Today, crowdfunding site Kickstarter announced that they will finally open up to folks in the UK. Although we knew that this was coming since July, today’s announcement provides details and a specific date for project-creators to shoot for.
On October 31st, people in the UK will be able to launch their projects on the site. Kickstarter is announcing this three weeks in advance in order to give creators what they feel is “plenty of time to build and tweak” their projects. Starting today, UK users can begin to build their projects by heading to the Kickstarter Start page.
All UK-based projects will reside among the rest of the Kickstarter projects – as in there will not be a separate site for UK users.
According to Kickstarter, payments will work a bit differently in the UK:
“The mechanics of Kickstarter (all-or-nothing funding, rewards, etc.) are identical for US and UK projects. When pledging, however, backers of UK projects will enter their payment information directly on Kickstarter rather than through Amazon Payments. All pledges will be processed securely through a third-party payments processor”
One last thing as part of this announcement: Kickstarter has added a streamlined international shipping option for both U.S. and UK projects, which they hope will make it clearer when creators need backers to tack on a little extra to their pledge for international shipping costs. Creators can also cut off rewards to international backers if they please.
Last month, Kickstarter made a pretty big change to the way creators display their projects, banning simulations and forcing them to outline all risks associated with backing them.
So, UK-based project-creators, get to building! Kickstarter says that they will send you an email when your project is ready to officially launch on October 31st, just in case you happen to forget.