Correct me if I'm wrong. Kickstarter gets 5% of each successfully funded project. So if we open a Kickstarter stat page (http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats) what will we see there? 319M of successful dollars. 5% of this sum is about $16M. Kickstarter was founded in 2009 and has got more than $16M in expenses for 3 years? Really?

Credit card fees are in the range of 2-3%, so that's potentially more than half leaving the bank from the start (or rather going to the bank :P).

Not sure if Kickstarter is charging extra to cover those fees, it's certainly against Visa/MC rules to do so.

The 5% is separate from the payement fees, so the total is around 8%.

"Kickstarter collects a 5% fee from the project’s funding total if and only if a project is successfully funded. Amazon (our payments processor) also charges credit card processing fees that generally work out to 3-5%. "

I had all the same objections. Their information sounds very outdated, especially how it applies to kickstarter.

Site says they are non-profit => They don't turn profit.

That's not what the term means, though I accept that companies may be sleazily using the term this way.