information and I am your host Dana Claire with the inluence and I'm super excited to have you all here today so Brian I am going to let the floor be yours awesome thanks Dana uh hi everybody uh my name is Brian McMurray I'm a director of product and Engineering here at Kickstarter working specifically in the payments area uh really excited to share with you all a bit more today about our new pledge overtime uh product uh offering uh it's today currently in beta uh planning for sort of General availability this spring um Dana if you can give me the screen share I've got a few slides and I'll walk you all through uh some quick overview of what pledge overtime is how it works you should be fine that that's all set up for you already awesome and uh I'll I'll I'll show you all sort of what it works how it works for you and what you need to keep in mind of as uh creators and uh also what the backer experience of this would be like uh I'll try to answer some questions uh as we go and if you've got more questions please add them into the chat and we'll have a little time for question and answer uh at the end I think y all right all right so pledge overtime at Kickstarter oh oh why why aren't you working there we go what is pledge over time uh we call it plot uh a fun little uh acronym uh plot allows a Creator to enable is is an option that's enabled on a Creator's project that allows a backer to break their pledges up in to several payments uh or increments uh in the way that we've built it today that uh payment schedule is fixed it's four equal payments uh spread out two weeks apart uh we can get some more I can I'm happy to talk more about that and other things that may be coming there in the future but what I really want you to understand uh start to start with is that plot is not a lending product you might be familiar with Clara or a firm or other lending products that allow this sort of buy now pay later experience on the internet uh they're relatively popular for in the e-commerce space these days what's important to understand about plot is that it is not quite the same it is uh more akin to uh a layaway program than it is a a lending product that means that backers do not have credit checks uh before they're offered uh to to use plot there are no late fees and for uh creators there's a a few other caveats so if you're familiar with something like a firm uh as a merchant the the customer may be paying over time but the the merchant or the seller gets paid in full uh with pledge over time just so that it's very clear you are paid on the same Cadence that the backers are paying their increments that means you're not paid 100% of the Pledge Upfront for the pledge overtime backings also important is that there are no additional fees uh for using pledge overtime on Kickstarter uh is just the standard Kickstarter platform fee and processing fee if you are familiar again with you know in a firm or a Clara like that uh typically the the seller or the merchant pays an additional fee beyond the cost of the the credit card fee uh for that purchase because of the cash fronting that is done in a lending product like that so uh touched on this a little bit already but for creators here's some important things to know about how pledge overtime works you are paid at the time when uh when your project uh collects so when your campaign is complete and Kickstarter goes and charges all of your backers your backers who have selected pledge over time will be charged to their first 25% increment and you the Creator will be paid out at the same time that you uh receive the payout for your pledge in full backers so those who don't select pledge overtime you're paid out on the normal Cadence which is about 2 weeks after your campaign completes that first 25% increment of the your pledge overtime uh backers is also paid out to you at that time on that roughly that same day your backers are going to be charged their second increment for pledge overtime two weeks after that they'll be charged their third increment and two weeks after that they'll be charged their fourth increment uh about a a week or two after your uh that fourth increment is charged your final payout for your pledge overtime balance will be issued to you so those uh increments two three and four are paid out as one lump sum at the end of the the com of all the payments so for backers that means that backers are charged in four equal payments as I said before that first 25% when the campaign completes and the three remaining every two weeks uh after that you're probably wondering well what happens if they if the backer uh card fails or a payment doesn't go through those are great questions uh because again this is not a lending product uh creators share in that risk alongside Kickstarter uh what that means is that if uh a increment a payment is fails uh on the backer side Kickstarter does what it always does we email and contact that Creator and say hey something went wrong uh your payment didn't go through here's an here's an opportunity for you to come back and fix that uh you may be familiar with in your normal campaign that that period after the your campaign completes there's a 7day period for backers to come back and fix their payments for their pledge for the pledge overtime increments backers are given a full two weeks to come back and fix that payment we're trying to give them as much as much opportunity to come in and repair that missed payment as possible uh both for you and for them so that that is part of how that goes but perhaps at the end of that 14 days they still have not repaired uh that missed payment