From paypal to nopayforyoubuddy
Monero works for anonymous payments for cocaine and fent across international boundaries, it can more than handle the illicit video game trade
This can only hurt there stock price in the long run
Uh…just use your credit/debit card directly within steam?
Why rely on the scummiest third party payment app that’s ever existed in the world?
Because, even if you do have a fully functional credit card which is not a given in many countries, US-based CC payment processors like Stripe are equally horrible third-party companies that gobble up all the data they can get their hands on somehow.
Seriously. You cannot even start “free trials” on US-based websites without handing over everything a bad actor would need for perfect identity theft.
Because typing in bank details every time is a pain and saving them is a big no no as many companies seem to get hacked. Trusting only 1 company with bank details limits the blast radius.
Make sure 2FA is enables on all your banking
In a lot of countries you cannot just use your debit card directly on Steam like you would a credit card which includes just entering the numbers and you are good to go. Or in some cases it directs you to the credit card provider where you have to authenticate the payment.
Here in NL we have to use iDeal if we want to pay online with most banks, this requires us to 2FA the payment by scanning a code using their app. iDeal will become Wero and will become an international system since a lot of countries had something similar to the Dutch iDeal.
Why is it set up that way
Being able to pay without 2FA is just risky business which is why the Dutch banks worked together (and so did the Belgium banks etc) to create a tool to make digital payments more secure. idk why it took so long to get one system for the entirety of the SEPA banking area though
This is finally changing. Dutch banks are - after years of dilly dallying - finally replacing legacy Maestro cards with Mastercard that you can use online. Yes, you still have to go via 2fa, but at least, I don’t have to deal with iDeal anymore with risky merchants.
You still won’t be able to pay on the majority of American sites, since they lack a proper payment platform.
Every American store supports credit cards in the form of Mastercard and Visa. Dutch cards will also work the same. With the extra requirement of 2FA, but that’s handled by pretty much every payment gateway, the merchant doesn’t get involved in that.
Most Dutch cards won’t work on North American sites. Our cards have an IBAN listed which cannot be entered on American sites. Paying with just the numbers on the card is not possibile unless it is a credit card or smething like Revolut iirc, which is bascially using the unsecure cards the American way or the 2FA system you explained, but that’s not most cards.
Dutch bank cards are now being replaced with Mastercard, unlike the old Maestro ones, they also have 16 digit numbers that can be used online.
Yeah they are, but they will not be able to pay online with just the code since they have the IBAN listed and not the 16 digit code.
The new system is better anyway, why do we need to go back in time?
Unless you have a debit card from a third world country bank and half of the time for online payment the authorization fail.
I’ve been in this situation several times and then though I don’t like it Paypal has often been the only payment option available to me.
Because its not really secure
Because it most of the world you’ll be dependent on Visa or Mastecard, US companies that have been exerting their power to effectively block payments to content they deem inappropriate, such as adult websites.
Exactly. I use PayPal so I can directly pay using my bank account instead of my credit card.
except they do the exact same thing so you are not escaping the problem with paypal
I agree with the sentiment, but the reason they’re looking at third party apps is to avoid the control that payment processing companies have over censorship following the whole Visa/MasterCard issue.
I can keep buying porn games on steam with my third world country credit card. 🧐
Third world countries sometimes tend to be more developed
Some people launder their money. It was the only I could send money out of the country without too many hoops to jump
https://voidfox.com/blog/payment_processor_fun_2025_making_your_own_msp/
Someone breaks down why it’d be a monumental task for Valve/Itch to vertically integrate the whole payment processing thing into their business. The essay is highly readable.
The only thing I had to look up was
Escrow: a financial arrangement w/ a third party who holds/manages funds on behalf of two parties in a transactionMy takeaway was that Valve/itch/GOG would still be beholden to the banks who track porn as high risk for fraudulent transactions.
So what can we do about it? ~asking in earnest, btw. I buy porn and toys like a regular ass person, too~
Monumental, perhaps, but at this point it would seem well worth the effort.
Use Monero I fucking guess?
How does using a cryptocurrency work in this instance? Does a game that costs 20 coins always cost 20 coins or is it going to be 10 one day and 60 the next depending on its value? If it stays at 20 coins are those 20 coins going to cost me 1% of my paycheck one day and then 3% the next? (Numbers just for example) Theres so many issues with just having to deal with another currency not just crypto. How can you guarantee its stability in relation to your original currency? How much are you going to have to spend to convert currencies and/or make transactions?
