On Jul 23, 2016 11:40 AM, "Nicholas Chammas" <nicholas.chammas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
[...]
> You can already do this today, of course, with services like PayPal, Gratipay, and Salt. But the process is scattered and different for each Python package and the group of people behind it. What’s more, it seems wrong that these third-party services should capture some of the value generated by the Python community (e.g. by charging some transaction fee) without any of it going back to support that community (e.g. via the PSF).

These kinds of money transfer services are pretty competitive, and AFAIK their transaction fees are largely set by companies like VISA, plus the actual costs of running this kind of business. (And this is much more than just shuffling bits around - there are all kinds of complicated regulations you have to comply with around issues like "how do you know that organized crime isn't using your service for money laundering". IIRC every country and US state has their own idea about what counts as adequate safeguards.) I think it's vanishingly unlikely that the PSF could provide these services more efficiently than these dedicated companies. So I don't think the PSF is going to get rich on transaction fees.

OTOH, if we give up on that part of the idea, then it becomes much easier :-). It'd be straightforward for PyPI to provide a "how to donate to this project" box on each project page, that has links to whatever donation processing service(s) the project prefers.

-n