Everyone is missing the point here -- the real change that Patreon are making is changing from a monthly batching of charges to charging patrons each little donation as a separate event. This means that a huge amount more money is wasted on the fixed transaction fees (the ones that you mentioned), and rather than just continuing to charge a single lump sum on a monthly basis; they are instead going ahead with that stupid decision and confusing the issue by transferring the cost from Creator to Patron at the same time.
Yes, exactly this - and EXCELLENT video!
I am surprised nobody noticed Patreon's sleight of hand here.... they are outright lying in their charts about how much money goes to the creators, they ignore the cost increase to the only people who are actually paying anything - the patrons! Shame on them.
As for what prompted this, I would guess it could have been a few things..
-As all companies do, they may have just been looking at their books wondering how they can make more money and thought "hey, we can shift those transaction fees to the payers".
-If you watch Dave's video, he mentions something like 800 people who donate $1. Presumably, many or perhaps most of them may donate to multiple creators and those payments would be batched, but if you look at the percentage that Patreon takes, it's certainly far less than 35% or so, which is what it would be if all those $1 pledges were processed individually. So there are ratios in there regarding the number of people pledging multiple creators, the average pledge amount, whether they are paying monthly or per-video and numerous other factors. It could be that things are trending such that Patreon is noticing an increase in fees and a reduction in profit due to this trend. Shifting the processing fees to the patrons eliminates all of the aggregation of data and batching of payments necessary to realize efficiencies of processing payments they need to realize a profit. It also insulates them from losses due to shifting trends in the way patrons choose to support creators.
-It could be that as Patreon has grown, the credit card companies have chosen to take a bite out of them. Patreon isn't a tiny fish, but they are a microscopically irrelevant fish compared to the transaction volume of Visa/MC/Amex/Discover/etc. I can see them doing enough volume to pop up on the radars of the processing companies and come under closer scrutiny, and either be deemed ripe for additional fleecing, or possibly be deemed to be a risk due to the service they are selling. Perhaps when they were smaller, they were categorized somehow with their processors but as they have grown, their payment processors want to adjust their rates. Whatever the reason, if their rates change even a little (a few cents more per transaction), that can radically change the business model under Patreon's old system.
-And it could be that they have been seeing a fair amount of fraud. Who knows - but there is no tangible good exchanged, so perhaps there is some way Patreon has been abused for money laundering or trading in illicit goods and this has caused the hammer to come down and required additional financial scrutiny.
Whatever it is, Patreon isn't telling and I wouldn't expect them to. I am disappointed that they were so disingenuous in their chart as pointed out in the video linked above. It makes me want to cancel my pledges, but I've supported Dave for a couple of years or more now, and I don't want the creators to the ones to suffer.