Accept Donations on a Business Account?

OceanRelic
Contributor
Contributor

The main thing I need is to be able to accept Ko-Fi donations from strangers without revealing my legal name. I don't mind if merchants or PayPal itself knows my legal name, since that is obviously needed for the transaction. What I'm uncomfortable with is strangers knowing my real name from the PayPal receipt that is generated when donating on Ko-Fi. I have been looking into options to remedy this. So this is not accepting donations as a charity organization, but as an individual.

 

Ko-Fi itself encourages users to switch from a Personal account to a Business one, since the latter allows users to specify a business name, which is what is displayed in the PayPal receipt instead of their legal name. (help page from Ko-Fi mentioning this, and another help page mentioning it too). Is this truly a good option for this situation? It seems to be endorsed by Ko-Fi but I can't find anything about what PayPal thinks of this.

 

I have also read that if something happens and PayPal flags the account, we have to show proof of ownership of the business to get it unflagged. So from this I would assume the Business account has to be connected to an actual business. Is this true, or is it allowed to use a Business account as an individual without a "business" but instead a "brand" or pen name?

 

Example, a writer who wants to just use their pen name as their business name. I've read articles that say that people can do this, they just set their "business type" to "individual"/"sole proprietor". So for this example, the writer would receive Ko-Fi donations and commission payments for their work with a Business PayPal account under their pen name. In this sort of situation, would the Business account have to be set to "charity" type in order to accept the donations in particular, or leaving it as "individual"/"sole proprietor" would be fine?

 

Sorry for the long post, I wanted to be sure I explained and covered everything as much as possible.

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sharpiemarker
Esteemed Advisor
Esteemed Advisor

@OceanRelic 

 

Set business type to “individual”. If PayPal asks for business registration, write a note to explain that you’re just an individual accepting money/tips for being content creator, not a registered entity. Pdf it and and upload to the request.


Kudos & Solved are greatly appreciated. 🙂

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sharpiemarker
Esteemed Advisor
Esteemed Advisor

@OceanRelic 

 

Set business type to “individual”. If PayPal asks for business registration, write a note to explain that you’re just an individual accepting money/tips for being content creator, not a registered entity. Pdf it and and upload to the request.


Kudos & Solved are greatly appreciated. 🙂
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OceanRelic
Contributor
Contributor

@sharpiemarker 

 

Oh my goodness, I honestly was expecting it to be more complicated than that. Thank you so much! This is such a relief.

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