at that Mo at that time the continuing payments will no longer be charged and that pledge will be dropped or that backer's pledge will be uh removed uh from your campaign that does not mean that the funds that you've already collected are returned to the backer automatically uh that is for you to determine a refund policy with them and if you would like to to refund them uh because perhaps their circumstances have changed and they just can't afford it uh that is up to you the Creator to to determine so Kickstarter does not automatically refund uh previous paid increments when a future increment fails a few other things to know about the beta specifically uh right now pledge overtime is in a uh a limited beta we're enrolling new projects um on a rolling basis now and letting them launch as they would like uh we've got a few criteria here as we scale up this program and continue to build out a few more features in the system so if you would like to use Pledge overtime pledge overtime when enabled in your campaign is available at for pledges over 100 like $125 us or higher inclusive of $125 uh we ask that right now for for beta campaigns uh we're looking at at projects that are planning to earn at least $10,000 um as a you know that restriction will go away when pledge overtime becomes generally available uh there's a few caveats as we continue to build out this system so these are some things for you to be aware of if you want to join the dat today uh the experience for backers if they have selected pledge overtime and would like to edit their uh their pledge perhaps you have stretch goals or other uh new offerings that are timed out throughout the length of your campaign pledge overtime backers will need to cancel that pledge and repledge that's not typically a problem in our experience so far for most campaigns uh but this could become painful for your backers if for instance you use uh early bird uh pricing strategies uh with limited time availability and then offer add-ons on during the course of your campaign that you expect people to edit their pledge and add in addition to uh today Kickstarter has an offering called late pledges which allows you to extend your fundraising period past your campaigns original end date to continue uh bringing in new backers uh who maybe missed your initial campaign pledge overtime is not currently supported for the late pledge period Additionally you may have heard in a previous uh webinar here uh or elsewhere on the internet that Kickstarter has uh a new pledge manager uh beta program uh we're very excited about the capabilities there and I just want you to understand that uh if you utilize pledge over time you cannot launch the pledge manager until the all of your payments have been collected so in the case of pledge overtime until 6 weeks after your campaign has completed would be the earliest that you could launch kickstarter's pledge manager that's in part to ensure that you have the most accurate information of who has made it to have full-fledged complete pledges uh when when the pledge manager launches we're still building some of the refund Tools in this during this beta period so if you were to launch during uh the pledge overtime beta uh and you need to offer refunds you'll just need to uh communicate with me and my team and we'll help facilitate that uh as opposed to the normal uh self-service refund flows that you may be used to working with within the kickstarter experience uh there's more information here uh available in the the kickstarter help center if you look for pledge overtime beta FAQ let me show you a little bit of what this looks like this is the perspective from a backer's uh experience so this is a live uh beta project today you can go check this out yourself um and if you're into cool music Hardware this is a neat neat synthesizer project uh live right now uh but this uh experience is if you've selected a pledge reward tier uh that is $125 or more uh as you move into the confirm your pledge experience as a backer you'll see this confirm your payment method area uh and collection plan option which allows you to select either to pledge in full meaning you'll be charged in full once right away or pledge over time and if if you select pledge over time you're going to be shown the uh calculated payment dates and amounts for your pledge overtime periods so you know upfront exactly when you'll be charged and for what amounts uh through the the course of that if you'd like to learn some more and or apply to join the beta you can uh check out our landing page here it's at start . kickstarter.com /plot dbaa there is a form uh on this page you can see here in the screenshot that says apply to join the beta you'll provide you'll fill that out with some information about your campaign uh and who you are and um when you're planning to launch our my team will review that and enroll uh new projects into the Beta or be in touch if there's some reason that uh it may not be a good fit for the beta period uh but as I said we're now accepting rolling applications rolling enrollments in the beta so uh it's pretty rare that there's a reason that a a a project couldn't be in the beta hey Brian we have a a question real quick that I would love to ask um that's relevant to what you just said is this beta open for those outside of the US or is it um just for the US that's a great question uh it is available in other currencies and other locations so um and we're enable like the plan is to enable that in all of our supported uh locations uh today if you're launching in uh Europe uh Britain or Australia we've already got