Hello to all.

I would like share some of the research I done for LATAM on June. 

This link [1] has a Google Docs Spreadsheet in which I include all the possible alternatives I thought at the time. This other link [2] got a comparison on each proposed alternative method including benefits and drawbacks. The idea was that one person from each active Fedora country (in LATAM initially) could fill the table with the most realistic values. After that propose one or two most feasible alternatives methods to Council. Maybe this could be extrapolated to every region. That will have valuable information of money is treated on each country where Fedora is involved.

One alternative we dropped consideration was having an extra cardholder on the region. As you all mentioned, this is not feasible. Only one cardholder specifically per region. As simple as that. The extra cardholder we can support is Brian.

Hope this input may be useful.

If you got any inquires, do not hesitate to communicate with me. Always willing to help and find solutions.

References:
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Potty/LATAM_Reimbursement_Alternatives#Benefits
[2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ODoF_2YwO4h3X6fm8hSQ_ljTZEq0yhVdXFoLyRqGKWs


2016-12-08 5:21 GMT-05:00 Brian Exelbierd <bex@pobox.com>:
On Tue, Dec 6, 2016, at 05:33 PM, Giannis Konstantinidis wrote:

Looking at Joerg's reports, I notice Paypal has some high fees as well. But I guess they're lower than some other alternative solutions/platforms.


I really appreciate that everyone is concerned about fees.  However, our regions are not currently spending their entire budgets, therefore I encourage everyone to not worry about fees.

If RH is forcing us to use a system that incurs high fees, I will talk to RH about changes so we can save money or additional budget to cover those fees.

BUT - until we are spending all of our money the fees don't matter.

This DOES NOT mean that we can use any money transfer method we want without consideration of fees.  On the contrary we should all be good stewards of the money.  But it does mean that if the fee savings is not significant in the grand scheme of the budget, not necessarily your local economy, don't worry about it.  For example, sticking with an inconvenient platform because it has a 3 EUR fee and avoiding a more convenient one because the fee is 7 EUR is silly.  Avoiding a 30 EUR fee is smart though.


Andsomething like Western Union could be legally quite questionable, it's IMHO
banned for good reasons at different companies; but I don't have a specific
clue about Red Hat here though. But in the very last end, using a bunch of
payment providers for reimbursement adds IMHO much more work to the persons
doing this work currently in their free time. And as often we transfer the
money, as more charges and conversion fees get IMHO applied - while we have
still a credit card as our base provided by Red Hat.


I do not know whether RH prefers to avoid WU or not. I'd like to gain some insight.


I am 99% certain that Western Union is not going to be acceptable to RH accounting.  I will inquire about this option once we have a list of options.

The goal of the conversation, as I understand it three things:

1) Determine where we are having trouble with reimbursements and figure out why (sounds like communications)? and then figure out how to solve this.

I am not hearing people talk about this enough.

2) Determine a list of alternative reimbursement providers and the regions/countries they are to be considered for.  This should be a company website, region/country that needs it, and an explanation of why PayPal isn't acceptable and why this is a better choice.

Once you all have this list together I will need to work with RH accounting to decide if we can use any of them and work them into a policy statement.  I am happy to do it, but I need your local knowledge to source the company names.  Keep in mind that companies that have a negative reputation in the US (i.e. Western Union) or that cannot process money from credit cards are unlikely to be accepted.

3) Figure out ideas for a reasonable policy for when the project should pay expenses in advance/on behalf of someone and when someone should need to do a reimbursement.  This policy needs to balance the ease of purchasing for both the project and person, the local economic situations in play, and the ability for the project to ensure that all requirements are met.

Let's talk more about this too please.

regards,

bex


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Abdel G. Martínez L.