicist
These companies aren't public utilities, no one would complain about a US bank not doing money exchange business with entities in the Ukraine or Belarus, why would that be different for US companies offering donations over the Internet? The fact is that all platforms that facilitate cross-border money transfers between two parties without clear services or good being exchanged are used for all kinds of money laundering, and governments try to contain that for good reasons. In the end they probably don't care much about the revenue they make in these countries as it's probably negligible. Again, their good right to do so, I don't see any issue with this at all.
elric
The article claims that funds were held after being donated. That certainly goes way beyond "not choosing to do business". The claims were refuted by BuyMeACoffee, which changes things.
But if I, as a donator, donate money to someone using your service, and you then don't give that money to its intended recipient, you've effectively defrauded me. Had you said in advance "I can't do that, because you're trying to give me money to $foo which I don't support", then that is your right as a business.
jonathanstrange
Of course, people would complain about a bank not doing money exchanges with Ukraine or Belarus. Moreover, payment system providers, money transfer systems, and banks are to some extent public utilities, especially when there are no viable alternatives. They are essential for business.
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mppm
I think at this point it would be preferable for the government to take over the payment infrastructure directly. This is often seen as dystopian, but it's a dystopia that has already come to pass for the most part. If we made it official, at least the rules for what can be blocked or refused or frozen would be out in the open.
grumbel
Numerous countries are debating the creation of a digital currency:
EU: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...
eviks
No they wouldn't, just like the rules of who can be deported and for what aren't in the open, but often arbitrary.
Also, 100% dystopia is still worse than a "most part" one
KingMob
I mean the current US govt is doing all sorts of awful things in the open, so I'm not sure this will be an improvement.
I no longer believe that "sunlight is the best disinfectant", and haven't for a long time now.
roenxi
The best disinfectant doesn't kill everything. Nobody's ever managed to assemble a government that doesn't do awful things out in the open.
One of my complaints about the Trump era is people are correctly identifying a bunch of problems with how the US government operates but for some reason they're only a problem when Trump does them instead of being a more general concern even if other people are involved.
Eg, Trump is almost certainly spying on his political opponents. Using infrastructure built by Bush/Obama/Trump/Biden that everyone who took notice at the time pointed out would be used by people to spy on political opponents. This isn't a Trump problem. It is people assuming the government is always on their side despite copious quantities of evidence otherwise and regular elections.
ngruhn
The alternate is crypto. That will service anyone for ANY reason.
eru
Well, that and cash.
Btw, crypto (like bitcoin) is only an alternative because of convention.
The complete history of bitcoins is globally trackable, and people could all decide that they'll pay more for bitcoins that came from Satoshi's initial hoard, or that they'll refuse to accept bitcoins that were ever seized by the FBI.
(Yes, there are mixers. But you'd just refuse to accept any bitcoin that took part in the mixer transaction, if any FBI coins were in there.)
em500
Europe is clamping down on cash, with in some countries placing caps on cash transactions as low as €1000.
https://en.econostrum.info/europe-restricts-cash-paymentss-n...
https://www.europe-consommateurs.eu/en/shopping-internet/cas...
jack_pp
How would you even price it? Have special markets based on coin origin?
lawn
You can't send cash digitally, hence crypto.
I'd like to introduce you to Monero, which isn't globally trackable and also properly fungible so you can't refuse mixed transactions (since all transactions are protected).
audunw
Crypto isn’t an alternative to a bank. Not any crypto I’ve seen at least.
The primary purpose of a bank is to issue debt. That’s why they were created. A bank has to be able to “print” money to issue debt. This isn’t a flaw as some crypto fans like to think, it’s a very important feature. Debt issued by banks replaced the informal promise-based debt people used before we had banks. You didn’t need money on hand, or to borrow some coins from some rich dude, to get help building a barn. You got help from people in the village in exchange for some other goods or service you’d provide them in the future. Bank issued debt with “printed” money is the replacement to that, and it only works if money can be created on demand.