that enabled if you're planning to launch in another country or currency uh just include that in your application and we'll review that and uh give us uh more than a couple of days but maybe a week or more notice uh before you uh want to launch and we can do our best to get that enabled for you uh and work out the correct uh amount threshold roughly our threshold is the equivalent of $125 Us in whatever the local currency is and is Canada a part of what you're already working on uh Canada I don't believe has been enabled yet but is again something that we can enable quite quickly if that is uh where you're you're based and you're thinking about participating please fill out the application form love to review it and uh do our best to to facilitate perfect and and can I start asking because we've got a bunch of questions so yeah let me um I can't see the chat in the screen share V very well so let me just uh oh you're fine we have them all right I'm just gonna ask them cool I'll show here too if you've got additional questions feel free to reach out to us at plot kickstarter.com that comes to the whole team uh working on pledge overtime and we'll do our best to to answer your questions and you can leave that side up if you want so people who are coming in can see that right away I think that would be fine if that's okay with you unless you want take it off um oh and then Amanda and I also put in the um chat the email address and then also the link if you you were interested in beta guys so you have that there too you can just click it or copy it um everyone knows I'm not great at Tech so I don't know if you can click I think it's a copy um well we've got a bunch of questions um if you don't mind Brian I would love to start with that sure we have a question in the chat that says as the Creator do you pay each and every credit card processing fee for the um increments yes that's uh that's a great question and and yes just to be clear the way that this works is um you know on it on Kickstarter when uh we charge the the backer's card for the uh for your campaigns pledge we take the 5% Kickstarter platform fee and the processing fee associated with your currency in the US that's 3% 30 um per transaction uh out of that pledge so we'll charge for that amount and deduct our fees and pay out the remainder to you with these pledge increments breaking this into four uh payments that payment that is also true will continue to take our processing fee and our platform fee off the amount charged at that time so that means that you're not being charged an excess of platform or processing fees we're just breaking it into four um four uh transactions did that um I think Shannon you asked that one Shannon did that meet your needs do you can send me a message if it didn't um will offering plot impact my ability to reach my funding goal do remaining payments count towards the overall funding goal in advance uh another great question um the full amount of the amount pledged even When selecting pledge over time counts toward your funding goal and will be reflected in your fund funding goal totals so therefore even if you have let's say 50% participation in a pledge over time the full amount pledged is what is reflected in your pledge uh campaign totals okay and then just to go back to before um Shannon's question and I think um Shannon said she understands that it will be one fee from Kickstarter but she assumes that every time the credit cards are charged those fees will apply so who is paying those fees yeah again um the way that this works is that when a transaction is charged a card is charged Kickstarter takes 5% as its processing or its platform fee and 3% plus 30 cents for US dollars as the processing payment processing fee so every on each increment so each 25% Kickstarter will take 5% and 3% plus 30 cents so that is uh it those fees are taken on each charge but the total amount taken is is the same or very very close to the amount that would be done that would be taken on a pledge INF full transaction as well so the 5% is the same total amount uh and the processing fees are nearly the same because there is that fixed component of the fee the 30 cents portion it can net out very slightly differently uh over four payments okay right the 30 cents so that Shannon that's making a little bit more sense I'm I'm with you girl I'm terrible at math this is budgeting is not my best suit um somebody else wrote I'm n uh don wrote I'm not great at math but I think this means that the extra expense over the whole thing is four times 30 cents versus the one time of 30 cents yeah that's right so essentially you're going to pay about 90 cents extra to break this into uh into four payments uh versus what you would have paid if it was all charged in one right and that would be similar with any POS like we use stripe or PayPal they all have their additional fees too yeah that's correct and and as I said at the Top If you were to utilize something like a firm or Clara on your own to offer a a pay overtime option typically Clara or a firm take something closer to six or 7% as their processing fee to offer you that service now what happens if a backer fails to complete all their payments so let's say they do one and two but now here comes three or even four and like they ghost you yeah that's a that's a great question and uh one that you know we're part of the reason that we put this out as a beta is so that we could learn too what that looks like the good news is is that so far the the error or cancellation rates of of those increments does not look any different uh percentage wise than it does