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?
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 1 day ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 11 minutes 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 1 hour 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.
Gorillazrule@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours 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 4 hours ago
I can keep buying porn games on steam with my third world country credit card. 🧐
IcyToes@sh.itjust.works 6 hours 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 1 hour ago
Make sure 2FA is enables on all your banking
FuckFascism@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Honestly fuck Paypal, don’t bring it back.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
Asking as an ignorant person, what’s wrong with PayPal?
skisnow@lemmy.ca 28 minutes 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.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 9 hours 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”.
nucleative@lemmy.world 10 hours 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.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
They quite often steal your money.
morphballganon@mtgzone.com 6 hours 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!”
nibble4bits@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours 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.
FuckFascism@lemmy.world 13 hours 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.
RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 10 hours 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.
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 13 hours ago
It was founded and continues to be run by some real shitbags.
Revan343@lemmy.ca 11 hours ago
If you sell things on eBay and the like, PayPal likes to fuck you over
Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 1 day 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 1 day ago
I mean, I don’t want to keep funds in PayPal, but they make a good proxy for a credit card.
Credit card POS systems permit for me to do (reasonably, lack a trusted display or input mechanism) secure transactions. But I can’t do that with my computer — I don’t have a way to use a smartcard reader and purchase things online. I have to send my actual credentials to a vendor and trust that they’re treating them securely.
But if you use PayPal to pay at a vendor and then send that payment to a credit card, you avoid the security problems inherent to direct personal use of credit cards.
I’m not comfortable sending credit card data to sketchy-looking sites. With PayPal, worst case they don’t send me whatever I paid for.
JordanZ@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You should see if any of your credit cards allow you to make virtual credit cards. I can make an entirely new card with a unique number, expiration and code then lock/delete them or even restrict them to the first retailer they’re used at. I have like a dozen virtual cards that only work at a single retailer and lock them all until I need to use them. While locked all attempts to use them are declined.
Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Use a virtual card like the ones from privacy. You can select if it’s a one time payment or a monthly payment and set limits.
It saved me many times from companies charging me way more than I agreed to. (Bought a phone and never activated it, they tried to charge me $150 the next year, but I used a virtual card!)
orclev@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Look into the Privacy app (kind of a terrible name honestly). It’s effectively a Paypal type system but one that issues CC numbers for each vendor or transaction and allows you to easily audit and manage them. It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Paypal.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
It’s not a credit card, but I use Revolut and they have temporary virtual debit cards on their free plan even. They work a single time per generated card only. Great also if you want a 1 month subscription of something and don’t trust yourself to cancel it.
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 10 hours 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 1 hour ago
or just use Wero which they are gonna use anyway
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 10 hours 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.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 hour ago
Fuck credit cards they are terrible for your finances.
Tinidril@midwest.social 6 hours 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 hours 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.
threeonefour@piefed.ca 21 hours 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.
jbloggs777@discuss.tchncs.de 20 hours ago
They could do it with significantly fewer people, for themselves and even for GOG, Itch and potentially others. Their use-case is digital payments for games, which is limited in scope and risk. PCI and compliance is a PITA, but manageable.
azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
The hard part isn’t processing payment… They already basically do that for themselves with the steam wallet.
The problem is getting the ability to withdraw funds from your customers’ bank accounts. That requires a commercial relationship with your customer’s bank and going through an insane amount of red tape. And there is no standard worldwide protocol for this, you’ll be starting from zero in every market by cold-calling major banks.
The only viable approach is to have an army of salespeople, accountants, and project managers to do all those individual negotiations.
The EU has been trying for years to have an indigenous continent-wide payment processor. The first attempt failed, now Wero is poised to succeed in the next few years but that’s building off negotiations that started a few years ago with pressure from the EU and buy-in from the financial sector, and still only a handful of European markets have been integrated at this point.
Now imagine all this difficulty but you have to also get active buy-in from every market worldwide. There’s a reason Visa/MC have a near monopoly on international payments in the western world, and it’s not that no-one else thought to get a piece of that very juicy pie that’s making them literally billions in profit every year.
Nighed@feddit.uk 19 hours ago
Is it a payment processor problem, or a card issued problem though?
3abas@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
PayPal/Visa/MasterCard do way more than just payment processing for one company.
Valve wouldn’t need 25,000 employees just to process payments for their own platform.
nymnympseudonym@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Monero works for anonymous payments for cocaine and fent across international boundaries, it can more than handle the illicit video game trade
Pringles@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
If digital payments are becoming a service problem, Steam might develop their own.
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I actually think ramping up their gift card distribution to more countries might be more effective imo, since people have access to cash or payment systems at physical stores.
teuniac_@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Tbh I could not be arsed to go somewhere to buy a gift card to then use it. I’m more likely to use another platform to buy a game.
It’s not that I don’t have values. I just don’t feel strongly enough about using Steam to make that trip just for a gift card.
Digital gift cards would be okay though.
Ugurcan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Gift cards is ab obvious way to bypass regional pricing, so a low-income country like mine could get more harm than good (as in fraud increases and the storefront gives up ın regional pricing from that point on).
Also, when convenience of online shopping is lost, why would I bother wearing my shoes and get out to sun to purchase a gift card, while I can buy a physical copy of the game instead?
