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Ask HN: How would you solve this problem?

2 points by rpjt ↗ HN
Imagine you're a bootstrapped founder of a mobile social app. On the app, there are content creators and consumers. The userbase is global, with creators and users from all over the world.

You want to start allowing users to tip creators for their awesome content, similar to the way Twitch viewers can tip "bits" to streamers, which they can eventually cash out for real money.

The tips are expected to be very small, a few cents here and there.

How would you solve this? Maybe try to do exactly what Twitch does? Seems like it would be a heavy, expensive lift to try to navigate all the tax complexities. Perhaps Stripe could help?

5 comments

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mrobins
I think more than tax what you need to be learning about/seeing if you can outsource is KYC.
rpjt
Yup, that too.
joshxyz
curious, since it is mobile are also subject to 30% fees of google store and apple store?
KomoD
> How would you solve this?

I'd pay someone who knows taxes, and I'd set a minimum withdrawal

nusl
Probably try to find someone to do it for me. This sort of thing is massively complex due to international law and tax differences. You can maybe abstract the issue a bit by using tokens like bits then paying out, rather than using currency directly. But in the end you still need to pay out and still need to conform to law in whatever country you pay to or do business in.

I would probably avoid doing this at all costs unless it was perceivable that it would result in significant return, significant enough to justify the initial pain and ongoing costs.

Someone else mentioned KYC, which is also very important here to avoid fraud and potential legal issues. KYC is not easy to get working because bad actors will always find a way to break it. It is also not cheap and is very heavy with overhead.

Be aware that engaging in these things may also put you in the hook for complying with laws like GDPR or equivalent, depending on the data you store and how, which can add to things.