Re: SPI credit cards for regular billing, specifically AWS costs

Peter Cock wrote:
> Dear SPI,
>
> I am the current treasurer and SPI liaison for the
> Open Bioinformatics Foundation. One of our major
> ongoing costs is hosting fees for the Amazon cloud
> computing platform (Amazon web services, AWS),
> where we currently run several servers including
> our own mailman instance.
>
> Paying for AWS requires a credit card on file.
> Currently we use the personal card of one of our
> former treasurers, and submit batched expense
> claims periodically.
>
> I personally do not have a USD credit card account,
> so taking on this role myself would have the additional
> complication and personal financial risk of currency
> fluctuations.
>
> What would be ideal from our point of view as an
> SPI member project, would be to have use of an
> SPI credit card for our AWS billing.
>
> This would likely also reduce the burden on the SPI
> treasurer by avoiding the current expenses claims.
>
> I note that credit cards or related payment services
> are not currently listed as being offered:
>
> http://spi-inc.org/projects/services/
>
> Is this something the SPI could assist us with?
>
> Are any of the other SPI projects in a similar position
> with AWS billing?

SPI does not have any credit cards but does have debit cards that can be
used where VISA and MasterCard are accepted. For several associated
projects, SPI's debit cards are used to pay for recurring services.
Associated Projects usually temporarily change the login information for
a service and share the login with me (as SPI Treasurer) so I can input
the card information.

I'm not aware of associated projects with current AWS expenses but SPI
currently handles the billing for several other similar services.

--
----------------------------
Michael Schultheiss
E-mail: schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org