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I wonder if this will just make them return bitcoin as an option to pay. It’s been 8 years since they dropped it and it has fewer large fluctuations now, it seems.
Kissaki@feddit.org 1 day ago
and it has fewer large fluctuations now, it seems.
106 to 76 to 120 in the last four months is not large fluctuation? 30 % variance is quite high to me.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 day ago
It still fluctuates a lot. If they were going to accept bitcoin I was a game developer would want them to get it into something a bit harder almost instantly. I don’t want it staying in bitcoin but can lose its value for no reason at all at the drop of a hat. Under the current system steam tend to hold on to money until the end of the month and then pay you, that wouldn’t work with bitcoin.
wabafee@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Perhaps it’s time Valve get into its own payment business.
dan1101@lemmy.world 19 hours 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.
Redex68@lemmy.world 19 hours 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.
Boddhisatva@lemmy.world 20 hours 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.
orclev@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
The fundamental flaw with all current crypto is that it’s far too volatile to use as a currency. The only reasonable use for it at the moment is as a high risk commodity which is the vast overwhelming majority of what we see. Any so called “currency” that regularly sees price swings of multiple percentage points in a day isn’t actually a currency and is unsuitable to be used as one.
Adding to this is the problem of transaction times. Actual payment systems typically have transaction times of less than a second, occasionally a second or two. Bitcoin in contrast can take multiple minutes, sometimes hours or even days to confirm a transaction. There’s no way for Valve to accept and then immediately convert Crypto to USD. The process would inherently involve at least to transactions, one to transfer the crypto to Valves wallet, then a second to transfer from Valves wallet to the exchanges wallet, and only then could Valve attempt to sell that crypto. The financial uncertainty involved in all of that is entirely unacceptable for a business.
At this moment there is only one potentially viable way of approaching this and it’s government regulation of some kind. Either government needs to regulate that payment processors get no say in the contents of customers business, or else they need to regulate the adoption of a neutral digital payment system. One possible example of what that could look like would be the GNU Taler system which might eventually become a payment system in Switzerland but isn’t yet.
deafboy@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
It was the support cost as far as I remember. Way too many people were too confused about how Bitcoin works.
Volatility was not the concern, at least for Valve. They’ve utilized a payment gateway that just swapped the BTC to USD right away. Which was still a single point of failure, but in case of bitcoin, the company switching a payment gateway does not affect the UX for the customer as much.
BlindFrog@lemmy.world 14 hours 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 hours ago
Monumental, perhaps, but at this point it would seem well worth the effort.
biotin7@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
Monero or GNU-Taler TBH. There are OpenSource Core-Banking-Systems like Apache-Fineract
spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
Use Monero I fucking guess?
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
If Valve did it, they’d make crypto insanely popular.
Nindelofocho@lemmy.world 11 hours 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?
victorz@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Good time to delete my PayPal. 👌
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I thought that my account was deleted years ago, but recently found out it still existed.
Deleted now!
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 15 hours 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.
badbytes@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
If valve had the power to enter the payment processing industry, I would support.
3laws@lemmy.world 14 hours 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
Lemminary@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Good riddance. Shady company from none other than the Muskrat.
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 hours ago
I think thiel is worse, also involved.
Traister101@lemmy.today 13 hours 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
moseschrute@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
What did PayPal do that it’s less usable than it was? Not that it was ever very usable
RedGreenBlue@lemmy.zip 22 hours ago
So paypal is unreliable, is the takeaway.
vxx@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Okay, steam cards it is then.
jeena@piefed.jeena.net 1 day ago
What happened to paypal?
comador@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Paypal changed banks and cannot accept currencies from most countries, resulting in the failures Steam is seeing. Source:
NanoooK@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
It’s written in the article, related to the currency used.
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 1 day ago
you can no longer
♫ pay your own waaaaaaaay ♫
woelkchen@lemmy.world 21 hours 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 20 hours ago
This sort of situation is exactly why I got a PayPal card 18 years ago when they first started offering it.
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 hours ago
Gotta find a way to a post-money world; money is the enemy.
deafboy@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Next up: Un-inventing fire!
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
We need to be post scarcity before we can be post money.
Eddbopkins@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
This can only hurt there stock price in the long run
tal@lemmy.today 1 day 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?
atticus88th@lemmy.world 1 day ago
C’mon Valve… Make me a credit card pretty please.
tal@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Based on the screenshot someone else posted, they do have some kind of payment/currency system of their own, Steam Wallet.
I guess you could buy a physical Steam gift card in a store via any mechanism the store accepts, including cash, and then transfer it to that.
FuyuhikoDate@feddit.org 15 hours ago
Why not crypto?
Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 day 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.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Is PayPal still a musk toy?
muhyb@programming.dev 1 day ago
From paypal to nopayforyoubuddy
Shape4985@lemmy.ml 23 hours ago
Started buying steam giftcards for myself now instead.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
Hello-ooo Klarna!
nul42@lemmy.ca 19 hours ago
Do they accept UnionPay?
descartador@lemmy.eco.br 31 minutes ago
Why don’t they implement crypto already? Nano would be perfect
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 1 minute ago
because me and many others hear “<coin you never heard about> would be perfect” and cant help but to immediately think scam