Somebody (who I don’t have the time/interest to look up) had the foresight to invent Paypal, where people could transfer money back/forth electronically, so I feel like this question is somewhat in the same vein.
It seems like this would be feasible in an “office Lotto pool” situation. As the ‘administrator’, you’d have a record of everyone that contributed, and avoid any confusion (of who was in / who wasn’t in) when the 6-numbers-plus-the-Powerball hits on one of the pool’s tickets.
Or actually - to get to my fucking point - is there a site where I can run a Fantasy Football pool - basically 15 people (from all around the country), each of whom electronically contribute their $20, and then I (as the ‘administrator’) dictate 6 months later how it gets distributed?
That is definitely an option, (and maybe I just need to get up to speed on what their fees are) - but back from my eBay’n days, it just “seems like, in my head” that if 15 people contribute $20/head to a ‘fund’, I’d be left with about $240 at the end of the day.
If an “escrow” site doesn’t exist out there (that maybe takes 1% out), then it doesn’t. I will definitely look into the Paypal thing though.
Probably not helpful for the small stakes you’re dealing with, but I want to mention this for others. There’s Escrow.com, which works in conjunction with paypal, but they have a minimum of $25 service fee.
Wepay.com is a smaller paypal competitor, and was originally launched for kind of the sort of thing you want, having a bunch of people contribute to one fund that’s then used for something. Their fees are on par with paypal’s, though.
Given that most such sites allow credit card transactions, you’re unlikely to get the fees below 2-3%. They’ve got to pay the credit card fee and make a bit of profit themselves. Once upon a time you could get a paypal account that had much lower fees but could only accept paypal transfers (no credit cards). I don’t know if that still exists.
Dwolla is a good choice and can be cheaper because they don’t accept credit cards.
Chipin.com is a way for multiple people to contribute to a cause. I think it’s a front end to paypal. You set the amount and people make their contributions.