Jack Preston King , there is actually one small way that the Medium/Stripe system is good for the customer. With my Tip Jar Stripe account, donations go to Stripe and then they take their small cut. Then they send it to PayPal and then PayPal takes out their small cut. It’s like I’m being double-taxed. With my direct to bank Medium/Stripe account a cut is taken out of my money only once. So I end up getting slightly more of my money. Of course, it’s a really, really small difference.

On the downside Stripe gets my money to my PayPal account very quickly (less than 24 hours). It takes them longer (2 to 7 days) to get money into my bank account. Again, that’s a very small difference.

The really big difference, though, is for Medium Authors who live in countries where Stripe is not supported (and apparently there are many of these countries). Perhaps Medium is hoping that Stripe eventually gets in all these countries. So, sadly, for those authors in those countries it’s a waiting game.

The truly sad thing for everyone is that with the unbelievable amount of hacking going on these days means no connection we have involving the internet is truly safe. All we can do is minimize our vulnerability. Of course, with every hacking the hackers get smarter and it’s only a matter of time before we all get screwed. Meanwhile Trump and his Republicans are stripping away every last regulation on the books that is designed to protect consumers.