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Couldn't they just take SEPA transfers to their account?

by IsTom 1y ago

dns_snek 1y ago
Yes but people expect to get their digital goods immediately, not in 1-2 business days. SEPA Instant support is spotty and even if it wasn't, I don't think that the tooling around SEPA on the merchant side of things is built to handle transaction in real time the way people are used to with cards.
- morsch 1y ago
  Supporting instant payments is now mandatory in the EU on the receiving side, and in a couple of weeks on the sending side. No surcharge allowed either, which usually means it's free.
- m4rtink 1y ago
  Arent those instant nowadays ? Also if there was a reason those take some time or are not as convenient as car payment so far (not sure there are any such reasons) you could just fill your Steam wallet and then pay for individual games from that.
  - dns_snek 1y ago
    Even if the payment is instant, the processing on merchant's side typically isn't. If I place the order at 5 in the morning and pay with card, it's ~always shipped the same day. Conversely I've never had the order processed the same day when paying with SEPA. I don't know where the bottleneck is, but I've personally never shopped anywhere that was set up to process SEPA payments rapidly.
_bent 1y ago
yeah, this I don't get. Maybe the issue is that you don't want to implement SEPA yourself, so you go through a payment processor -- which may then have the same guidelines as MasterCard? SEPA flows typically have a more rough UX, maybe this would put off a lot of customers? They could also just piggy back off of SEPA and just do the bog standard thing of asking the customer to transfer x amount of money with the reference abcxyz. If the customer then uses instant transfer in their banking app, they get to immediately confirm the purchase. In case of Steam they could totally also just give immediate access and then revoke it if the payment doesn't happen within 36 hours.

Couldn't they just take SEPA transfers to their account?

by IsTom 1y ago

Couldn't they just take SEPA transfers to their account?

Yes but people expect to get their digital goods immediately, not in 1-2 business days. SEPA Instant support is spotty and even if it wasn't, I don't think that the tooling around SEPA on the merchant side of things is built to handle transaction in real time the way people are used to with cards.

morsch 1y ago
Supporting instant payments is now mandatory in the EU on the receiving side, and in a couple of weeks on the sending side. No surcharge allowed either, which usually means it's free.
m4rtink 1y ago
Arent those instant nowadays ? Also if there was a reason those take some time or are not as convenient as car payment so far (not sure there are any such reasons) you could just fill your Steam wallet and then pay for individual games from that.
- dns_snek 1y ago
  Even if the payment is instant, the processing on merchant's side typically isn't. If I place the order at 5 in the morning and pay with card, it's ~always shipped the same day. Conversely I've never had the order processed the same day when paying with SEPA. I don't know where the bottleneck is, but I've personally never shopped anywhere that was set up to process SEPA payments rapidly.

_bent 1y ago

yeah, this I don't get. Maybe the issue is that you don't want to implement SEPA yourself, so you go through a payment processor -- which may then have the same guidelines as MasterCard? SEPA flows typically have a more rough UX, maybe this would put off a lot of customers? They could also just piggy back off of SEPA and just do the bog standard thing of asking the customer to transfer x amount of money with the reference abcxyz. If the customer then uses instant transfer in their banking app, they get to immediately confirm the purchase. In case of Steam they could totally also just give immediate access and then revoke it if the payment doesn't happen within 36 hours.