This was incredible! Couldn't stop scrolling and reading. For a kid of a certain age and curiosity it'll blow their mind! I'm so grateful the creator made this, shame that his "buy me a coffee" isn't a simple PayPal or Apple Pay but you have to put in credit card or bank details!!
PayPal and Apple pay take a significant cut of the transaction. CC is a lot less and bank is mostly free of TX fees.
Most users don't know/don't care, so given the option, they will likely take it and funnel their donations to conglomerates.
PayPal doesn't cost significantly more than what a small online place can get from other payment processors. It's something like 3% + $0.50. That's also not much more than what a small business can usually get for in person credit cards.
This site does use buymeacoffee.com, which appears to be a dedicated payment platform. Its transaction fee is apparently 5%, which is steeper, but better for these small donations because of the lack of a fixed fee.
Maybe you'd like one of the banks that provides you with limited-use or one-time credit cards? I've been using one called Envelope Budgeting for the last few months after my previous one shut down. It's $40/year, but that's waived if you spend more than $5,000 USD in card purchases. I put the Neal.fun on my "Misc" card that I keep at $0 balance and transfer money to when I buy something.
I believe there are other services that will also give you virtual cards, I'm not familiar with them off hand.
I'm not understanding this sentiment at all. You'd rather input your CC details into a site whose main business isn't dealing safely with credit cards - rather than inputting it into Stripe (which is what his site uses), whose entire raison d'etre is doing so?
But xx% of some amount is still better than 100% of $0. And the pure convenience of using PayPal, Apple Pay or things like Ko-Fi will probably result in more net donations.
How do you pay with PayPal if not putting in your credit card or bank details? link is a pretty well-known online wallet and much simpler to use than PayPal.
I've never heard of link, so it's the difference between a random website and a well established brand. Not that hard to understand why someone might be hesitant to put in their cc details.