this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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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.
or just use Wero which they are gonna use anyway
When will that happen though?
Depends a bit on the country since they are all transforming their national payment system to Wero, some of them already have it like Germany and Belgium will be getting it in October this year. The Netherands will get it 2026-01-01.
Will they? That would be awesome but I haven't found any information on that.
Who Steam? Yeah they will be using Wero since they are currently supporting iDeal and the like which are changing to become Wero.
Based off what? The option are credit cards or crypto.
They don't need a valve pay for 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 if 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.
This kind of problem is the exact reason crypto exists and is really the only solution even if it's not perfect yet.
Edit: sorry, they could do a bank integration through ACH / EFT / Wires etc, but that's slow and realistically not an option. If people want to buy something they won't want to wait days for it.
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.
I wonder if it would be simpler to launch a digital only credit card, IE no physical card exists? If you can load the card onto a device that supports tap to pay, that would be a very useful card.
I mean...I wouldn't mind a physical card if it looked cool and shit.
That is such a monumental task and valve only has between 350-400 employees.
Stripe has around 8500 employees, and they only integrate with ~~credit card~~ banks who integrate to the credit card companies. But they finally got a license to directly integrate so we might finally see that in the near future.
When sears made the discover card, they had hundreds of thousands of employees, and they didn't need to deal with all the digital shit we gotta deal with now.
They needed hundreds of thousands of employees because they didn't have "digital shit". Today, the entirety of Discover Financial Services is around 21k, and probably falling.
If Valve did it, it wouldn't be under the Valve organization anyways. It would be a subsidiary, and Valve has plenty of cash-flow to build it out.
The digital shit is so complicated it takes a huge amount of employees. Integrations with hardware (payment terminals), banks, setting up infrastructure so others can accept your payments, automated fraud detection, digital compliance in every country they want to target, it's huuuuuuge. Thousands of employees.
It used to be do a carbon copy of the card and send us the receipt.
Valves internal structure wouldn't scale to that size either, and they have no experience running a company of the size that would be required in a different structure.
What payment terminals? They could go years just being an online credit card. Hell, initially it wouldn't be very different from any company that bills their customers. Start it as a Steam only thing, then add select partners one at a time. It doesn't have to be in your grocery store on day one, or ever really. Fraud detection is easy when you can just yank the game back. Sears couldn't do that when you bought a washing machine. I worked in banking infosec and I have no idea what "digital compliance" means in this context. The hardest compliance standards in this space are PCI, and those are defined and enforced on clients by the payment card industry itself.
Which is why I specifically said it would be run as a subsidiary.
Gosh, where on Earth could they find people with experience running a company that would look like 99% of the companies in existence?
You're just throwing shit on the wall and hoping something sticks. You could neigh say anything, and nothing in the world would ever be accomplished.
Neither are cryptocurrencies for most people.
Fuck credit cards they are terrible for your finances.
Only if you're bad with finances & don't understand their use cases.
Even if you are good with your finances, they are still more expensive and if you use some kind of bookkeeping or budgeting software, you will have issues connecting the export.
Yes, I know of cashback, but those don't exist everywhere and exist so you buy more to fund the consumerism going on. Which is actively hurting society.
The insurance part is nice, but often it's not better than what you get with a normal bank card.
Creditcards in most countries will hurt your credt score because of if you are paying money to pay off a credit card you cannot use that money to pay for your mortgage.
There is also that technical benefit of having to pay later which means you can "invest" that money, but for the average joe that is an irrelevant benefit.
The only benefit to me of having one is that I can use them on American sites that don't support other payment platforms which is most American sites (including Amazon.com, while the European brands do support Wero etc.)
You might be able to handle the responsibility of the credit card, but a lot of people don't.
Not in the slightest (cost me 0), and I do.
Not the main selling point.
That is a good use case: charges easier to dispute & reverse. Fraudulent credit card charges don't disrupt your available funds.
