[committee] Membership 2008

[David Adam]

On Fri, 16 May 2008, Simon Fryer wrote:
> As actually coming into the club room is a little difficult for me
> (until November), can you please let me know where I can aquire a
> membership form online, and how I can pay my membership for this year.
> Paypal is good for me. 

Here are a few slightly off-topic thoughts:

We probably need a new PayPal account (the current one being used is 
paypal-2007 at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au).

Our account was limited recently, because PayPal are asking for a 
number of documents to verify that we are a not-for-profit 
organisation. Luckily, we managed to withdraw all the funds before 
transfer limitations were imposed.

PayPal are chasing:
"""
- A cancelled check registered to your organisation
- Evidence of tax exempt status or registration with any regulatory bodies
- Information about the nature of your organisation and the type of 
payments you intend to process with PayPal
"""

I'm not sure whether it's worth chasing these up: the first is impossible 
and the whole thing seems to be very orientated towards the US financial 
system. It might just be easier to create <paypal-2008 at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> 
and make sure not to mark us as a non-profit organisation.

A solution that doesn't require PayPal would be ideal - they are becoming 
more and more 'evil' (there was no e-mail notification of investigation 
or limitation of our account, and it's becoming less and less obvious how 
you can pay with a credit card without needing a PayPal account). We could 
use the University's credit card interface but that needs a business unit 
and so on, so would need close cooperation with the Guild.

I'd started writing an interface to connect PayPal receipts with dispense 
accounts, allowing top-up of dispense via credit card, but didn't make 
much progress once I realised the problems with the current account.

There's also a separate discussion here on whether allowing large-scale 
non-cash transactions with dispense is a good idea; arguably it's getting 
a little bit out of hand.

Maybe I should get back on the project to hook up the Guild website to the 
UWA credit card system and allow all clubs to accept credit card payments 
with minimal pain...

David Adam
zanchey@