Moonbase GBP feature request

[dannytaurus]

If you sell through Moonbase and any of your customers are in the UK, this affects you.

Moonbase can only hold your balance in EUR or USD. There is no GBP holding currency. Per their help centre, that has two effects:

• If you set a GBP price, you pay a 3% currency surcharge on every one of those sales (EUR is 0%, USD is 1%), and the money is converted out of GBP before it is held.
• If you don't set a GBP price, Moonbase converts for the buyer and the surcharge lands on your UK customer instead.

For UK-based sellers it is worse, because the money then gets converted back to GBP at payout. So a sale from a UK customer to a UK seller goes GBP to EUR or USD then back to GBP, with a surcharge on the way.

I asked Moonbase about it. Tobias @tobbentm replied quickly and opened a feature request, but said there is no timeline yet:

https://feedback.moonbase.sh/p/gbp-as-holding-currency

It's been open since the end of August and has two votes, one from me and one from Tobias. I suspect that's because nobody knows it exists, not because nobody cares.

The UK is a big market for plugins, and I guess most sellers here have a decent share of UK buyers. For me it's about 35%.

If this matters to you, an upvote and a one-line comment with your rough GBP split would help them prioritise it.

For context: I'm not on Moonbase yet. I'm planning a move from Gumroad, Moonbase is where I want to end up, and this is one of the few things holding me back. So this isn't a complaint about them. They have been responsive, and this is the kind of thing a vote count can move.

[David Healey]

@dannytaurus Voted, I don't see a per-currency breakdown in Moonbase though so not 100% sure about the split.

[dannytaurus]

@tobbentm If any of my post is inaccurate please let me know!

[tobbentm]

@dannytaurus the only thing I'd add is that the 3% conversion fee is carried by the buyer by default, so you don't technically pay that.
This is the alternative to listing in EUR for example, where the buyer would still pay the conversion fee, just through their card provider instead.
The end result should be that you get the same net amount in either case.
If you hard-code a GBP price, you should include the conversion rates in that price to get the same effect.

I totally get this is not great if you expect GBP in your account at the end of the day, so I hope we can add support for more holding currencies by the end of the year.

[Lindon]

@dannytaurus The one thing we do - given the range of 3rd-parties we sell thru and their differing currency approaches, is have our own Wise account, and this allows us to hold and transfer(at the best conversion rates we can find anywhere) between currencies at our own discretion. We just tell the 3rd-party the details of the account holding the currency they prefer. If I recall correctly Wise accounts are free, they will pay you interest and the transfers between accounts is seamlessly manged(by you) on line whenever you want, including transferring to your Real-world bank account. We have US Dollar, UK Sterling, Australian Dollar and Euro accounts...all in the one Wise account, with a Debit card we can use anywhere.

Might not be everything you want but you should take a look.

[dannytaurus]

@Lindon Yeah, we talked about Wise previously. It doesn't help with the Moonbase internal conversion situation though.

https://forum.hise.audio/post/122699

[David Healey]

@Lindon said in Moonbase GBP feature request:

they will pay you interest

This I didn't know, are the rates any good?

[dannytaurus]

@David-Healey You have to switch on 'interest'. GBP is 3.29%, USD 3.6% and EUR 2.2%.