A normal bank card spends your real money. Disputing through a bank may take longer. Until the bank returns money to your account, that money is gone: fraudulent charges to your bank account disrupt your available funds.
That's a use case for me: risk mitigation & flexibility to optimize returns on my savings.
Assumptions
Constantly transferring between accounts for every single transaction is inconvenient. Leaving money in the checking account isn't ideal due to low interest earnings & risk of unauthorized debits.
Solution
The credit card is simply an instrument to allow me time & flexibility to move money I already have to pay expenses. The money is usually earning kickass interest (at least enough to beat inflation) somewhere and takes a non-instant amount of time to transfer.
Always completely pay off a credit card by the payment due date. A credit card is a shitty account to carry a debt (any non-0 balance past the due date): only dumbasses do that.
If it works like in the US, then as long as you make mortgage & all other bill payments on time, completely pay off credit cards by payment due dates, and keep credit utilization low (at most 30% of card's credit limit), you should be fine.
Starting a mortgage temporarily lowers your credit score until it recovers with consistent repayments over a few months. Then the added credit mix usually improves credit scores.
Are mortgages not paid there in regular installments with due amounts like in the US?
You don't have an account (maybe savings) that earns better interest? You're not saving for emergencies, retirement, or goals?
It's usually just slack time (until payment due date) to make a payment you would already make some other way.
I work at an accounting firm and part of my job is advising on automation software and the like, automating credit cards is a hassle and often impossible. Sometimes when it is possible, only half the transactions are posted (just the payments and not the money received from other your bank account).
If they don't cost you any more, then those are the once which are expensive on the stores you buy from. For one, there is additional bookkeeping to be done (deduct the costs from the payment when receiving the money) and the extra costs itself.
For a lot of people on the internet, that small cashback is their reason they use it.,
A normal bank card is way harder to even get into a situation where you need to open a dispute and most credit card companies do not care about you getting scammed either btw because you authorised the transaction.
Unauthorised debits are such a rare thing, nobody is going to accidentally wire money to you. Unless you are a business and it's a double payment.
You are also explaining the reasons as to why I said that technical benefit of earning money on borrowed money is bullshit for the average Joe. Why are we discussing this if we agree it's bullshit?
Transfers between accounts are instant these days and payments on your normal bank accounts can be a lot larger than on most credit cards. Credit cards are limited to 1k, 2.5k or 5k for most private individuals since you generally need to make x amount more a month (after taxes) than the limit of the card. The maximum on basically every bank account of a private individual is 50k
Irrelevant issue, you still gotta do this with a credit card since you have to pay off the dang thing. Most things are also a consistent thing and a monthly thing. You also mean unauthorised credits, btw. Banks turn around debit and credit like it's their party.
This happens way more than you think, remember most people are terrible with money. You see this even more in countries like the US, where people take out loans for everything.
In a lot of scenarios, they look at what you can monthly spend, because your past experiences don't dictate your future. In NL and other countries it works something like this,, but it is a lot more complicated in practise. If you have a monthly income of 5k, you pay say 1k taxes from that, which means you have 4k left over. In NL, there is something saying that you can only spend say 75% of your net income on loans. In this example, that's 3k. If you have a car loan for 1k a month and a credit card of 1k and a phone where you pay 50 bucks for and a student loan where you pay 50 bucks for. Which means you can only spend 900 euro on your mortgage. In the US system you might be able to take a mortgage of 2k (just guessing/execrating) because you always paid off your phone, car and credit card loans nicely. Which means you would spend 3,1k a month on loans. Which is one way that a people get into financial trouble.
And this is why the US credit score is bullshit because yes we do, everywhere in the world.
Ofc we have savings for emergencies, most people do. Most of my emergency fund is located in a savings account, but still instantly accessible, which means it is at a low interest rate. I could lock the money for a year to get like 2.9% interest instead of the 1.2% I am getting or something (it's on a free account).
