Patreon said today it has fixed the root cause of a problem that led to creators and patrons seeing widespread rejected payments this week, and itâs still working to solve the larger problem. The funding platform confirmed to Engadget that financial institutions have flagged âa slightly higher-than-normal number of patron paymentsâ as fraudulent. In addition, some creators said theyâre unable to access their funds, which Patreon describes as an unrelated problem stemming from a partner update.
The company describes the inability to access payouts as only affecting âcreators using a single payment partner,â which its system status page identifies as Payoneer. It says itâs working âactively with Payoneer to restore payoutsâ and expects to see the transactions restored today.
The problem gained attention after various Patreon users posted on social channels about losing supporters en masse. Many reported that Patreonâs billing information appeared to have recently shifted to Dublin, which some users speculated was the root cause of banks flagging the transactions as fraudulent. âI just checked and have lost 80% of my patrons,â Dr. Brooke Magnanti, author of Secret Diary of a London Call Girl, posted on Bluesky today. âAwesome.â
Meanwhile, Reddit user u/Competitive_Fruit901 wrote on Wednesday that they lost 300 patrons. âBilling messed up way more than usual this month,â u/Koratl replied. âA lot of peopleâs cards flagged Patreon as fraudulent.â Redditor u/arzen 353 chimed in, âNot only that, thereâs no way to re-try payment once you authorize it with your bank. People canât re-subscribe even if they want to. Apparently you just have to wait for patreon to un-fuck itself.â
Hey, if you’re a Patreon creator and are confused as to why a bunch of your income vanished, it’s because Patreon’s system appears to have totally collapsed. They sent me an email saying my credit card blocked the payment as fraudulent, and CANCELLED ALL OF MY CREATOR SUPPORT. 1/
â Jason Pargin, author of John Dies at the End, etc (@JasonKPargin) August 2, 2023
Patreon tells Engadget that the Dublin billing location is likely related to a recent upgrade. âWe made a required upgrade with one of our payment processing partners,â company spokesperson Ellen Satterwhite wrote in an email response. âThat may have changed the descriptors people are used to seeing in their statements. We are working closely with this payment processing partner to resolve the issue.â Patreon doesnât expect the flagged payments to be a long-term issue. âAs a matter of course, when payment declines happen for various reasons, and payments are retried, those patron relationships are restored,â the company told Engadget. The company added that it didnât want to speculate about a timeline or specific actions until itâs fully rolled out a fix.
At least one user reported getting things back on track after calling their financial institution. u/Current-Confusion-67 described a lengthy ordeal of calling the card provider, verifying information and finally seeing their Patreon setup return to normal. âI donât really know whatâs going on myself, and I canât really seem to track down an answer to why these things are happening, but Iâd say the issues are probably related to the location of payments being processed suddenly changing to another country entirely causing cards to be flagged by fraud prevention.â
Weâll update this article as we receive more information. You can also check on Patreonâs status blog and its X (formerly Twitter) support account for updates.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/patreon-is-fixing-canceled-payments-and-inaccessible-funds-for-creators-175319787.html?src=rss