From a donor point of view, it works differently from patreon and IMO far inferior. On patreon, you sign up to a creator for a fixed amount every month. Once you've subscribed, it's like any other online subscription - every month, your card is automatically charged.
On liberapay, you have to manually fund your account in advance. If your account runs out of money, you have to log back in and top it up again.
Some people dislike automatic charges, while others don't want to be bothered with renewals, so it's best to support both. For historical reasons related to payment processor limitations Liberapay was launched with only manual renewals, but we're working on implementing automatic charges now.
