With how things are going, I’d be happy to support an EU-based alternative.
Comment on Blamed for Steam games ban, Mastercard encourages censorship during Riot Games VCT livestreams
pheggs@feddit.org 1 month ago
Man I just wish there were better alternatives to MasterCard and Visa.
iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world 1 month ago
pheggs@feddit.org 1 month ago
I read that this is actually coming. I forgot what it was called though. Fingers crossed.
swab148@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
GNU Taler?
caoimhinr@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Wero.
pheggs@feddit.org 1 month ago
I have seen it mentioned quite a few times on websites. Can you actually pay normal shops using that?
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
AmEx & Discover. I don’t know if steam takes them, though.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Does anyone take them anymore?
seralth@lemmy.world 1 month ago
[deleted]castlebravo404@lemmynsfw.com 1 month ago
They still exist but it’s usually small mom and pop places for AmEx, in my experience. Just because they take a slightly bigger cut.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That’s good to hear, just haven’t noticed their logos for years while visa/mc logos seem to be everywhere.
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
apparently Steam according to other commenters.
HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
A lot of places won’t take them because they both of those cards have higher fees.
castlebravo404@lemmynsfw.com 1 month ago
They definitely take AmEx that’s typically what I use.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
I wish they weren’t a duopoly. There isn’t really any other options even if they are better.
butwhyishischinabook@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Discover? Not that much better but works fine for me. Good cashback too.
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 1 month ago
Isn’t Stripe one of the growing alternatives?
Noja@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Stripe bans even more stuff stripe.com/en-de/legal/restricted-businesses , recently they banned payments for online dating platforms in the US.
JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Yeah, Stripe is the reason itch.io had to pull all paid NSFW games.
However, it isn’t exactly their fault, either:
We spoke with Stripe yesterday about their content policies. They confirmed that they will not be able to support adult content that fits the following definition: “content designed for sexual gratification.”
Stripe asked us to pass along the following message to our users:“Stripe is currently unable to support sexually explicit content due to restrictions placed on them by their banking partners, despite card networks generally supporting adult content (with the appropriate registrations). Stripe has indicated that they hope to be able to support adult content in the future.”
arararagi@ani.social 1 month ago
This is why it’s so hard to fight this, every company blames another one but never by name, I’m sure it’s by design
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 1 month ago
In the Itch.io incident, Stripe laid the blame for that on “banking partner” rules, claiming they were looking for ways to fix it.
MashedTech@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Stripe is a payment processor. It has different payment methods it supports. Which are MasterCard and Visa. But it does also support(if you can use it and the merchant accepts it): Giro card, other card options, Revolut Pay and other options. Those avoid the MasterCard, Visa ecosystem.
Regardless, not everyone wants to use or uses Stripe. And it’s a bad thing for everyone to use Stripe just because of their interoperability because that then gives stripe too much power.
Plus, for a company like Valve, the fees of Stripe would severely affect their revenue.
Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It really boggles the mind why we have to go through private corporations to use our monetary system in the digital realm
If we had to use private corporations then there needs to be enough competition to prevent what is happening now.
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 1 month ago
FedNow became a thing just two years ago. With transaction fees of just $0.043/transaction, it’s cheaper than every other payment processor out there. Hopefully it can gain adoption and push out Visa/Mastercard.
PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Interesting. Good to have a less rent-seeking option, not sure I love the idea of the Fed just (assumedly) having access to all my transactions, though.
b3an@lemmy.world 1 month ago
What prevents them from getting bigger and doing the same thing. This cycle of sadomasochism needs to stop at the root cause.
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 1 month ago
FedNow is owned by the Federal Reserve. They are almost certainly going to retain stricter regulation than independently operated payment processors.
Landless2029@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Enshitification is common. Corps care a ton about social pressures and norms. They get swayed easily by public opinions.
This one is US Gov based so we’ll see how it plays out. They tend to be slower to move… Until someone starts slinging executive orders around to rip things out and tear them down.
BD89@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
As much as everyone here hates it literally the only way to ever do that is cryptocurrency unless you receive precious metals in the mail.
arararagi@ani.social 1 month ago
Steam already tried it, but it was too volatile so they stopped accepting it.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 1 month ago
They stopped using Bitcoin when the idiots scammed everyone into thinking we couldn’t raise the blocksize, which caused massive congestion and delayed transactions, which resulted in complicated failed payments/refund problems.
They were 100% right to stop accepting it given the problems the congestion caused.
You can just use something like Ethereum instead now and avoid that entirely, and you can avoid the volatility by accepting something like USDC
BD89@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
They tried bitcoin. And also fraud was a concern too.
With Monero, fees are minimal and there’s no possible way to prove fraud thus if you KYCd youd be breaking no laws and it would work quite well. The volatility is still a factor though for sure.
Stablecoins exist but ETH also has large fees at certain times like btc so and other chains like Polygon are trash and not as secure.
Volatility is a factor, but using a different crypto than Bitcoin is necessary to avoid high fees and stolen coins
frongt@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
You don’t have to. You can use cash, checks, crypto, gift cards, and more. It’s only credit cards (and probably almost all debit cards) that go through them.
Seleni@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’ve been to places that don’t take check or cash anymore though.