across the rest of the kickstarter platform so there's a small percent of customers whose payments fail and they fail to fix them the way this works in pledge over time is twofold if you have let's say you're you've collected two increments or two payments successfully but it fails on the third that customer is notified and given two weeks to come back and repair that third increment and then uh and stay active as a as a backer on your project if they do not come back and fix their payment and pay that third increment then their uh pledge will become dropped or cancelled meaning that you the Creator do not have an obligation to fulfill do you still get payments one and two yes and payments one and two are still issued to you that essentially becomes bonus support for you they they the backer has agreed through the terms that they've agreed by selecting pledge over time that they'll understand that those previously paid increments are not by default automatically or entitled to a refund now you as the creators have the opportunity or the choice just as you always do to choose to issue refunds arbitrarily to your backers so if you wanted to uh have a policy different than the sort of blanket default policy that Kickstarter puts in place you could choose to to offer refunds of those earlier paid increments but you are not obligated to and it is not automatic we did this on purpose to prevent uh any sort of bad behavior where uh backers might promise huge amounts of pledge uh over time and then uh allow them or intentionally set them up to fail on the future increment and Claw all of that back you know pulling money away from the campaign that you were expecting uh so that is that is the um uh the idea behind that that previously paid increments are not automatically uh due a refund and do you have any stats to show that plot um you're able to make you know Higher Goals or higher or fund hire I should say because plot allows people that flexibility um do you have stats on that that you could share with us I can I'll I'll share one um example from our our uh plot beta which uh as you all may be aware the announce we announced this on in early February so the first cohort of beta projects are are now into their uh collection they've completed their campaigns one publishing uh industry project that participated in the plot Beta had 45% of their backers select pledge over time wow and uh hold on I just had had these uh stats open let me grab it again a few other notes uh on that on that project uh the average pledge amount for uh pledges that's used pledge overtime on that project was about $240 the average non pledge overtime pledge was $144 so a difference of $100 um that's great if we further limit the the pledges uh that didn't select pledge over time to just those above the threshold of where they had the choice to select pledge overtime so those $125 or more the backers who selected pledge overtime pledged on average 21% higher or $43 higher than other backers at $125 or more so very high participation on that project and very good results in terms of allowing uh enabling backers to reach toward those premium tiers that they may not otherwise select if they didn't have the option of breaking that up into several payments um and I'm gonna do Don I'm just going to read this so he says in effect does this extend the time before the campaign completes by a month so that you don't have start fulfilling any rewards until all um plots have been finished uh that is a good question and and I think that there are a couple ways to think about that one you could wait like perhaps you can't fulfill until every single one of your backers is uh is complete and in that in that situation um you probably want to wait until all of your pledge overtime backers have completed their payments uh that said perhaps uh you may not have that constraint and you may want to start fulfilling some of your reward tiers earlier if available or some of your rewards if available it's going to be somewhat a decision on your part in terms of what risks you want to take in terms of producing uh those those rewards that are uh still a little bit we'll say at risk because the the pledges are not yet complete um but you know in general I would I would suggest that you look closely at your production costs and where your what Your margin is in terms of how much it costs you to produce and what you want to do with extra stock if you end up with it if you just choose to start producing and fulfilling before your pledge increments uh our completed uh collection does that make sense yeah I think that that makes sense um is the required I probably can answer this but I'll just still read it is the requirement to have at least one reward over $125 just for beta or will there be similar requirements once it's available to the public in the future uh that's a great question um Francine thank you um today we have set one floor amount that $125 uh for uh for the campaign what I'll note here is I didn't say this very clearly before so let me expand on this slightly that $125 is the total amount pledged that means that perhaps you're offering add-ons or other um you know uh options in the add-on phase of your pledge so your pledge reward tier may not be $125 on its own let's say it's $100 and you are offering uh previous books in your series as add-ons that could allow that pledge to get over $125 then it would become eligible for pledge over time a backer could also choose to add bonus support to bump themselves over the threshold and enable pledge over time so uh that's the idea there it doesn't per se mean