Look. Ignore the content. Why the fuck do we allow credit card companies have a say in how we spend our money? Fraud? Abuse? Fine, let me put cash onto a card and if that card gets stolen, oh well, my loss. Mastercard should have no say in what what speech is considered acceptable outside of their offices. We don't care what execs at a water company think? Why do we care about the people at Mastercard?
Because they are on the hook for fraudulent transactions, until they get to merchant to refund. Otherwise they wouldn't care.
Which is why some merchants get effectively blacklisted if they have too many fraudulent transactions
Okay so is Steam enough of a money printer for Valve to say "well fuck you guys, we'll make our own credit card with hookers and bingo"? And hold out Half-Life 3 (only purchasable with the ValveCard) as a carrot?
I mean, if there's one company that I believe could pull that off is Valve. And maybe Amazon. Maybe the two together. It would be one hell of a JV for both parties.
My guess is it's simply a chargeback risk. It's the reason casinos and adult sites have trouble getting credit card processing and are charged much higher basic rates, even under the best of circumstances when the casino or adult site is operating entirely within the law in the jurisdictions it allows. Punters run a lot of chargebacks on casinos, and people whose spouses catch a XXX video or game on their card statem…
That's the problem though. The risk means the market for those riskier credit transactions is literally categorically not a great market. You think JP Morgan gives a shit about Japanese titty games? Hah. No. They care that these games get charged back way more often. If there is a market opportunity, it's probably in a processor for debit-based transactions that are harder to reverse. But then that makes fraud harder…
With the CFPB under threat, there may be room for payment processors which don’t protect consumers from fraud. (Regulation is only as strong as its enforcement)
It's not just games. Payment processors ban many things that are completely legal, even foods and dietary supplements. It's ridiculous. They have too much power.
I have no trouble seeing why a payment processor would want to avoid doing business with dietary supplement companies.
No issues buying Marlboro reds with the credit card of course.
Okay so is Steam enough of a money printer for Valve to say "well fuck you guys, we'll make our own credit card with hookers and bingo"? And hold out Half-Life 3 (only purchasable with the ValveCard) as a carrot?
Nope. Even a company such as valve would be intimidated by the regulation of setting up their own company payment network outside the traditional banking system. Maybe crypto is an option but I haven’t seen use in retail. Only speculation instrument. Apple tried. Failed. Google tried. Failed. Only thing that works is partnering up with existing bank
I have seen crypto used for payments, particularly if its overseas companies
Okay so is Steam enough of a money printer for Valve to say "well fuck you guys, we'll make our own credit card with hookers and bingo"? And hold out Half-Life 3 (only purchasable with the ValveCard) as a carrot?
Practically impossible. To replace visa/mastercard you need to have thousands of banks support ValveCard across the world. It's hard to imagine how it's going to happen. Players will not switch to another (probably foreign) bank just to buy Half-Life 3. They'll pirate it. By the way, Gabe has a very famous quote: > Piracy is a service problem. He knows it very well that if it's hard for players to buy something they'…
What if you used your mastercard to buy valvebucks you spend on whatever the hell you want in the steam store?
It is a shame that it takes payment processors to get Valve to do even the bare minimum curation of their store. IMO the thousands of outright bad games and ai slop asset flips and weirdo porn that verges on outright illegal content in many countries should have never been allowed in the first place. All of this leads back to various executives at Valve essentially doing no actual work and refusing to hire anybody because a huge part of their corporate culture is to keep headcount low while chasing constant growth.
My guess is it's simply a chargeback risk. It's the reason casinos and adult sites have trouble getting credit card processing and are charged much higher basic rates, even under the best of circumstances when the casino or adult site is operating entirely within the law in the jurisdictions it allows. Punters run a lot of chargebacks on casinos, and people whose spouses catch a XXX video or game on their card statem…
That's the problem though. The risk means the market for those riskier credit transactions is literally categorically not a great market. You think JP Morgan gives a shit about Japanese titty games? Hah. No. They care that these games get charged back way more often. If there is a market opportunity, it's probably in a processor for debit-based transactions that are harder to reverse. But then that makes fraud harder…
I wouldn't scoff at the leftovers. You're talking about maybe a trillion dollar industry that struggles to find payment solutions. This is why I gave up on credit card processing for my startup casino in 2010 and just went to taking Bitcoin and other crypto. I originally planned to just take Visa. I wasn't looking to skirt the law. Card companies are looking out for themselves, and they don't really even need regulatory capture to shaft anyone running a business that the public could consider shady or immoral. There's plenty of demand out there, and in my opinion they're leaving money on the table. But their business model makes it difficult to take on the risk, especially in the case of something like Valve where they can't pick each transaction apart and evaluate the risk separately. So yeah... a globally accepted porn and gambling card? That would be a home run if the bills showed up never to someone's spouse, and it won't happen. Using a combination of crypto and higher CC fees to sell the content, though, there's a lot of pent-up demand.
>You sold your car. O, its over 7 or 10k, well, this is getting reported to the local IRS. Where is that cash coming from, questions, questions? (I'm not in the US) I'm curious about how does that happen. Do they reach out to you? Your bank?
Your bank will file a report with FinCEN that says that you withdrew (or deposited, or transferred, or whatever) the money. They can/will also separately report suspicious transactions, including patterns of transactions that seem designed to evade the reporting requirements.
What if you cash your paychecks at the grocery store?