Why don’t they implement crypto already? Nano would be perfect
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'
Submitted 7 months ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
descartador@lemmy.eco.br 7 months ago
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 7 months ago
because me and many others hear “<coin you never heard about> would be perfect” and cant help but to immediately think scam
Bilaketari@reddthat.com 7 months ago
Though nowadays most places that accept cryptocurrency payments only do so through the most well-known stable coins. Generally, just Bitcoin, Monero, USDC (fixed to the dollar), and maybe Ether or such. Random coins like DOGE or [insert strange acronym] aren’t really accepted for payments most anywhere. And this is just as a payment option, so it’s not like you need to use it. Like paying on Amazon through Klarna or whatever. Anyone who prefers payment through a bank account or bank card would continue to be able to do so.
FuyuhikoDate@feddit.org 7 months ago
Finally somebody with a Good reply instead of a “downvote and fuck off…”
descartador@lemmy.eco.br 7 months ago
fair point
Eddbopkins@lemmy.world 7 months ago
This can only hurt there stock price in the long run
moseschrute@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
What did PayPal do that it’s less usable than it was? Not that it was ever very usable
Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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?
CatDogL0ver@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Some people launder their money. It was the only I could send money out of the country without too many hoops to jump
0x0@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
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.
Scrollone@feddit.it 7 months ago
Exactly. I use PayPal so I can directly pay using my bank account instead of my credit card.
zqps@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
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.
Evotech@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Because its not really secure
BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 7 months ago
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.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 7 months ago
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.
rroa@reddthat.com 7 months ago
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.
IcyToes@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
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.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 7 months ago
Make sure 2FA is enables on all your banking
Gorillazrule@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
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.
Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I can keep buying porn games on steam with my third world country credit card. 🧐
nymnympseudonym@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Monero works for anonymous payments for cocaine and fent across international boundaries, it can more than handle the illicit video game trade
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 7 months ago
I wouldn’t mind seeing a ValvePay system. 1% transaction fee, available to anyone who wants to use it, including OnlyFans, Itch, Kagura, DLSite, and others. Valve can team up with Japan, the EU, and Brazil to handle their respective ends of the business, so that Valve can focus on the United States.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 7 months ago
or just use Wero which they are gonna use anyway
wurstgulasch3000@lemmy.world 7 months ago
When will that happen though?
sockenklaus@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Will they? That would be awesome but I haven’t found any information on that.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Based off what? The option is credit cards or crypto.
They don’t need a valve pay got crypto. They could easily accept something like USDC to accept crypto and not deal with volatility.
For credit cards all that would do is bypass the intermediaries of they directly integrated to a credit card company, and then they’d still be subject to their rules that the intermediaries claim they violate to protect MC etc from having to say it themselves. It’d solve absolutely nothing.
Also a direct integration like that is a multi billion dollar business and all the effort and expenses that would come with that without even solving the root problem.
0x0@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
but that’s slow and realistically not an option.
Neither are cryptocurrencies for most people.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 7 months ago
Fuck credit cards they are terrible for your finances.
Tinidril@midwest.social 7 months ago
I think the point is that Valve has the reach to start their own credit card network. It might be far fetched, but I’m old enough to remember when Sears launched the Discover card. It’s totally doable for a company that already has the technical capabilities of Valve.
Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Are you aware you can just transfer money between bank accounts, usually for free?
Much like with a credit card, you could just transfer money to Valve, which would be credited to your account, and you can then use it to buy stuff.
There’s no need for crypto anything.
BlindFrog@lemmy.world 7 months ago
voidfox.com/…/payment_processor_fun_2025_making_y…
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~
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Monumental, perhaps, but at this point it would seem well worth the effort.
biotin7@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
Monero or GNU-Taler TBH. There are OpenSource Core-Banking-Systems like Apache-Fineract
Gigasser@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Monero is good, but is currently facing troubles of their own with potential 51% attacks.
spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
Use Monero I fucking guess?
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
If Valve did it, they’d make crypto insanely popular.
