Payment Service Disputes

The following article deals with payment service disputes in crowdfunding. See the main article for an overview of the Disputes in Crowdfunding.

Disputes involving payment services occur because of their and the crowdfunding platform’s contrasting policies. The ones at loss are usually project creators, who are unable to receive the collected funds.

Contrasting Policies of Collaborating Services

A crowdfunding platform and a payment service can have different policies regarding the content of the funded projects, which can result in creators not receiving the funds, although everything was done properly. This has happened on more than one occasion. In such cases creators can only obtain the money directly from the backers - which means they have to be personally in contact with them to get the funds wired directly from one account to another, without the involvement of a payment service (WePay, Paypal etc.) - or accept the fact that the funds cannot go through and be left without the money.

Kickstarter writes in its Terms of Use that “each payment provider is its own company, and Kickstarter isn’t responsible for its performance. […] Kickstarter partners with other companies (such as Amazon Payments and Stripe ) for payment processing. When you back or create a project, you’re also agreeing to the payment processor’s terms of service.”

Andre Shakti

Andre Shakti

Fundly

In this case of a payment service dispute, Andre Shakti is an adult entertainer and sex industry worker. She started a campaign on Fundly, a platform which promotes itself with the slogan “Raise money for anything!”, to cover her travelling expenses for a flight to a festival for Feminist Porn Awards. She raised the money she needed but when trying to purchase the ticket, she was informed by WePay that she violated WePay’s Terms of Service and her funds could therefore not be processed and that the contributors would be refunded their pledges. There was nothing that neither she, nor the platform, could do about it.