Crypto can’t “print” money on demand, by design. So it can’t replace banks.
immibis
Bitcoin can't, but defi can. An entity can issue a ERC-whatever token that acts as a bond, minted in exchange for whichever other token (e.g. ETH), and redeemable for that plus interest at their discretion (e.g. you could create a redeem queue). The bonds can be traded in secondary markets immediately upon creation - no need to file for listing (you need to create a swap pool and seed it with a little of each asset though).
An important difference is that your new token can't ever be confused with base money. In banks, we have base money, and we have bank money, and we pretend they're the same thing because banks are pretty reliable (not 100% but pretty). In crypto, the system won't let you lie like that. (Though you can create another new currency backed by a mix of currencies - this is what DAI does.)
Another important difference is trust. I can easily issue bonds in the real world and then just run off with the money and not repay them. If I try, a lot of heavily armed men will hunt me down. That doesn't really happen in crypto, and as things are now it can't happen, because if you make your identity and location known and issue crypto bonds, the same armed men will hunt you down for issuing crypto bonds instead of ordinary bonds, which is a crime itself (see what happened to Kik/Kin). So you'd have to stake something else to make people trust you.
twelvechairs
This is a major reason (maybe the major reason) crypto keeps going up. Many people want money to avoid government oversight - for reasons both benign (e.g. avoiding having money confiscated arbitrarily) and nefarious (everything from tax avoidance to funding crime and war).
Not long ago we lived in a world where currency from anywhere other than the nation you were in (or maybe somewhere close by) was impractical to use on a daily basis. Things have changed now and the government's use of money as a tool to keep control of citizens is loosening. For better and worse.
sabas123
Which is not necessarily a good thing.
notpushkin
But not necessarily a bad thing either.
If everything else fails, I know I can still have two things to pay with: cash and crypto.
coolcase
It's like a kitchen knife. Can be good or bad.
immibis
The future of legitimate activity is that it will be performed on the same platforms designed to protect criminal activity, because it will be treated as criminal, despite not being so.
If BuyMeACoffee was run like a dark web drug marketplace, it could support every country.
renewiltord
This is one of my favourite word shifts. Back in the '70s this would have been quite the claim of sexual debauchery. I still chuckle at it.
lazide
It’s the ‘greedy coward’ leadership model - tends to work pretty well for most businesses, until it does’t. usually all at once.
znanz
I’ve been working many years in the banking and Fintech industry. These companies are driven by compliance before profit. Sometimes, compliance will order a country to be blocked because of the risk to service bad actors, and they can get this done bypassing every other department. This is also why it takes forever to get an account opened, the know you customer and know your business processes are long and tedious, use manual and semi automated process to establish a risk score and make a decision wether to service a customer or not. Most of the time, these processes are about ticking boxes and filing required documents to cover the institution. In the case of the article, servicing a zone at war, with a lot of parties under sanctions is a risk that either BuyMeACoffee and / or a few of their providers were not willing to take.
nathell
They also at one time blocked the author on Twitter.
croisillon
what's up with that Jijo Sunny guy doing 10 min long videos from his car
notpushkin
So they’re disabling Wise/Payoneer because they can’t implement some optional features on top of it? Why not just gate the features based on the payout platform instead?
noeltock
Or maybe that's simply their public-facing reason.
bayindirh
Too expensive to implement (in developer salary), and AI can't code it in five minutes and ship it yesterday?
notpushkin
They are a small company, yeah, but that also means they are extremely agile, and this feels like the kind of a feature that would take me (a single developer) maybe a couple days to implement.
bayindirh
I mean, if spending 16 hours to implement a future proofing feature is not acceptable, I don't know what is.
jimjambw
I signed up for BuyMeACoffee recently. I did some work for free that’s important for the industry I work in and a few people donated money to me. That was almost 2 weeks ago and I’m still waiting for them to review my account. The only support seems to be just an email address?
In regards to the fact they pulled out of countries that are hard to operate in, yeah it’s annoying but you know, can you blame them?
rckt
Well, I'm glad that this kind of thing got in the spotlight.
