"Hey if you like my stuff consider adding my <public bank account key> to your monthly payments.
I guess Patreon provides a walled garden of premium content for patrons, but I'm skeptical that's universally desired by creators. The few I know don't do any of that.
One thing that Patreon does have that would be harder to recreate is the gamification of patronage. Like comparing subscriber counts on YouTube, Patreon makes it easy to compare different creators' Patreon income which I think serves as a rough estimate of clout.
Banks specifically DON'T want you doing that because they don't want undesirable businesses funneling money in and out of their banks. I'm sure there are different legal liabilities for different places for different undesirable businesses with that kind of thing. It's probably a potential minefield to let anyone do that indiscriminately.
Probably have to track everyone, and then roll back or cancel accounts when you catch the pornographers, or cartels or what have you.
(Of course, that brings you back to the problem of randomly cancelled accounts.)
My credit union offers free unlimited bill pay to anyone. Certain businesses can do it via a direct deposit, but I can send a set amount of money to ANYONE and they will mail a check on the Nth day of the month.
Not sure I understand this objection - the recipient of such a transfer would already have to have an account at another bank, and that bank would have to do the full AML/KYC checks anyway. There should be no issues with someone with an account at reputable bank A sending a regular payment to an account at reputable bank B for any purpose.
While Patreon isn't Silk Road, people can and will try to take advantage of any payment system with weak controls.
The problem is that it has to be international.
Here in Europe a lot of content creators do this. You can simply set up a recurring payment to any IBAN, transaction fees are usually low.
There’s a lot of people who mostly use it as “automatic tip jar”, too.