Nindelofocho@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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?
FuckFascism@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Honestly fuck Paypal, don’t bring it back.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Asking as an ignorant person, what’s wrong with PayPal?
skisnow@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
It’s got all the worst parts of extreme anti-fraud measures, like freezing your account and holding onto your money just because you did something suspicious like receive money, but without actually protecting anyone from fraud.
morphballganon@mtgzone.com 7 months ago
It’s pretty easy for a scammer to get your money from you via paypal with no recourse. Person claiming to be selling an item for x dollars. You purchase item. They get money. They disappear. No item. Paypal: “oh well!”
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 7 months ago
They quite often steal your money.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 7 months ago
All the authority of a bank.
None of the responsibility.
Plus Peter Thiel and Elon Musk had a hand in it, and made their fortunes. It’s right up there with Hitler and Reagan in the “reasons to invent a time machine and go back and destroy something”.
nibble4bits@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
A few matters - About 5-6 years ago - PayPal was going to make telemarketing your phone number a requirement in order to have an account - If you had an account, they were going to FORCE you to allow their 3rd party marketing calls. No opt-out available whatsoever.
PayPal is also an owner of the extension Honey - an extension that promoted they would try every online coupon code to see if you could save money on a deal. Recently (within the last year) it was discovered that even if they didn’t provide you with any discount at all - they were still hijacking the referral links that brought you to the shop site in the first place. They were also striking deals to those same vendors about kickbacks to NOT keep the best coupons in their system. Essentially they were taking money from three sides, promoters, vendors, and the purchasers - all while NOT providing the best possible coupon codes - which was the whole advertised point of their service. Lawsuits on this are pending.
RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 7 months ago
A non exhaustive list of what makes them awful: expertbeacon.com/why-is-paypal-so-bad/
Afaik, the issue that was making the most victims, was that they were facilitating scammers that targeted sellers:
5. Good Luck Recouping Losses as a Seller in Disputes.
89% of sellers experienced dispute resolution problems with PayPal in 2021 surveys. Despite providing evidence the item shipped or service rendered, they lost cases and sums averaging $622.
This is driven by PayPal‘s buyer-favored review round taking 1-2 weeks. This favors scamming buyers at the expense of legitimate businesses.Iirc, there was a time when Paypal always sided with the buyer, irregardless of evidence or past track record, the review process was useless. Once scammers picked up on this and began scamming sellers en masse, Paypal still kept their policy unchanged for years and sellers started to raise their prices on platforms that forced them to accept Paypal (ebay used to do this). Ebay has since tossed Paypal off their platform. I don’t know if Paypal ever improved.
nucleative@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Their policies, verification systems, KYC/AML processes, risk aversion, and customer support leave many PayPal users with unmet expectations, especially when there is an issue with the transaction and PayPal is asked to assist.
The company has found ways to avoid some of the regulations that banks are held to which is partly the reason for the issues.
If you search the web for PayPal experiences, you’ll find concerns such as their 1.3 star rating with almost 35,000 reviews on Trustpilot.
Revan343@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
If you sell things on eBay and the like, PayPal likes to fuck you over
FuckFascism@lemmy.world 7 months ago
They don’t like free speech, they’ve stopped processing payments on steam because they don’t like some of the games on the platform.
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 7 months ago
It was founded and continues to be run by some real shitbags.
FuyuhikoDate@feddit.org 7 months ago
Why not crypto?
sleen@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
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 with standardisation exists, there are too many tokens available. Monero seems like the way but people still view bitcoin as THE coin - despite its many issues.
FuyuhikoDate@feddit.org 7 months ago
Yeeeeah geht the point about that. The thought about crypto for me was Mord like a "when i would somebody trust to help normies To get info crypto then i would trust valve 😁 And yeah… Fu*k bitcoin…
spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
No genuinely, why not something like Monero?
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Gotta find a way to a post-money world; money is the enemy.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 7 months ago
We need to be post scarcity before we can be post money.