that you must have a reward tier that is $125 or higher by its own a backer could get there by adding add-ons or bonus support if they'd like uh when we go live in general availability It's Our intention to allow backers to choose this threshold within reason on their projects most likely what that means is that a campaign will there will be a sort of platform-wide lowest amount that pledge overtime is offered we don't necessarily want to split a $5 pledge into four separate payments I don't think you do either uh so there's probably going to be a reasonable minimum amount but if you'd like to set your pledge overtime Threshold at a higher amount we intend to allow you to do that so if for instance you wanted to aim it at 3 00 or $500 you would have that option to raise the floor but then would it be any reward over that 125 or 300 or whatever that is would have to be a plot right like you couldn't just say my um like reward one reward tier is plot but the other ones are not right today that is uh that's a that's a feature that we're exploring but um in terms of what is most likely to be in the first version of the generally available feature it will likely be a threshold amount on your campaign not a uh per reward tier enablement or disablement okay um and then back to those payments Jen had the question so if a a missed payment number three comes in at the 10day Mark does that reset their time making the number um for payment no does not so there fourth payment will still continue as scheduled uh which in that CA in that example would be 4 days later okay um Jen says I recall you mentioning what is reflected in the campaign totals what of the plot reward amount is counted towards the overall campaign total that is actively being shown during an active campaign this help factors and stretch goals and such like that yeah and I think Amanda answered this here too U exactly what Amanda said your the full amount pledged is what reflects in your campaign totals I just wanted the group to I don't know if everybody's on the the chat stuff um and then can backer switch from traditional pledge to plot pledge or vice versa mid campaign uh they can as uh as I called out there in during the beta period um the experience for a backer to make that change will re require them to cancel their pledge and repledge to make the new choice however we're actively working on improving that experience so that a backer can use the edit pledge experience to change their um their uh payment period choice so somebody who did like an early bird that was $250 if they go and cancel it they're now out of luck because they're no longer going to be able to get that early bird that would be the challenge yes right great and I I I kind of just said that so that everybody could hear and then of course this being recorded So we want to make sure that our audience can hear it um how does plot affect fulfillment timelines especially for time sensitive rewards um is that something that's really like per campaign because of how they want to set their timeline fulfillments like for example you've got a reward and you're like oh well the inhance date is you started in January you're like March or April 2025 but because of you know plot or pledge over time should everything be backed like should those rewards be backed up including that time frame in it as well that's a great question and I think you know it's it's again one where you want to think about the risks that you're willing to take in terms of um you know promising a fulfillment date especially if that fulfillment date is uh within the sort of six- week period of those plot collections uh knowing that you know uh folks who have selected pledge overtime may fail to pay that fourth increment that final increment and you may be stuck at that moment with extra inventory that you've paid for that you you know no longer have been paid the full pledge amount to to fulfill so likely should not fulfill so it's that's certainly a a good consideration to think about in terms of planning your fulfillment promises on your campaign and also you know uh how you want to handle that uh logistically for yourself um does plot integrate into third-party pledge management sites like backer kit or pledge box um you said you're locked out of the kickstarter pledge management until all payments are made so wondering what it would look like if you're using another integrated third party uh that's a great question um I can't fully speak to how backer kit or pledge boox will handle the pledge overtime information um available in the backer report that you download and import into those third party systems um I don't know if they have built support for that uh or not at this moment so that may be an area that you'll need to work with to sort through yeah I would think and then would you is there um uh I know you had mentioned that there was that site maybe even providing their customer support with that site that gives a little insight um as to what plot is might be helpful for them because they probably at this current time don't have um the support to it since it's so new and and I imagine that you guys aren't chatting about this so um I think that was Jen that asked that Jen I might you might want to contact their customer um support or success team and find out um if they know about this and what they can do for it um does Kickstarter provide any analytics or insights into how plot is affecting the campaign um you mentioned those stats before that we all lit up like a Christmas tree hearing do we get those stats as things are starting to progress in the campaign so