Comment on Steam payment headaches grow as PayPal is no longer usable for much of the world: Valve hopes to bring it back in the future, 'but the timeline is uncertain'

• Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  That’s for bank transfers, not for payments.

  Mind you, you often can pay stuff online in Europe via bank transfer if it’s within the Eurozone (and the fact that it works from anywhere to anywhere in the Eurozone rather than just locally in each country is exactly because SEPA has been standardized), but it’s not reliably available in sellers and is a bit more convoluted than pure payment systems (basically you have to use your bank’s online site or app to transfer money to the account the seller provides you).

  Actually payment systems are not standardized across Europe yet, though various country-specific ones have been getting together and setting up cross-compatibility, but none of those covers more than a handful of countries.

  source

  • woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    That’s for bank transfers, not for payments.

    Let be blow your mind: Transfer money to Valve’s EU bank account, get the game in return.

    source

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      As I wrote elsewhere, Steam already supports all the European national payment systems, which are all more convenient than bank transfers.

      Mind you, a lot of sellers in Europe do actually support bank transfer payments (which go via SEPA) but a lot don’t, plus it’s a bit less convenient than a dedicate payment system (though if you do the bank transfer from a banking app in your smartphone it’s reasonably simple plus some of those payment systems are really just a convenience layer - say an app scanning a QR-code for automated payment - over the whole “open the transfer screen and manually enter 20-something digits and an euro amount”).

      source

      • woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Mind you, a lot of sellers in Europe do actually support paying by bank transfer (which goes via SEPA) but a lot don’t

        This is not about what “a lot of sellers” do, it’s what Valve could do as an easy alternative in one big region of the world.

        though if you do the bank transfer from a banking app in your smartphone it’s reasonably simple plus some of those payment systems are really just a convenience layer - say an app scanning a QR-code for automated payment - over the whole “open the transfer screen and manually enter 20-something digits and an euro amount”

        Making SEPA money transfer by scanning a Qr code from the bank’s app is literally a thing. That’s how I paid the dentist a couple of months ago.

        source

        • -> View More Comments
• WanderingThoughts@europe.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  That works for account to account transfers and in shop payment with your card. The online payment world is still a lot more fragmented.

  source

  • amju_wolf@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Um, no? They can provide an IBAN and then you can pay almost instantly with most banks, with the worst ones taking a business day or two.

    source
  • woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    That works for account to account transfers

    Yeah, so? europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/…/sepa-instant-credit-…

    The online payment world is still a lot more fragmented.

    Valve literally only needs an EU bank account. Doesn’t help the rest of the world but the outlandish claim was that within Europe Valve would need to support “at least one local payment system” per country and that’s just wrong.

    source

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      I believe Valve already supports all the local payment systems in Europe, though they’ll only show it to you if you’re in one of those countries (the payment processing flow asks you which country are you paying from upfront and then uses that to display the various payment systems available for that country).

      Same for GOG, by the way.

      The problem is mainly that to sell to anywhere in Europe a seller has to integrate with the many local payment systems out there, which is a lot of work for a small seller.

      source