This stuff is very common for "second-class" countries. It's happening all the time with all kinds of services. Most of them just don't want to be bothered (spend resources on) with figuring out how to work with those countries. I guess the payment systems provide convenient frameworks for them via which they do money related stuff. If there's no easy way to reproduce something in several unfortunate countries that was super easy to achieve in developed countries, then it's not worth it. The profits there are not gonna meet the expectations in relation to the spendings.
So while these are really shitty situations for people from those countries, these decisions are dictated by the market. And I don't think this is gonna change.
But one of the great points in the article is that services should be very clear, up to date and explicit about their policies.
gsky
The way i support content creators is by signing up for services through their sponsor/referral links.
Tip for content creators: Please use services like https://UseCode.net to host all your sponsor/referral codes in one place, as this will be very helpful for users.
Remember all could not afford to pay a zillion content creators out there
gadders
A friend did some online usability/survey thing with a web development company just to get £20 or so.
They were told that the US payments company couldn't send the money to their primary email address as (for vanity reasons) they have a .by domain from Belorussia. (They are a UK citizen living in the UK)
florbnit
The did it silently because they know what they are doing and wanted to get by without the natural consequences of their actions. I’m now going to silently never tip another “cup of coffee” through their services, hopefully others will follow.
johnisgood
Unfortunately it is the people who contribute for free that gets fucked up by that, unless they have other means for you to donate.
casenmgreen
From mid-2024.
I regard all FinTech-type companies as unreliable, after incredible (in the literal sense of the word) experiences with Revolut (seven years to get an account closed and the money in it returned, and that actually happened only after I made a GDPR request, and they got it done - seems its less work for them to close than meet the request) and Transferwise (who shortly after the UA war started, blocked donations to the UA State bank military support account - yes, really, if you didn't know).
By all means have an account with them, but never, ever, ever, rely on it, and plan on the basis that the next morning you wake up to find the account, and everything in it, has gone, and that customer support is a defensive shield the company uses to keep customers at arms length.
If you want almost no-cost currency conversion (2 USD minimum, but you have to convert like 100k USD I think it is to go above that), use Interactive Brokers LLC. They won't let you have an account purely for currency conversion, but as long as you do a few trades now and then, it seems fine.
whstl
After working in a couple unicorn FinTechs:
They're just like traditional companies, but with less regulation or oversight.
At the beginning there is plenty of support channels, but that's because of marketing and because there's investor money. But as soon as the money gets tight, people start suggesting dark patterns and everything becomes "you must contact us to do X".
Not only that but there is way less auditing, as technical auditors that deal with fintechs aren't really ready to deal with anything made after 1990. That's you, Deloitte.
Also regarding security, what I saw in practice was that everyone has access to absolutely everything and could do anything, and customer personal data is sent around in Excel files in email like it's candy. There was SO MUCH logging that seeing suspicious employee activity was basically impossible.
Also: AI and Data Science are mostly people running one or two queries per week in the production DB, exporting to CSV and calling it a day.
Recently there was allegedly a kerfuffle with a german Fintech bank banning hundreds of users because of suspicion that they had gang relations. Well guess why.
kmlx
> Transferwise
what was the “incredible experience” with Transferwise?
> the next morning you wake up to find the account, and everything in it, has gone
they’re all protected by the FCA via the FSCS scheme: https://www.fscs.org.uk/what-we-cover/
notpushkin
> they’re all protected by the FCA via the FSCS scheme
Which would help if Revolut went insolvent, which is not the case here.
kmlx
so what's the case?
notpushkin
> Transferwise (who shortly after the UA war started, blocked donations to the UA State bank military support account - yes, really, if you didn't know).
Oh wow. Well, at least donations to NGOs / individuals seem to work.