that we too can can you know keep our data yeah during the beta period we're adding those the visibility into these things uh progressively so we've been releasing new uh features into the Beta um to make that more visible that is absolutely a concern for ours that when this is available for General release or general availability that you the Creator can track along with your backers uh choices in this regard and what that's looking like for you because this is an important thing for you to keep in mind for both your production and cash flow planning and your fulfillment planning right no I think that that's great um I think that's it Amanda anything that I missed um if there are changes to features or any of like uh the user interface while in beta how is that communicated to the creators like can they expect changes to be happening while they're using it in Live or would the version that they have be the constant version until the end and changes would be pushed out after the fact uh that's a great question each of our beta um participants or or beta creators are partners with us and we're in communication with them throughout the the beta and after um I'll say that what we've launched today is a fully functioning system so it is working uh through the the whole the whole experience for collections and payouts and we are not intending to make any sort of major changes there if for instance uh we needed to consider changing the threshold amount of when pledge overtime is enabled we would work with our beta creators to make sure that everyone is on board with that if they've got live campaigns uh so that there's no unexpected changes in the course of your campaign uh new features are are predominantly what we're continuing to add during this beta period to fill in the areas of functionality that we uh didn't build to their full complete general availabilities you know reliability and stability standards that we would want for this to be fully available for anyone at all times so like I mentioned that's uh surfacing the statistics and information about how pledge over time participation is looking on your campaign during the campaign making sure that those refunds tools and other things are available and improving that experience for for uh backers that allow them to move between pledge overtime and pledge in full without cancelling their backing uh those are the sorts of things that we're continuing to improve during this beta uh so any other changes like that we would be in touch with you well in advance of it of it launching you might have answered this um and I missed it as we're taking notes um for the playback but right now the campaign goal has to be over 10,000 when it does launch will that number change we've got many of our own clients that do way over 10,000 some in the six figures but their campaign goals are like 4,000 or 9,000 or and that's strategic so that 10,000 especially in the publishing industry I would say um seems a little bit High even if somebody's going to outdo that by um tenfold what's the future look like and why was that chosen the that amount was chosen for the beta criteria mostly just to uh give us a chance to see this happening on relatively large at relatively large scale so that we could make sure all of the Kinks in the system were worked out during the beta before it's available to every Creator on every campaign we expect that on General release at General release time that there wouldn't be a limitation on the crowdfunding campaign total amount uh you would be able to do anything you'd like okay um that that sounds good and I I assumed that so just to recap who is eligible to use plot and how do I know if my campaign uh qualifi it's in beta um enrolling new projects would have to go through you at this time for a launch that would Pro potentially happen late spring um and then the campaign goals for beta need to be over 10,000 um no late pledges at this time um and uh only partial um refunds are available for refunds and you have to submit your application within at least a week before launch am I forgetting anything else that as a summary everybody will need to know for them to be eligible to use it in this beta stage uh that's it thank you for the great recap and again you can learn more about this at uh our landing page start. kickstarter.com plot dbaa uh and click that apply to join the beta link to fill out the form uh let us know if you've got an upcoming campaign that you'd like to use us on and we'll do our best to make it happen yes y does anyone else have any final questions you guys were an amazing audience as always um this is our second one and we're so excited we've had about 75 people sign up for both and have had anywhere between 20 to 25 on live so this has been great if you've got any questions this is your moment before Brian is gone forever no just kidding but Brian can be back to the internet where you can reach me again at plot kickstarter.com if you follow-ups I love that thank you Brian so much this was so um educational and helpful and I think you've inspired all of us we're big plot fans over here so um everyone's thanking you in the chat as well I'm excited for this to roll out too thank you for your time thanks for helping us thicken the plot yeah oh how long did you work on that for that was brilliant we've been having a lot of fun with those those that pun in particular head work I love that great for the publishing audience too yeah I feel like it's very on brand very thanks so much Brian have a wonderful rest of your week everyone else take care we'll see you next month bye guys bye Brian