Some crypto are called stablecoins, which are backed by some currency (such as the USD for USDC) inside of a bank. There’s a bit more to it than that, but effectively what you get is one coin = one unit of currency.
They could even issue their own stable coin if they were weary of being reliant on another. I think valve would be viewed as trustworthy in keeping the 1:1 backing in a bank account. They could partner with someone else to issue it, like coinbase and Gemini do USDC.
USDV
Stablecoins like USDC are basically x coins is the cost. It’s pegged to the US dollar so 1 USDC is equal to $1 USD, always. Something like Bitcoin on the other hand, it’s better to think of it as it’s own currency. For example, right now the equivalent to $20 USD would be 0.00016962 BTC. When BTC goes up in price, $20 USD costs fewer Bitcoins (sats, which are everything passed the decimal).
The real world equivalent would be exchange rates, like between the US and Canada. Say the rate is 1.33, so that $20 USD game would cost $26.60 CAD. The rate changes to 1.35, so now it costs you $27. Next week it dips to 1.28, so now that $20 USD game costs $25.60 CAD.
Those are all really good questions, I don’t really know the answer to. Not all coins have the wild spikes like bitcoin. Monero has been fairly stable. I haven’t listened a game before, but I’m pretty sure you can pick which currency you want to get paid in. The conversion rates would be roughly the same for crypto.
However, Valve is no stronger to imaginary digital assets that wildly fluxuate in real world value. If there was any company that could figure out how to process crypto I think it would be them.
They know exactly how to do it as they did it before but had to stop because the bitcoin network was artificially congested with insane fees and it caused failed transactions or multi hour long transactions where the price dramatically changed. This resulted in complicated refunds or delays which resulted in unhappy customers.
They can avoid that all now by simply accepting stable coins like USDC. For every issued usdc there is 1 usd in a bank account somewhere. The value barely fluctuates. There are networks that can handle the volume this would create without getting congested nowadays as well.
Given the mess that happened last time though I imagine they are highly reluctant, although this could be enough motivation.
If Valve did it, they’d make crypto insanely popular. They are pretty incentivized to do it right now, so it would not surprise me if they tested it out soon.
Monero or GNU-Taler TBH. There are OpenSource Core-Banking-Systems like Apache-Fineract
Monero is good, but is currently facing troubles of their own with potential 51% attacks.
Why not crypto?
One thing that goes into mind is ease of usage. Crypto is difficult for newcomers and it is easy to do something that you didn’t want to.
Another problem is with standardization, there are too many tokens available. Monero seems like the way but people still view bitcoin as THE coin - despite its many issues.
No genuinely, why not something like Monero?
Do they accept UnionPay?
If valve had the power to enter the payment processing industry, I would support.
The most likely already half the knowledge, mainframe infrastructure is a different beast than servers but not a huge gab if you are Valve, they were responsible for half an EXABYTE of data traffic per month… IN 2015!!! Haven’t seen any new reports from them or Level 3 Com (unaware if they still partner with them), to know current levels but its for sure at least 10 exabytes annually
Okay, steam cards it is then.
Gotta find a way to a post-money world; money is the enemy.
Next up: Un-inventing fire!
Totally comparable. Yes. A way of trackibg social entitlement totally alienated from any concept of valye or materiwl reality is as important fundamental and useful as fire.
Ever heard of “humor”? 🤔
Explain the joke?
We need to be post scarcity before we can be post money.
Nope. Backwards.
So paypal is unreliable, is the takeaway.
Hello-ooo Klarna!
Shit data hoarding company.
Good riddance. Shady company from none other than the Muskrat.
No actually! Musks entire involvement with PayPal was being fired by the company he founded which then later down the road was bought out by PayPal when the people who fired him for incompetence turned it around and made it valuable enough PayPal wanted it
I think thiel is worse, also involved.
Why isnt PayPal usable?
The short is that the acquiring bank of PayPal has banned transactions to Steam in all non-Western currencies (exception being Japanese Yen).
Why?
its a power play to enforce dominance
TIL Mexico isn’t in the west
Is PayPal still a musk toy?
No, you can tell because the name makes sense and doesn’t sound like it comes from a tween edgelord.
