Comment on Blamed for Steam games ban, Mastercard encourages censorship during Riot Games VCT livestreams

pheggs@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• Doomsider@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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  • BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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    • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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    • b3an@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      What prevents them from getting bigger and doing the same thing. This cycle of sadomasochism needs to stop at the root cause.

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      • Landless2029@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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      • BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        FedNow is owned by the Federal Reserve. They are almost certainly going to retain stricter regulation than independently operated payment processors.

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  • BD89@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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    • arararagi@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Steam already tried it, but it was too volatile so they stopped accepting it.

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      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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

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      • BD89@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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

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  • frongt@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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    • Seleni@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I’ve been to places that don’t take check or cash anymore though.

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• iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  With how things are going, I’d be happy to support an EU-based alternative.

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  • pheggs@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I read that this is actually coming. I forgot what it was called though. Fingers crossed.

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    • swab148@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      GNU Taler?

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      • caoimhinr@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Wero.

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      • pheggs@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I have seen it mentioned quite a few times on websites. Can you actually pay normal shops using that?

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• NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  AmEx & Discover. I don’t know if steam takes them, though.

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  • seralth@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Steam has always accepted them

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  • spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Does anyone take them anymore?

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    • seralth@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I can’t recall the last time I saw a place that doesn’t.

      The problem of finding places that take amex or discover is not really a problem these days.

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      • castlebravo404@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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      • spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        That’s good to hear, just haven’t noticed their logos for years while visa/mc logos seem to be everywhere.

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    • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      apparently Steam according to other commenters.

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    • HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      A lot of places won’t take them because they both of those cards have higher fees.

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  • castlebravo404@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    They definitely take AmEx that’s typically what I use.

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• butwhyishischinabook@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Discover? Not that much better but works fine for me. Good cashback too.

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• ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I wish they weren’t a duopoly. There isn’t really any other options even if they are better.

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• peoplebeproblems@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Isn’t Stripe one of the growing alternatives?

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  • Noja@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Stripe bans even more stuff stripe.com/en-de/legal/restricted-businesses , recently they banned payments for online dating platforms in the US.

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    • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.”

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      • arararagi@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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

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    • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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  • MashedTech@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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