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Steam payment headaches grow as PayPal is no longer usable for much of the world
- JumpCrisscross 1y 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.”
- lesuorac 1y agoSo, this means a bank that handles EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD and USD isn't afraid of Visa/MasterCard and is willing to process the transactions while the other currencies don't have a willing bank?
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoIt means PayPal’s bank(s) don’t want to take foreign currency risks in non-major currencies.
- Ekaros 1y agoThat sounds actually scary. If they are taking actions on some short term future now... What do they see in immediate future?
- laughing_man 1y agoThe whole situation is getting weird. I know of a streamer who got his account locked because someone with one of the "other" currencies sent him money as a tip. And of course PayPal is holding onto his money (including a bunch of other transactions) without saying when or if they'll ever give it to him. It all just cements a decision I made almost two decades ago to refrain from ever using PayPal.
- lumost 1y agoWatching this from afar, I'm deeply confused about the recent trend of payment processors determining what types of vice can be accessed using their payment systems. I understand legal compliance, and cases where legal compliance is ambiguous (marijuana transactions in the US). However why are payment processors collectively policing what is acceptable in video games?
- mrguyorama 1y agoPayment processors are being sued by essentially religious fundamentalists. They are anti-porn, have very very good lawyers, and keep winning vague cases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_on_Sexual_Exploitation#Visa_and_Mastercard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_on_Sexual_Expl...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cozyman 1y ago[flagged]
- frogperson 1y agoIs there anything religion cant ruin? Why cant these people just leave everyone else alone?
- CamperBob2 1y agoWhy cant these people just leave everyone else alone? Their book tells them not to.
- dashdashu 1y agoTheir book also tells them to love their neighbours regardless of how different they look. The problem is, in my opinion, more that these people pick and choose from their book to justify their bigotry and hate
- altairprime 1y agoIs it Fiserv? I notice Mastercard invested into PayPal and Fiserv just a couple months ago, and PayPal was already in business with Fiserv via Fastlane.
- mrkramer 1y agoPayment ecosystem is so complex and convoluted that it is hard to tell. I was using my Visa card for years on Steam and all of a sudden Steam started refusing it. Steam support was repeatedly telling me that the problem is not on their end but on my end. At the end I figured out that I need to enable Visa 3D Secure feature on my credit card because I assume Visa was seeing a lot of fraud from Steam so they started requiring 2FA for Steam payments. Also Bandcamp.com refused to accept the payment from my credit card and I contacted my bank and they told me that payments to Bandcamp are always blocked because of security reasons(that is their policy) and they had to manually approve my credit card for use on Bandcamp....which is totally fu*king crazy. Manually approving payment transactions in the 21st century is wrong. How the hell should I know which vendors are on my bank's blacklist?! Tbh or at least that's my impression all comes down to the problem of fraud and crime. That's why we still have shitty payment providers and processors.
- upseo 1y agoIronically, porn website keep accepting Visa/Mastercard like nothing happened
- jeffwask 1y agoand all the sports betting sites are doing just fine.
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- linotype 1y agoI never thought I’d hear myself say this, but can Steam just accept Bitcoin?
- mrguyorama 1y agoSteam DID accept bitcoins for like a year. They shut it down because of high fees, volatility, and because nobody actually buys things with bitcoins
- linotype 1y agoSounds like there may be no other option for some soon.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoI would buy a Steam gift card from a Walgreens/Target/whatever before I would deal with the hassle of Bitcoin.
- immibis 1y agoOf course there will. Monero, Ethereum, USDC... All of which do a better job as currencies than Bitcoin does.
- Melonai 1y agoWell, XMR is sadly "problematic" now, because the usual flock of EU politicians panicked about not being able to track those transactions as nicely as they can with Bitcoin, Ether & Co. Since then it's not quite easy to acquire anything through Monero, nor to obtain any XMR, here. Which is such a shame considering it was by far my favorite crypto. :( It's also, interestingly, a coin that seems to mostly resist the constant hunt for investment opportunities that befell most other "coins", hindering the ability to actually use them for normal human transactions. The Solana chain and SOL also seem to do an okay-ish job at being more like a "currency" you actually buy stuff with, but not too many things accept it. But by technical standards and my preferences nothing well-known even comes close to Monero.
- siva7 1y agoThis screams so hard to buy a bank to solve this problems out for the gaming industry. Valve has the capital to do this but probably not the CEO...
- burnt-resistor 1y agoI know someone who bought a defunct bank to solve a family wealth repatriation catch-22 issue. This might be a sensible approach. Or, if they had some sense, they'd get into the credit business with their own "store card" that doesn't use V/MC. With this, they'd have the leverage to tell credit card processors to "get bent" should V/MC try telling them how to run their business and what content is acceptable.
- mock-possum 1y agoAnd the thing is, I absolutely trust Valve to run a bank / provide a card. They’ve built such good will over a quarter of a century at this point that I’d love to see them step up to implement a solution like this for me.
- Habgdnv 1y agoFirst they came for the porn, and I did not speak out - because, officially I do not watch porn. Then they came for cryptocurrency, and I did not speak out - because I am not a crypto bro. Then they came for the games, and I am a gamer... but there was no one left to speak for me, because payment processors had already "ethically" deplatformed everyone else.
- kbelder 1y agoAll the guys, at least.
- dankwizard 1y agoTransactions done through steam not in USD are 1.1% of all transactions. Not even a noticeable drop.
- supermatt 1y agoThat seems like it cannot be true, given the percentage of customers from countries with their own currency storefronts. What is your source?
- jackvalentine 1y agoOwn currency storefronts display in local currency and charge in USD. I was extremely surprised to see the international transaction fees my bank charged.
- supermatt 1y agoThat is definitely not the case for me on the EUR store. I am billed in EUR.
- up-n-atom 1y agoI kinda question the validity of the NSFW explanation news articles are bringing up because it’s signalling out foreign assets more than anything. Maybe a ploy in trying to keep the reign of the US currency, G7, and debt holders over BRICS plus outspoken critics? Just a quick look at the nations and currencies it seems more plausible. As a bank you don’t want that target on your back nor do you want to be excluded from SWIFT. But I guess this is way over the heads of the average gamer so blame corn.