Mobile SMS Payments - Bring Boku Back!

[Kezzy Babes]

Yo, I'm relatelively new to Steam, but been looking on web for a means and it seems there are one but gone now, mobile payments? Cmon Steam, what'd be wrong with that? I read some people saying 'yeah, parents are gonna love their kids' mobile bills' but it's no different to paying with a card, in fact it's better I think, coz then the kid at least sees the amount they're spending, rather than just putting on card and being done with it. Also in my experience, mobile-payments are always lower than card payments; on most games I've played they're having min or $10 for card, but usually like $5 for mobile, then max of about $50 for mobile and several hundred for card...
Anyway, any thoughts?

[HLCinSC]

mobile payment providers often use unfair payment policies towards retailers. What likely happened when their current deal was up one party demanded terms the other refused to accept and until one caves and a new agreement is made you won't be seeing the return if that payment method.

[Spawn of Totoro]

I'll just quote what Tito has said in other thread like this.

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Paying through mobile is a far more complicated issue that it sounds. Blizzard tried it and didn't work out.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/5910721541#5

First: A lot of phone companies do not allow Pay-by-Phone, and there are some who did allow it at one time, but stopped doing so. This is for very good reasons. Pay by phone can be very risky. If you are not very careful with it, your account can get charge backed, resulting in your account getting locked until Blizzard get their back pay. Phone Companies pay themselves first. If you have any billing disputes with your phone company, partial, or late payments, they can(have done so in the past) issue charge back, on any Blizzard payment they have ever made for you, even 2 years afterwards.

Second: Any disputes you may have with PaymentOne can put both your phone service, and your WoW account in jeopardy. PaymentOne and under it's Old name EBillit has had a bit of a spotty history, when it come to costumer complaints and disputes. If fact Verizon use to allow paymentOne's pay-by-phone service, but dropped it.

Lastly: Of the phone companies do allow Pay-by-Phone, they may limit what can or can not be charged. Because Paymentone is a 3rd party middleman, even though the charges may have appears to have gone through, they really haven't. In other words paymentone may have approved the charge, but your phone company hasn't yet. This can put a hold on the transaction until the phone company does approve it. This normally only happens the 1st time the service is used. But it may happen at any time.

Players that used this service for their WoW account needed to have been sure: To pay their phone bill on time and in full every month; If they had a dispute about part of their bill, they still had to pay it in full, and hope they would get credit back latter, when they settled their dispute; Lastly they had to be careful not to not blow off their last bill. Even if they only used pay by phone one time 2 years ago, the phone company could issue a charge back.

[Kezzy Babes]

Well they could do something a little different; some games which Steam hosts, (ik only of the Turbine games lotro and ddo, but there may be others, idk) have an online download NOT through steam which then does have mobile payment. I play lotro on Steam because of my HDD space, which using the Happy Cloud would take up too much space as well, it's saving a little bit anyway, so why can't steam include direct lotro payments and steam lotro payments, using lotro as an example? Then if there's already money in Steam Wallet, you can use that, or if you prefer you could pay lotro directly, as they already have mobile payments. Obviously it can't work for all games, some games you'd need Steam Wallet cash, but isn't both an option?

[Spawn of Totoro]

That would be up to the game's developer to accept mobile payments through their own software. Valve has no say in that matter.

Valve gets a 30% cut from purchases on Steam. If a mobile payment gets revoked by the payment company and/or phone carrier, Valve looses that money, but the developer still got paid. That is a 70% loss for them, in addition to any fees they may have to pay their bank.

Mobile payments for Steam/Valve are not possible as the risks out weigh the benefits.

LOTRO uses mircropayments and get 100% of the money for them, when done directly. The risk to them is far smaller then what it is to Valve.