Even as PayPal claims to be addressing the shortcomings in their payment platform, the roster of crowdfunding campaigns which have been impaired by PayPal continues to grow. The latest campaign to experience a “PayPal Freeze Out” is from SIGMO – a voice translation device which started crowdfunding on Indiegogo on August 5th.
In a letter posted to their backers, organizer Marti Karrer shared their PayPal woes:
Hello Friends,
We have bad news for today.
Currently you can’t contribute through PayPal system and they also have frozen our PayPal account. We were informed that the account had become Limited: we can receive payments, but can’t withdraw them. PayPal said that we will receive the money from our campaign only after delivering the product, in 2014 which obviously is totally useless for our crowdfunding campaign.
We would like to request that nobody cancel their payments or take any action aside from speaking out. We are in negotiations with PayPal and hope that we can solve this problem. You will be informed about any further actions.
We know that the same problems with PayPal had other campaigns like MailPile, GlassUp and others:
https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2013/08/20705-paypal-glassup-indiegogo/
We have also disabled PayPal as a payment option on our campaign until it has been resolved. But you can still contribute directly through your credit card. We are really sorry for the inconvenience.
Marti Karrer
SIGMO blasted past their original goal of $15,000 and now stand at around $120,000 raised to date with 23 days left on their campaign. The SIGMO device is a “voice translating” piece of tech which hopes to eliminate the hassles of communication when visiting a foreign country where you do not speak the language. The campaign had recently set Stretch Goal #4 as they attempt to hit $200,000.
PayPal for their part has communicated several times they are aware of issues in their process and are working on a global solution. For live crowdfunding campaigns fearing a PayPal Freeze out – this resolution cannot come soon enough.
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