Only the first month, after that it doesn't really matter.
If credit cards users pay higher prices than non-users, checking accounts are secure from erroneous/unauthorized transactions, and transfers are instant, then the use case for credit cards is less clear.
That changes the trade-offs a bit. I missed the assumption that credit card users pay the same prices (& no extra fees) as everyone else: processing fees are typically paid by the vendor who includes it in prices everyone pays regardless of credit card.
In the US, credit card users basically get short-term, interest-free loans subsidized by the hidden costs in processing fees everyone is paying. Since consumers in the US mostly can't avoid the hidden costs, they don't benefit as much by avoiding credit cards as consumers in other places where consumers can avoid those fees by not using credit cards.
It doesn't help that those credit cards compensate (poorly) for deficiencies in our financial system as I'll explain.
Maybe yours. Here, online payments only need some numbers on the debit card & your name & billing address.
All it takes here is debit card information or an (e-)check. A check openly shows your routing number & bank account number & states to pay from there. Low barriers to fraud.
Different here: by law no one who disputes a charge within 60 days is obligated to pay it until the dispute is resolved (within 90 days). It's usually charged back immediately. Due to weak security, authorization is easier to dispute, and they won't simply assume it.
Maybe in more civilized parts of the world. In the US, transfers & payments between financial institutions usually take business days to settle. Real-time payment is still uncommon there.
I agree that makes more sense in accounting. It's often stated as I did with bank accounts & I gave up trying to figure that out.
My regular & emergency savings go in an account like this with 4.3 APY, and that's "instantly" (as fast as a checking account) accessible. The slow settlement times, security risks, and "free" credit cards may offer some insights into our haphazard financial landscape & stopgap "solutions". The stronger use case for credit cards here is a byproduct of this broken system.
Yeah you are right, credit cards in the US are part of the consumerism system and are designed to get you people in as much debt as possible. Which is part of the reason why I am so against credit cards and keep complaining about the dang things. Companies in the US also force me to use a credit card (and to not have clear prices because you exclude the tax which is illegal when selling to the EU)
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.
That takes time (days) that people don't want to wait to make a purchase, nor do people want to leave a balance with companies or have to worry about topping it up so they have enough to buy the next game they happen to want without waiting.
Edit: Not to mention the risk of sharing bank account information.
For me it takes barely even a minute. What stone age banking systems are you using?
Bank to bank transfers typically show up in under an hour in my country, and you would obviously be able to credit your account ahead of time.
Hours?? Lost of places (see EU, India, Japan) have instant transfers.
Ours is hourly for some reason, and it's only recently they started doing that.
We need a lemmy instance for your country. sh.itdoesnt.work
Even having to wait an hour is a fantastic way to lose a sale.
Valve could extend a limited credit for the first two hours of play time. If after downloading and playing for two hours there's still no confirmation from the bank, they'd then block your access to the game.
That's actually a pretty realistic option given the 2 hour refund window.
Maybe allow it only after 1 successful deposit, and revoke it after 1 failure for a long period and X successful payments.
Also maybe only 1 game is playable if you happen to buy more than 1 in that time
This is to top up your account, not make a purchase.
And that's back to my point of people not wanting to leave money places in case they want to buy a game in the future.
Instead of leaving it in your bank account just in case?
Money in my bank account I can spend on just about anything. If I realise "shit, I'm out of toilet paper", I can go to the grocery store and pay by EC, with the money in my bank account. The money that I keep in there, just in case there's something I want or need to spend money on literally anywhere.
Besides, my bank is subject to my local jurisdiction and my own country's laws and regulations. If my money is with some US company, I can't be sure whether they'll suddenly go "sorry, pal, your money has been confiscated on some bullshit pretense you have no way of actually fighting back against".
You have completely missed the entire point of the number one cryptocurrency in the world. You'll wish you had done some research. If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry.
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