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.
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 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.
Valves internal structure wouldn’t scale to that size either
Which is why I specifically said it would be run as a subsidiary.
and they have no experience running a company of the size that would be required in a different structure.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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 cardbanks 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.
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.
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.
👍
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.
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”.