Possible regulation of crowd sourced funding in the UK

[Mr Mystery]

It's not so much straight dealing, but additional overhead of being regulated. There is a financial compliance cost, risk of penalties, etc. that drive cost up.

Yet with that, in the UK at least, you get added confidence from the market, and a potentially cheaper alternative to legal action in the form of the Financial Ombudsman Service. Paid for by a levy, and a per case, win or lose case fee. Upside to those flat costs? If the Ombudsman upholds in the favour of the business, it's generally dropped at that point.

[Wolfshade]

Regulation to try and stop an investor being taken for a ride? That will stifle creativity.

[Mr Mystery]

Then so be it. UK is currently going with soft regulations, but strongly and actively enforced. And seems to be going fairly well at the moment.

It's also to protect whoever is producing. As has been demonstrated on this thread, there are those who pledge, cough up, receive goods, then reverse the payment..... Regulation sets out rules for this sort of thing.

Did you know, Paypal is regulated in the UK?

[Wolfshade]

I did know that. Did you know that it's EULA is 6000 words longer than Hamlet...

[Mr Mystery]

Probably.

Main reason we see Paypal cases is between Paypal, and the business receiving the money....

[Deadlift]

I like paypal, biggest case I had was a couple years ago. My xbox live account was hacked and somebody used the linked paypal account to purchase £90 worth of xbox live points. I rang up Microsoft - Xbox and they said it would take 30 days to resolve and at the end of the investigation I may receive a refund. I then phoned paypal who refunded me in less than 2 hours.