Flattr takes 7.5%.
Their payment processor takes 9%.
Withdrawing costs you $3.
And people call Patreon's 5% (on top of Stripe's 3%) outrageous. I guess it's better than the walled garden 30%, for popular enough sites.
Regarding keeping money in the system: In the new version, there are separate accounts for "givers" (contributors) and "receivers" (creators / publishers). So, just shuffling money around is neither the obvious nor the intended solution.
Flattr is neither a micropayment service in the sense that you make a "real" transaction nor is it an App store.
I'm not sure what the right solution is, but this is pretty gross as you describe it. Off the top of my head, the only thing that would make me feel better about Flattr is if they somehow tracked money as it flows through Flattr, and prevented double-taxing content creators.
I do find my perception interesting though. Generally, I'm pretty pro-company in the sense that, they need to pay their devs, they need to pay their bills, investors, etc. Yet, if a company moves itself in my head to the "we're here for the community" side of the line, suddenly they conceptually become a non-profit in my head, and if their profit feels like more of the pie than absolutely needed, it feels like the worst type of greed. Greed from the needy, greed from those we're trying to support, etc.
If the money then circulates then that's OK. If the money is withdrawn then take a good cut of that.
One downside to that is that the more popular it becomes, the more 'currency' the flattr-coin becomes, it simply circulates with people neither depositing it nor withdrawing it. However, flattr are then effectively become a central bank and that isn't a problem.
The real problem with not taking a cut of moving between flattr accounts is that people would sell flattr through side channels to avoid flattr taking a cut. So you'd pay me cash and I'd transfer to you the flattr coin on platform.
And if it took off in a big way then money laundering becomes a problem and the cut would not cover the cost of KYC etc.
Not true, from the FAQ:
How do I withdraw money I have received? You need to have a valid bank account associated with your profile. You can then request a withdrawal. This works worldwide as long as your bank accepts international bank transfers.
It is quite hard to make money with Flattr (you need to be really popular to get enough micropayments), and I guess that 95 % of Creators never reach the 10€ limit to actually withdraw their money. So giving money back to others is the "obvious" thing to do.
So, just shuffling money around is neither the obvious nor the intended solution.
What does this mean?
By the way, apparently the full fee is now quite higher: https://blog.flattr.net/2017/10/our-new-fee-structure/
Given that the amounts are going to fluctuate anyways, I wonder if tracking multiple currencies would really be so bad?
But America lives off credit, so nothing's going to change any time soon.
That is only true for cases where users credit their account only with $3. For every $ above this limit flattr will also pocket some additional money. For a 10$ account recharge flattr will keep additional 3.5%, for a $20 recharge they will pocket additional 5%.
- Whenever other people send you money, Flattr keeps 10% from that money.
- When you make money with Flattr, Flattr expects you to give this money back to other authors you like. And they will send them back to other authors. As the money are sent back and forth, and 10% are removed at each step, Flattr is the only one actually making any money.