PayPal and other International Payment Gateways

[xtremeLinux]

Hi everyone, this is a proposed idea to something that happen to me this week.

I live in Costa Rica but my bank account that I use for Steam and my credit card are from the US. So last week, Steam offered support for Costa Rican currency. That is excellent news but 2 things happened to me:

1. I was forced to see the pricing of games in Colones (The currency used here in Costa Rica) when in fact I normally see the price in USD to make sure I can purchase it since I get paid in USD and manage everything in USD.

2. The PayPal option was no longer available. With this I mean, I previously (Last week) was able to quickly purchase any game by simply doing the whole payment process through PayPal. Just 3 seconds and I was finished. Now in Costa Rica, not only is the PayPal option gone, but the payment process is done in 1 to 3 business days. That basically eliminates the whole idea of enjoying the weekend with a game or getting something during those special sales.

My Proposed solution is:

1. Offer PayPal independent of country. If the user has PayPal then excellent. Use it. I have PayPal but since I live in Costa Rica, Steam simply eliminated the option (No idea if it's tied to the country or not, but I have used PayPal for over a year purchasing from different sources, including Steam because it is super easy to use). PayPal and similar easy to use means, should have the option of show by leaving it to the user to use them or not (Friendly to the user, flexible for Steam).

2. Offer the option to see the pricing in the currency the user wants. For example in Costa Rica they have the Colon (CRC) and the US Dolar (USD). So an option to use USD helps a lot. Or simply have the option to show pricing based on the most common currencies (US, Euro, etc..)

I came here thanks to the suggestion from one of the customer representatives that guided me here.

With that said, think positive and keep up the excellent work.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

You need to ask Paypal to update their service to support your currency. That is why you can not use it. Valve can't offer anothers service independent from what they offer. Paypal needs to make the change. It is not only your country but all the ones that had their currencies changed on Steam. Blame Paypal for not supporting your own curreny for the transactions.

[xtremeLinux]

I don't think that is the issue since I was already purchasing games and buying other 3rd party services with PayPal. And my PayPal account is tied to Costa Rica so asking PayPal to update their service makes no sense when it is only affecting steam right now and it was working for more than a year with Steam until Steam (Not PayPal) updated themselves with the country change.

Basically the issue is with Steam, not PayPal. Again it was working before last week and it is still working for other sources not steam related.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Because Valve want local currencies to be used and Paypal does not offer that in your country.

A Paypal issue.

[xtremeLinux]

Thank you for the clear point. It then would be a 2 part issue:

1. PayPal would need to update their service (Which I doubt since Costa Rica is a small country which equals to not much profit from adding local currency for it).

2. Valve would need to update their service to allow non local currency if the user has the ability to use it.

[rcanessa]

Hola Luis,

Soy de Costa Rica tambien. ¿Conoce algún otro sitio donde se puedan comprar juegos con Paypal?

[Alias]

I have had a similar thing happen and subseqently stopped using the steam store completly, since togther with the change of currency came an unwarrented and more importantly HIDDEN price rise. I will not condone any store that hides rising price behind a change of currency, and untill the option to view the game prices in propper currencies is not enabled, I will not give hand to this sort of underhanded approach to buisness

[LucXas2]

no entendi muy bien, dices que implementen mas metodos de pago en costa rica?

[xtremeLinux]

Originally posted by rcanessa:

Hola Luis,

Soy de Costa Rica tambien. ¿Conoce algún otro sitio donde se puedan comprar juegos con Paypal?

Originally posted by LucXas cstrade.gg:

no entendi muy bien, dices que implementen mas metodos de pago en costa rica?

No hago referencia a agregar mas metodos de pago en costa rica. Es metodos de pago independientes del pais. El hecho de que me limitaron a costa rica en donde no existe PayPal como metodo de pago directo (Que existia antes) es el problema del que estoy hablando (Sin salirse del tema como tal).

Y si existen muchos sitios donde venden juegos usando PayPal como por ejemplo humblebundle, gog entre otros.

Ahora regresando a la pregunta inicial, el problema es que al forzar en utilizar la moneda del pais o los metodos de pago del pais, en caso de que la persona tenga acceso a otros metodos de pago, estos no seran accesibles (Como PayPal por ejemplo) si el pais o el servicio no tienen un convenio. Ya yo venia trabajando perfectamente con PayPal durante los casi 50 juegos que tengo, ahora con esta limitando simplemente no puedo. Espero se haya explicado sin salirse del problema mismo. Gracias.

[xtremeLinux]

Originally posted by Alias:

I have had a similar thing happen and subseqently stopped using the steam store completly, since togther with the change of currency came an unwarrented and more importantly HIDDEN price rise. I will not condone any store that hides rising price behind a change of currency, and untill the option to view the game prices in propper currencies is not enabled, I will not give hand to this sort of underhanded approach to buisness

Did not know about hidden fees, but I will keep that in mind by asking friends from other countries. Now the issue is the fact that I am unable to use PayPal for Steam (Independent on where I am located) so localized payment gateways are good in one aspect but completely horrible in others. The idea is to give the use the OPTION to choose from both instead of forcing them altogether.

[DeathStalker-K39]

Hello
And yeah, everyone i know here in CR uses Paypal (or at least used to...) to buy on Steam, no one that i know uses CRC online, with that said I cannot buy anything anymore
The payment options given by the new regulation are just absurd, i wont go and create a whole new bank account just to use it on Steam...

I've been waiting to see if the situation changes in some way, but it seems that the new regulations are here to stay... the only good suggestion I have heard about this is to buy "Steam cards" that are now supposed to be Region-free, but i still need to a little research on how it will work

Anyway, the Steam user-support beign as bad as always been makes us always end up in here talking users with users trying to figure it out what to do, since they make sure you have no a way to contact a human beign on the other side

[xtremeLinux]

Originally posted by DeathStalker-K39:

Hello
And yeah, everyone i know here in CR uses Paypal (or at least used to...) to buy on Steam, no one that i know uses CRC online, with that said I cannot buy anything anymore
The payment options given by the new regulation are just absurd, i wont go and create a whole new bank account just to use it on Steam...

I've been waiting to see if the situation changes in some way, but it seems that the new regulations are here to stay... the only good suggestion I have heard about this is to buy "Steam cards" that are now supposed to be Region-free, but i still need to a little research on how it will work

Anyway, the Steam user-support beign as bad as always been makes us always end up in here talking users with users trying to figure it out what to do, since they make sure you have no a way to contact a human beign on the other side

The more I read your comment, the more I see you are right in a lot of ways. Talk about freedom of choice for users (Pre-Payment System era). Now it forces. Currently I am using a US Bank because they really did not do their do diligence when researching for this payment changes.