We are often asked “what is the Kachingle transaction fee”?

IMPORTANT UPDATE JULY 2010: IN EARLY JUNE WE REDUCED THE OVERALL TRANSACTION FEES (KACHINGLE PLUS PAYPAL IN AND PAYPAL OUT) FROM 20% TO 15%.
A detailed blog post on this will be written soon.

Our corporate motto is “transparent and fair” and we apply this not only to the way Kachingle behaves for our users (all payments are visible and are based on a “fair” algorithm of value received by the Kachingler), but we also apply this to ourselves.

The simple answer is 10% —  approximately 50¢ of the Kachingler’s $5.00 monthly subscription (we call this the “Pay-In”).

80% of the Pay-In is distributed to the content providers (Kachingle-enabled Sites).

Our 10% + Sites’ 80% = 90% — who gets the missing 10%?

That would be PayPal.

PayPal

PayPal collects fees when Kachinglers make their monthly $5 Pay-In, and collect fees again when we Pay-Out to Site Owners:


  • On the Pay-In, PayPal collects 30 cents plus 2.9% of the $5 subscription — which comes to 45 cents total
  • On the Pay-Out, PayPal collects another fee which varies in size depending on the number of sites and total amount of money we’re paying that day, typically a few cents

These two PayPal fees together make up that last 10% — or 50¢ of a Kachingler’s $5.00.
As we enable Kachinglers to contribute higher amounts the fixed part of the PayPal fee will go down as a percentage – and we plan to negotiate with PayPal to get their overall fees lowered — savings which we will pass on to our users. (PayPal also has currency conversion fees which have to be factored in.)

We must be a viable business to make our client sites successful – and our 10% commission is what we make us able to develop and maintain the Kachingle service.