Authors: Mariia Molodkovets, Anastasia Ivantsova, Ivan Mishchuk

Buy Me a Coffee (BMC) has restricted withdrawal options for Ukrainian bloggers registered on the platform. BMC has not publicly commented on the reasons and timing of the restrictions, but the responses of their support team have been posted online. The AIN team found out when Ukrainians will no longer be able to withdraw their money (spoiler alert: not on August 14), how this will affect Ukrainian bloggers, and what are the ways to get funds out of Buy Me a Coffee.

How Buy Me a Coffee and similar platforms work

Platforms like Buy Me a Coffee are designed to gather a blogger’s followers in one place and receive money from them in exchange for exclusive posts, videos, podcasts, or first access to content.

They make money by taking a percentage of the amount donated to authors. For example, Buy Me a Coffee takes 5%, YouTube takes 30%, and Patreon takes at least 5% plus taxes.

The platforms use intermediaries to pay the accumulated funds to the authors. For example, Patreon does this through PayPal or Payoneer.

So, a blogger has an account on Buy Me a Coffee. He has accumulated a certain amount of money that can be withdrawn. He creates an account with Payoneer and transfers money there. Then, from Payoneer, he withdraws the money to a Ukrainian account directly to a bank card or a sole proprietorship account.

Buy Me a Coffee worked with two payment systems — Payoneer and Stripe. The latter does not work in Ukraine because of the war and the occupation of some territories. Therefore, many Ukrainian authors used Payoneer to withdraw their money.

How the issues with Buy Me a Coffee started

Ukrainian content creators encountered problems withdrawing funds from the platform in early August. First, a user of X, who goes by the nickname BzickOff, noticed the problem. She could not withdraw $30 from her account and contacted the support service.

They informed her about the innovations in the company’s policy regarding Ukraine:

“We need to inform you that, due to recent policy updates and the increasing complexity of compliance and sanctions, we are no longer onboarding new authors from Ukraine. We realize this may be disappointing, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

This decision is driven by various factors, including the need to meet strict compliance standards. With approximately 20% of Ukraine subject to sanctions, it has become extremely challenging to accurately verify and monitor locations, posing significant risks for errors.”

BzickOff’s post went viral on social media and garnered a lot of comments sharing similar concerns. A few days later, a similar post appeared by blogger and voice actor AdrianZP.

“Buy Me a Coffee... has closed the possibility of withdrawing funds directly from the card through Wise and Payoneer. The only possible withdrawal method is Stripe, which is not available in Ukraine, and by August 14, all authors will be able to withdraw their funds for the last time,” the blogger writes.

He added that he would most likely be forced to close his channel, as viewer support is the main revenue channel for Ukrainian creators.

What Ukrainian creators say about the problems with Buy Me a Coffee

For many Ukrainian content creators, support platforms like Buy Me a Coffee are their only or most significant source of income. Usually, it’s not only money to live on but also to constantly improve their content.

“If you have the money, you can, for example, improve your equipment (microphone, camera, lights are not free), pay for EpidemicSound, and generally focus more on YouTube. Creating content takes time, which no one has now, except maybe students. During these years, you can do many things only with enthusiasm and no money. People think that YouTube is just a hobby and that it takes 5 minutes to make a video. Or they think the author has no right to make money and live on it because it’s not a job,” blogger AdrianZP told AIN.

 

Many creators ended up on Buy Me a Coffee because of the problems of other Ukrainians on Patreon. First, on February 24, 2022, the day Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the platform blocked the account of the charitable foundation Come Back Alive. Its monthly donations were up to $250,000 and were supposed to be debited from the patrons’ accounts in early March.

The next massive wave of Patreon outflows occurred after the account of blogger and activist Serhiy Sternenko was blocked in late March 2023. The reason is the same as with Come Back Alive: violation of the platform’s rules due to “financing of military purposes.”

Although at the same time, accounts of Russian “war journalists” were operating on the platform.

So Buy Me a Coffee has become a simple and quick replacement for other services.

“At Buy Me a Coffee, we kept an emergency stock, an amount sufficient to cover the salary of the entire editorial staff for a month. We tried a lot of ways to actively attract people to Buy Me a Coffee. But, to be honest, it wasn’t easy. Recently, it has brought us about $300-400 per month. For our scale, it’s tangible, but it’s not enough as a sole source of income,” says Oleksiy Bondarenko, editor-in-chief of LiRoom, a media outlet about new Ukrainian culture, about his experience with the platform.

However, some Ukrainian content creators have left their Patreon accounts live. The Sebto Media team, like many others, decided to diversify their risks.

