Hi Theo, great question. I had to check on this answer for you. The way the Medium Partner Program works is that there is a pool of money that Medium pays authors that comes from the $5 per month subscription that readers pay. If the author isn’t signed up for the MPP or is unable to due to their country and the lack of Stripe support there, the size of the pool remains the same but Medium pays more to the authors who are in the program.

So for example, if the total pool is $1,000 and there are 1000 pieces, each from 1 author and 500 are signed up for the MPP, the $1,000 can be divvied up to the 500 authors based on their articles’ performance. If there were 800 of those authors in the MPP, then the $1,000 would be divided a bit differently among the 800 articles and their performance.