I wouldn't mind seeing a ValvePay system. 1% transaction fee, available to anyone who wants to use it, including OnlyFans, Itch, Kagura, DLSite, and others. Valve can team up with Japan, the EU, and Brazil to handle their respective ends of the business, so that Valve can focus on the United States.
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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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.
Monero works for anonymous payments for cocaine and fent across international boundaries, it can more than handle the illicit video game trade
Honestly fuck Paypal, don't bring it back.
Asking as an ignorant person, what's wrong with PayPal?
All the authority of a bank.
None of the responsibility.
Plus Peter Thiel and Elon Musk had a hand in it, and made their fortunes. It's right up there with Hitler and Reagan in the "reasons to invent a time machine and go back and destroy something".
A few matters - About 5-6 years ago - PayPal was going to make telemarketing your phone number a requirement in order to have an account - If you had an account, they were going to FORCE you to allow their 3rd party marketing calls. No opt-out available whatsoever.
PayPal is also an owner of the extension Honey - an extension that promoted they would try every online coupon code to see if you could save money on a deal. Recently (within the last year) it was discovered that even if they didn't provide you with any discount at all - they were still hijacking the referral links that brought you to the shop site in the first place. They were also striking deals to those same vendors about kickbacks to NOT keep the best coupons in their system. Essentially they were taking money from three sides, promoters, vendors, and the purchasers - all while NOT providing the best possible coupon codes - which was the whole advertised point of their service. Lawsuits on this are pending.
Their policies, verification systems, KYC/AML processes, risk aversion, and customer support leave many PayPal users with unmet expectations, especially when there is an issue with the transaction and PayPal is asked to assist.
The company has found ways to avoid some of the regulations that banks are held to which is partly the reason for the issues.
If you search the web for PayPal experiences, you'll find concerns such as their 1.3 star rating with almost 35,000 reviews on Trustpilot.
A non exhaustive list of what makes them awful: https://expertbeacon.com/why-is-paypal-so-bad/
Afaik, the issue that was making the most victims, was that they were facilitating scammers that targeted sellers:
5. Good Luck Recouping Losses as a Seller in Disputes.
89% of sellers experienced dispute resolution problems with PayPal in 2021 surveys. Despite providing evidence the item shipped or service rendered, they lost cases and sums averaging $622.
This is driven by PayPal‘s buyer-favored review round taking 1-2 weeks. This favors scamming buyers at the expense of legitimate businesses.
Iirc, there was a time when Paypal always sided with the buyer, irregardless of evidence or past track record, the review process was useless. Once scammers picked up on this and began scamming sellers en masse, Paypal still kept their policy unchanged for years and sellers started to raise their prices on platforms that forced them to accept Paypal (ebay used to do this). Ebay has since tossed Paypal off their platform. I don't know if Paypal ever improved.
If you sell things on eBay and the like, PayPal likes to fuck you over
They don't like free speech, they've stopped processing payments on steam because they don't like some of the games on the platform.
Isn't that like all credit card payment processors? Maybe we should just use Monero
I've only heard of Visa, MasterCard and PayPal censoring content but I could be mistaken; but yes we do need a much wider variety of options.
It was founded and continues to be run by some real shitbags.
https://voidfox.com/blog/payment_processor_fun_2025_making_your_own_msp/
Someone breaks down why it'd be a monumental task for Valve/Itch to vertically integrate the whole payment processing thing into their business. The essay is highly readable.
The only thing I had to look up was
Escrow: a financial arrangement w/ a third party who holds/manages funds on behalf of two parties in a transaction
My takeaway was that Valve/itch/GOG would still be beholden to the banks who track porn as high risk for fraudulent transactions.
So what can we do about it? ~asking in earnest, btw. I buy porn and toys like a regular ass person, too~
Monero or GNU-Taler TBH. There are OpenSource Core-Banking-Systems like Apache-Fineract
Use Monero I fucking guess?
If Valve did it, they'd make crypto insanely popular. They are pretty incentivized to do it right now, so it would not surprise me if they tested it out soon.
How does using a cryptocurrency work in this instance? Does a game that costs 20 coins always cost 20 coins or is it going to be 10 one day and 60 the next depending on its value? If it stays at 20 coins are those 20 coins going to cost me 1% of my paycheck one day and then 3% the next? (Numbers just for example) Theres so many issues with just having to deal with another currency not just crypto. How can you guarantee its stability in relation to your original currency? How much are you going to have to spend to convert currencies and/or make transactions?
Some crypto are called stablecoins, which are backed by some currency (such as the USD for USDC) inside of a bank. There's a bit more to it than that, but effectively what you get is one coin = one unit of currency.
They could even issue their own stable coin if they were weary of being reliant on another. I think valve would be viewed as trustworthy in keeping the 1:1 backing in a bank account. They could partner with someone else to issue it, like coinbase and Gemini do USDC.
USDV
Those are all really good questions, I don't really know the answer to. Not all coins have the wild spikes like bitcoin. Monero has been fairly stable. I haven't listened a game before, but I'm pretty sure you can pick which currency you want to get paid in. The conversion rates would be roughly the same for crypto.
However, Valve is no stronger to imaginary digital assets that wildly fluxuate in real world value. If there was any company that could figure out how to process crypto I think it would be them.
They know exactly how to do it as they did it before but had to stop because the bitcoin network was artificially congested with insane fees and it caused failed transactions or multi hour long transactions where the price dramatically changed. This resulted in complicated refunds or delays which resulted in unhappy customers.
They can avoid that all now by simply accepting stable coins like USDC. For every issued usdc there is 1 usd in a bank account somewhere. The value barely fluctuates. There are networks that can handle the volume this would create without getting congested nowadays as well.
Given the mess that happened last time though I imagine they are highly reluctant, although this could be enough motivation.
If valve had the power to enter the payment processing industry, I would support.
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Okay, steam cards it is then.
Gotta find a way to a post-money world; money is the enemy.
Next up: Un-inventing fire!
Totally comparable. Yes. A way of trackibg social entitlement totally alienated from any concept of valye or materiwl reality is as important fundamental and useful as fire.
Ever heard of "humor"? 🤔
Explain the joke?
Good riddance. Shady company from none other than the Muskrat.
No actually! Musks entire involvement with PayPal was being fired by the company he founded which then later down the road was bought out by PayPal when the people who fired him for incompetence turned it around and made it valuable enough PayPal wanted it
I think thiel is worse, also involved.
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