“I suggested this decision to the team because I had a hunch that almost every Western platform would, at some point, do something like that, as was the case with Patreon and Sternenko. In addition, I was very clearly aware that if we closed Patreon, we would lose some of the subscriptions and, as a result, money. At that time, we had just created the community, and every subscription was very important to us. After all, it’s the same now,” says Daryna Zarzhytska, director of Sebto Media.

Ilona Yaremych also noticed subscribers’ unwillingness to immediately switch to a new platform — even after a public kickoff. She runs her own blog Pityatko. She shares that most of those who unsubscribed from Patreon did not switch to Buy Me a Coffee; they simply left the previous platform.

“If Buy Me a Coffee does become unavailable, or there are problems with withdrawing funds, and subscribers leave the platform, then obviously, there will be nothing pleasant for me personally. I will lose about 35% of my support. The saddest thing is that subscribers are leaving the platform because they believe that Buy Me a Coffee is restricting Ukrainians, so it’s a bad service. In fact, I don’t see any systematic restrictions now, so I’m not leaving the platform. But this is for now. If Buy Me a Coffee becomes unavailable, we must create another alternative,” says blogger Ilona Yaremych (Pityatko).

According to AdrianZP, advertisers are the only effective way out of the situation. After all, they are not tied to foreign services for payment.

“But so far, there are almost no advertisers. And if there are, it’s a privilege for big channels because they care about the number of views, not efficiency. If you don’t have 100k views on a video, you have no ads... Not every content can get 100k+ views,” AdrianZP explains.

Alternative services for Ukrainians

The creators with whom the AIN team spoke on and off the record are looking for other convenient platforms that would be worthy analogs to BMC.

Ukrainians can stay on Patreon. Although it has blocked accounts, withdrawals have not been a problem. The platform also has a slightly higher commission.

Ukrainians can obtain YouTube sponsorship. However, the platform has a high commission of 30%, which is a significant disadvantage. Another disadvantage is that it’s not an option for authors who don’t have a YouTube channel.

“At Buy Me a Coffee, we had a small share of donors, so the termination of cooperation with them will not upset us much. In general, I encourage everyone to sponsor a project on YouTube. Even though there is a 30% commission, everything is reliable, and you don’t have to deal with Payoneer, Wise, and Stripe,” explained Oleg Novikov, co-founder of the Poplava podcast, about his approach to monetization.

There are also several Ukrainian options. 

For example, there is Base by mono. To work with the platform, you need to have a sole proprietorship account in mono with the appropriate types of business activities. And the platform’s functionality is currently limited — you can’t post content there.

“We are not currently considering Base for ourselves. We were very excited about this idea, but it turned out that it was not what we needed at all. I suspect it’s convenient for YouTubers and streamers but not so much for podcasters. Maybe it’s changed now, but when we were checking it out, there was no option to download audio. Nor was there a way to write a private message. But I believe in Base. They’ve already spoken to our community development manager, Olena Paplynska. I hope that they will gradually take into account all her feedback,” says Daryna Zarzhytska, director of Sebto Media.

Another analog is Donatello. It is a small service that allows you to receive money through LiqPay. Payments are possible only to sole proprietorships, which can be inconvenient for beginner bloggers.

What Buy Me a Coffee and the National Bank of Ukraine say

More than a week after the problem arose, the platform’s representatives began actively responding to Ukrainians’ withdrawal requests. The response to AIN’s request was not very informative.

Buy Me a Coffee’s support team says that Wise and Payoneer are being shut down due to incompatibility with future platform features, including local currency support. They advise withdrawing funds via Stripe Express, “which is compatible with these new features and supported in over 130 countries, providing a fast and secure payment option.”

The response to the Ukrainian creator Eileen, who provided screenshots to AIN, was much more informative. It says that Payoneer will stop working on November 1, 2024, meaning creators have more than two months to find an alternative withdrawal system.

We asked the Ministry of Digital Transformation whether the government could influence the situation. The ministry replied that it did not have a clear answer. Meanwhile, the NBU, in its comment to DOU, suggests that companies add Ukraine to the list of “prohibited jurisdictions” because they do not have a source of data on the status of Ukraine’s territories or an official list of Ukraine’s territories temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation.

“In other words, such decisions are not a requirement of the US legislation on financial monitoring sanctions. Such changes are a form of de-risking — when financial institutions completely terminate or significantly limit business relations with clients or categories of clients to completely avoid risk rather than manage it.”

In case funds are blocked, the NBU advises contacting the bank that blocked the payment to find out the grounds for the refusal and agree on the scope of additional measures/information required to make the payment. Within a month, banks must inform the NBU of the results of the measures taken, problematic issues identified during communication with partner banks, and proposals for possible solutions.