Giant Killer?

A STARTLING FACT ABOUT "PAYPAL CONTIBUTIONS BUTTON"...it occurred to me that maybe if someone donated say a penny that it might not clear thru Paypal because they charge 30cents + 2.9% to 4.9% on each transaction, which would mean that either Paypal would not accept such a contribution on behalf of it's customer (as a matter of say courtesy), or the unthinkable would happen and Paypal would (for reasons of say self interest) acknowledge a contribution proffered to it's customer of say 1cent and then bill said customer for the service of handling this transaction, which if my math is correct would look something like this:-

Contributor Donation = 1c
Paypal Fee = 30c + 2.9% to 4.9% (and you know they would charge us the full 4.9%) = 31.5c
Net Profit to Recipient (the Paypal customer) 1c minus 31.5c = minus 30.5c
Or more likely because technically there is no 1/2c Paypal would "substitute" the rounded up version of minus 30.5c = minus 31c

Net Profit to Paypal = positive 31.5c or more likely a full 32c

To sum up: A Contributor donation of 1c would cost the "charity" or Paypal customer 31c while Paypal would profit 32c......if my math is correct this would be a STARTLING FACT!

On the donations set up page of the Paypal website there is a demonstration model, which I looked at, apparently it was a real website that included an "open donations" button so that the contributor could choose to donate any amount at all. The website was called "NationalReview.com" (whatever that is) and as a kind of practical query I donated 1c US to see if it would fly. The experience of seeing my donation accepted was one of shock and awe. In slack jawed disbelief I went immediately to my Paypal account to verify whether this transaction had occurred and to my amazement apparently it had...one penny US. As my head literally spun I then visited my bank account and sure enough the transaction had posted there too. Can you imagine? The repercussions of this little known fact are how do I say this, potentially bankrupting. If a million people donated say a single Paypal penny to someone like say "NationalReview.com" it would cost said recipient something like $310,000 in Paypal fees. Why Paypal would allow such a travesty to occur I cannot imagine, oh wait, yeah...they would profit something like $320,000. This could have earth shaking repercussions for an organisation that relies on contributions to fund say an unpopular yet dominant point of view. I would not want to be such an organisation and have this type of information about their Achilles heel passed around within a large network of some sort that contained a substantial base of say political opposition.

That's all I got, except, can't remember where they say this but... you heard it here first.