Agreed, IBKR are a nice bunch. I wouldn’t rely on them either, but it’s always better to have more options, in case everything else fails. And of course, when banks can block your accounts at any moment just because they don’t like your passport, crypto is king.
apples_oranges
Of course who would ever doubt that
throwaway290
Ironically crypto is also what helps fund and survive (bypassing sanctions) the warmongers and dictatorships which make banks not like our passports
In the end poor peasants shouting "crypto is king" are the ones owned from both sides. They are used for profit by their local oppressors/gangs and by western cryptobros. The peasants transactions are the rounding error but they are the ones who allow to pretend it's "freedom"
notpushkin
I’m not sure if that’s the case. I mean, crypto is surely used for some transactions, but governments also just pay for stuff openly. EU is still paying Russia for gas, I believe?
> They are used for profit by their local oppressors/gangs and by western cryptobros.
For a razor-thin margin, maybe. It’s still the cheapest way to move money out from Russia, meaning it’s not used there to pay taxes (i.e. fund the war!) And the alternatives are using banks or money transfer systems, which I think are more likely to be pro-government than just a bunch of local guys that want to make some cash.
askonomm
Up to 100k per bank account is secured by the European central bank though, so for most Europeans, the money cannot just simply disappear and you never get it back. And if you have over 100k per bank account, you probably should look for banks with better insurances anyway.
casenmgreen
I would need to look into this again, but I am not sure this is actually true.
Something like the underlying account(s) used by the FinTech are secured in this way, but your account with the FinTech is not.
This is why Revolut for example have accounts which are something like "vaults", which are in fact accounts which are covered, because they are actual accounts, one per person, with a normal bank.
That sounds incredible, it needs to be checked, about to leave the house so can't right now.
richrichardsson
Revolut/Wise etc. make it quite clear they are not "bank accounts", and therefore their accounts don't come with the normal protections associated with bank accounts. I think there is some form of regulatory protection, but it's much less than for banks.
notpushkin
Revolut is an actual bank if you’re in the EU! https://help.revolut.com/en-EE/help/accounts/what-does-uk-ba...
Edit: and apparently they’re now setting up a bank in the UK as well: https://help.revolut.com/help/more/legal-topics/is-revolut-a...
Wise is not, and it might be more difficult to get the money out if they are insolvent. For the customers in the EU, they’re a Payment Institution in Belgium: https://wise.com/help/articles/2932693/how-is-wise-regulated...
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HenryBemis
> all FinTech-type companies as unreliable
Please allow me to disagree (not really but yes). In the same spirit that some (fin-tech) companies prefer to _not_ do business with certain industries (e.g. porn) or countries (e.g. North Korea) for a wide variety of reason, doesn't make them unreliable. Makes them exactly what they are.
I am not trying to equate "access to my money" with "my favourite soft-drink is discontinued" because they have a very different impact to one's life (paying rent/mortgage/bills money vs sugar). I do understand though (I was working in a dairy company many-many years ago), that "we pulled this product because it costs X and makes 2x while product Z makes 5x, so bye-bye". In the same spirit many companies have profit margin requirements and they won't keep 'a service offering' that makes 'just a little'.
anal_reactor
All my bank accounts only have money for daily expenses and maybe a little more just in case of emergency. If it's gone, I'll be upset, but not the end of the world. Most of my actual savings are in DeGiro, which AFAIK is okay for EU customers. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
notpushkin
Sounds okay-ish? But as they say, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
jopsen
Which is why you also buy a house :D
Kiro
Dumb question but I don't expect any service to support all countries, so what makes BuyMeACoffee different? My service (which also involves money) only supports one country in the world.
makeitdouble
The dropping part.
It's not "fair", but people get pissed when you can compare before/after. And to a reason, it means some users relying on that support are now left SOL, when they could have made different choices if the service couldn't handle them from the start.
rdtsc
“20% and subject to changes” yikes what a way to say “you’re losing territory and you’re not in the news enough for us to bother”. That’s probably one country that needs the help from a place like that.
We have normalized the treatment of the financial and payments systems as things that exist primarily to perform law enforcement surveillance functions. It's the same dynamic that leads to debanking of small accounts - payments firms exist on thin margins and the potential fines for inadvertently servicing a bad actor are stratospheric, so it's entirely logical to play it safe by refusing to service anyone whose profile looks even the slightest bit risky.