Oh boy... WireCard fraud (Patreon)

Update 01/07:

Card has been unfrozen, and just in the nick of time as the bulk of the monthly bills got due for payment =D

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In the interest of transparency, here's a little financial situation I'm currently facing.

Some of you may already have heard about WireCard, a german reputable financial firm (well, it was at any case), and one that issues cards for several companies, amongst them Payoneer, the most popular withdrawal option for Patreon.

WireCard now finds itself in a quite Enron like situation... I'll spare you all the recap, but do google it or look it up on youtube, quite the story.

Yesterday evening I got a email from Payoneer that the UK government has frozen the balances associated with WireCard, so that would be all my balances with Payoneer, period. So long story short, the money I have on that account to pay the S3 bills, Hosting bills and commission work is now inaccessible for me until the UK Govt decides to unfreeze it, and that can take anywhere from days to years all depending.

Now, what does this mean for me? It means two things:

- The current balance is inaccessible to me for the foreseeable future.
- Movement of money will be slowed down significantly

This isn't the end of the world for me, I know others have it way worse, patreon never has been my primary source of income, so I can cover bills and all that with my private fonds... the coming weeks will be rather hard for me, but not insurmountable. Though paying $3500 in still outstanding bills will certainly hurt.

Due to multiple companies being affected and Payoneer not only dealing with Patreon, but it's also a common withdrawal account for a suite of freelancing services and amazon merchant services... A lot of people are in a far worse place than me, as they have their whole financial life currently frozen, causing real life problems with getting food on their table for their families and getting bills paid. Hell, even heard about someone filling gas that got the cops called on him for not being able to pay.

My thoughts go out to these people in these trying times. I wish any affected people reading this the very best and I'm right alongside you praying that this will be over and done with quickly.

What does this mean for you all?

Nothing much. I have the funds needed to operate as normal, thank god, though the currently ongoing trial of a faster download option for sideloader mods may be temporarily moved to a $10 tier exclusive thing at the end of the trial instead of into public as initially planned, this is to reduce risk for myself till this gets sorted, at which point I'll make it public as originally intended... taken that the trial completes as expected at least.

TLDR

Trouble in paradise, but business more or less as usual.