European bank accounts [LWN.net]

European bank accounts

Posted Nov 6, 2002 16:35 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1)
In reply to: Your weekly report from LWN by stuart
Parent article: Your weekly report from LWN

We are working on it, but the simple idea of a European bank account is almost certainly not going to go anywhere. Opening an account requires a "presence" in Europe that we don't have. There is a great distance between simply having an account and being able to deal with the mass of debit card systems found in Europe; our investigations tell us that there really is no way for us to accept debit cards that are not based on the Visa/MC networks. And, for all the talk of monetary union, bank transfers across EU borders are still difficult and expensive.

Trust me, we really want to find a way to encourage more of our European readers to give us money. We are not ignoring this issue. But it is not an easy one.

Student subscriptions: we expect students, like all other subscribers, to pick the level that they think is appropriate for them. In the case of many students, the "starving hacker" level is probably right. We remember well what the student life was like... Of course, what we would really like students to do is to go to their university library and encourage them to buy a group subscription for the entire campus. We have made it quite affordable for universities to do that.

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European bank accounts

Posted Nov 7, 2002 3:47 UTC (Thu) by a_hippie (guest, #34) [Link]

Greetings:

This is just a thought, so please pardon me if you have already
addressed it yourself.

I belong to ARRL (http://www.arrl.org). I also belong to my local
amateur radio club. ARRL set up a nice way to pay their dues via a club
payment that also netted the club $1 per paid member. The end result was
that ARRL gained a new (or renewed) member and the local club gained $1 per
member too.

Would it be possible to pick larger, strategic LUG's in Europe that
could accept lwn subscriptions as joint parters to lwn? If so, then perhaps
these LUG's could gain a small percentage of income while likewise gaining
lwn happy new subscribers.

Wishing you the best as always.

European bank accounts

Posted Nov 7, 2002 14:19 UTC (Thu) by tres (guest, #352) [Link]

I'm not a European so this may be a totally bogus idea -- anyway here it is. There are many companies in Europe that are friendly to Linux and most likely LWN; SUSE in Germany, Mandrake in France, and Turbo Linux in Japan (or whatever its name is now and I know it's Asian and not European). Is there anyway that you can possibly get them to be an extension of LWN? That would provide you with a presence there. I'm sure the salary of a single author, translator, marketeer, etc. would be worth the income that the citizens of Europe seem to be trying to give you. How about exchanging some consulting for the aid of a European bank in this endeavor? It just seems to me that there are so many people trying to find a solution to this problem that it has to be there somewhere.

Tres (class5@pacbell.net)

European bank accounts

Posted Nov 7, 2002 16:56 UTC (Thu) by hamjudo (subscriber, #363) [Link]

From a technical point of view, anyone with a credit card and a European bank account can buy LWN gift certificates and resell them.

Are there any legal, marketing or practical issues preventing the resale of gift certificates?

Which issues make it unattractive as a business?

European bank accounts

Posted Nov 14, 2002 11:50 UTC (Thu) by gerard (guest, #1478) [Link]

While only an option for the annual subscriptions, PayPAL is Launching "Multiple Currencies" soon, they are going to accept payments in Canadian Dollars, Euro, Sterling and Yen.