this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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Well, as I said, Steam already supports all the national payment systems in Europe and yeah, since I've switched away from PayPal in GOG, my game payments have also been done by scanning a QR code from the banking app (which goes via an intermediary but ultimately gets turned into a SEPA transfer).
Sure, Steam could add bank transfer payments. They don't need to as in Europe they already have the VISA/MasterCard/PayPal mafia problem solved, but it would be nice if they did (actually the whole split between payment-system and bank-transfer disappearing and it becoming a single mechanism is probably a good idea).
The lack of a pan-European payment system that's accepted anywhere in the World isn't a problem for Steam, it's a general problem for Europeans wanting to avoid using VISA/MasterCard/PayPal in all their payments no matter where the seller is located (plus even in Europe a bunch of things such as car rental often require a Credit Card). It's solved for the likes of Steam, but not for other sellers (for example I buy eBooks books from a US based seller who doesn't support anything but PayPal, VISA and MasterCard and the same when I buy stuff from AliExpress),
When it comes to Steam, the problem of them being dependent for payments on VISA/MasterCard/PayPal is outside Europe, not in Europe.