@tagomago I researched Patreon quite a bit before I joined up. And before that a service called Subbable.
So far, the company has been reasonably transparent about it's workings. It supports many of the international locations that are hard to get access to (and probably took a lot of work for their legal team) and they issue tax documents for you to help file your taxes at the end of the year.
For a creator, their system is less work than say LiberaPay (also good) but their website is basic.