I've been working on making the ClearCoin escrow service's fee structure simpler; here's the new structure, which will "go live" in the next day or two:
ClearCoin costs 0.5% (one half of one percent) of released coins. For example, if you are paying for something worth 100 bitcoins the cost will be 0.5 BTC.
Fees are paid only on released coins; no fees are charged on coins donated to charity or refunded to you.
Coins in escrow will never be taken or held if you have unpaid fees; if you do not pay your ClearCoin fees within 30 days we may prevent you from creating new escrow transactions but will never prevent you from releasing coins from existing escrow accounts. However, given how quickly the value of bitcoins has been increasing recently, it is better for you to pay your ClearCoin fees quickly.
Any month you accumulate more than a trivial amount of fees ClearCoin will email you an invoice with a detailed list and a bitcoin address to which you can send payment. You can also pay at any time by sending bitcoins to an address on the ClearCoin website.
All of these changes were prompted because I think it was confusing to pay fees directly from the bitcoins being used for the transactions-- if you were paying for something that cost 159.95 BTC, calculating how much to send to pay for the cost AND ClearCoin fees was complicated. This should also be much easier for anybody creating a lot of ClearCoin transactions via the new ClearCoin API.
As always, feedback, complaints, and suggestions are welcome.