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Nope. Backwards.
deafboy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Next up: Un-inventing fire!
badbytes@lemmy.world 7 months ago
If valve had the power to enter the payment processing industry, I would support.
3laws@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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
vxx@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Okay, steam cards it is then.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Hello-ooo Klarna!
Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 7 months ago
Shit data hoarding company.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Good riddance. Shady company from none other than the Muskrat.
Traister101@lemmy.today 7 months ago
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
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
I think thiel is worse, also involved.
nul42@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Do they accept UnionPay?
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Is PayPal still a musk toy?
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 7 months ago
No, you can tell because the name makes sense and doesn’t sound like it comes from a tween edgelord.
victorz@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Good time to delete my PayPal. 👌
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 7 months ago
I can’t access mine, for about a year now. Suddenly, I’m not “verified” on the account I’ve had for years, and they require a phone number and license to verify (against what?). So, fuck em.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I thought that my account was deleted years ago, but recently found out it still existed.
Deleted now!
wabafee@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Perhaps it’s time Valve get into its own payment business.
Redex68@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The problem is that if you make a PayPal equivalent, you’re still beholdent to MasterCard and Visa since you need them for people to actually add money to their account, and if you want to make a direct competitor to MasterCard and Visa, that’s basically impossible without government support because they’re way too entrenched, why would a business support a random new payment method that nobody is using yet.
dan1101@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I expect the established banking/credit card industry is not likely to let Valve into their systems just to circumvent their restrictions. Vabve would need to be able to validate Visa/Mastercard/Discover etc cards issued by any any bank and be able to credit/debit them.
Boddhisatva@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I had heard that Steam used to accept crypto but the volatility of the currency was a major issue. Maybe try cryptocurrency again.
Perhaps they could set up a system where they could make a sale in bitcoin or something then immediately convert to USD. They could add a processing fee to the sale to cover any conversion fees.
I know nothing about actually doing any of this beyond having bought and sold BTC in the past. I was just wondering if it would be possible.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The funny thing is that because Master Card is too afraid to actually accept any responsibility, using Master Card directly is still an option:
That means Master Card-powered PayPal Card should work.
floo@retrolemmy.com 7 months ago
This sort of situation is exactly why I got a PayPal card 18 years ago when they first started offering it.
threeonefour@piefed.ca 7 months ago
For all the people saying Valve should become their own payment processor. PayPal employs 24,000 people. Visa employs 31,000. Mastercard employs 35,000. Valve employs 400. They're not going to 60x their employee count anytime soon.
RedGreenBlue@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
So paypal is unreliable, is the takeaway.
Shape4985@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
Started buying steam giftcards for myself now instead.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I would think Steam is big enough to make deals with local card vendors in individual countries.
I bet that would also be a lot cheaper than PayPal.No need for Steam to make their own as some suggest, it would be insane to have a system just for one business.
muhyb@programming.dev 7 months ago
From paypal to nopayforyoubuddy
Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Meh. Paypal deserves everything bad that happens to it. Barely used it in the last few years. Definitely do NOT keep funds on there unless you’re okay with just losing them.
tal@lemmy.today 7 months ago
“In early July 2025, PayPal notified Valve that their acquiring bank for payment transactions in certain currencies was immediately terminating the processing of any transactions related to Steam. This affects Steam purchases using PayPal in currencies other than EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD and USD,” the message states.
"We hope to offer PayPal as an option for these currencies in the future but the timeline is uncertain.
There are currency conversion services all over the world that manage to do this. How hard can it possibly be to partner with an existing service to do the conversion as part of a transaction?
Pringles@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
If digital payments are becoming a service problem, Steam might develop their own.
atticus88th@lemmy.world 7 months ago
C’mon Valve… Make me a credit card pretty please.
jeena@piefed.jeena.net 7 months ago
What happened to paypal?
QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Why isnt PayPal usable?
Barracuda@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
The short is that the acquiring bank of PayPal has banned transactions to Steam in all non-Western currencies (exception being Japanese Yen).
BunScientist@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
TIL Mexico isn’t in the west
QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Why?