Why the fuck is it, that American online companies ONLY ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS

WHY NOT JUST DEMAND FUCKING CHECKS FOR PAYMENT

What should they accept?

Do you know how inconvenient checks are to accept for online orders?

@electrineer Payment providers, as is common practice here in europe, because few people outside of the us actually own credit cards

@whoneedsgit I thought it was only the Germans who still use cash.

So they should accept online payments from all banks in the world? Never gonna happen.

@electrineer It's just a different mentality, most people here see credit cards as debt, and therefore prefer debit cards

@whoneedsgit Wait... Shouldn't debit cards always work as well as Credit cards? I think mine does.

@fuck2code I live in Europe too and I use cash probably once or twice in a year.

In America. Using a credit card and paying of all of your debt before interest is the most sane way to spend money though. For online stuff.

Not my preferred method of payment. But that's the way it is.

@BigBoo Exactly. I always viewed a credit card as the best way to pay for big purchases I just don't have the ability to pay in full at the moment.

I use my debit card instead of cash a lot of the time, because when I do get cash out of the bank, it's coming from the same account. (I always have like $150 cash but it's more or less for emergency spending. Not that much, but some is better than none.)

@Stuxnet Well, to my knowledge. It's more important to build your credit score in America than in Europe. We don't really have to do that. We still can get some benefits of paying with credit though. Like points and cashback.

@BigBoo Credit is very important. VERY.

Definitely regret not getting a credit card while in high school just to make a few cheap (like $5) purchases to build the credit up some. But it's fine. I'll start soon I guess.

We have cash back and stuff as well. Some people are financially retarded (hate to use the word, but I'm not sure how else to word it to get the same message lol). Max out your card? No worries! Another card will help. Maxed that card? Another one! That's how they end up with the kinda stereotypical debt.

I was raised to be very concious of my spendings, but I have relaxed a little bit. Handling your money really needs to be a class for high school seniors and college freshmen to take.

@electrineer a single payment provider offers support for most european banks and if not Paypal, or paying afterwards by bank transfer.

German amazon supports ideal (a dutch payment system all dutch banks use), an england tee store supports a payment provider so we can pay with ideal there as well. Its not that difficult and gives people a lot more options.

It's called financially illiterate. It's very common everywhere. Sadly. Atleast I'm not. 🤷‍♂️

@Codex404 What payment provider is for European banks?

In the netherlands we primarily use debit cards, cash is still a big thing and it will never go away (would be a big issue if payments go down like a few days ago with mastercard)

@Codex404 well they would have to support multiple payment providers, and I think it would cost them a lot of money.

@electrineer Thanks for the input! I researched it a little and found out that debit mastercard securecode should (theoretically) work in credit card fields.

Jesus christ, the possibilities are endless now

@electrineer most of them support all west european banks.

And you only pay a few cents per transactipn, this can be paid by the customer so no it doesnt cost more money. If china can do it why not the US?

A creditcard only pays off if you do enough payments with it. The monthly fee is not worth it for most people.

Checks bounce, take longer to process, and are a bigger source of fraud than credit cards.

@Stuxnet Exactly. I know some people who could not go to school, struggle to find a job, cannot own a car, and still live with their parents due to apartment complexes turning them down, all because of their credit score.

@arjaycodes I bet so. Someone moved in down the road from me that's from Charlotte. They hated it.

Not judging them, but based on what I've seen from them, they seem like it could be a similar situation for them as well.

It's expensive and easy to get financially trapped if you're not careful. I wanna try and work somewhere in my small town as a remote worker to pay my student loans off, sense the cost of living here is a looot cheaper.

I'd love to live in Uptown but it's expensive as hell and I'm not convinced it's worth it.

(I'm from NC in case you couldn't tell lol)

@Stuxnet Woohoo! Another DevRanter from NC! I am in Charlotte currently :)

@Stuxnet and yeah. I can get better space for a fraction of the price in areas like Concord or Huntersville than you could in Uptown (especially NODA)

@arjaycodes I've got a friend in Concord. His rent (1/3 of a 3 room) isn't bad at all. I just enjoyed the ablity to walk everywhere when I was in uptown the last two years for a Panthers game lol. The convenience is pretty sweet.

And yea there's a few others from NC that I've noticed on here. Pretty sure they were all from the Triangle region.

@Stuxnet Yeah, traffic on I-85 has had me considering living in an overpriced area just to be closer to work. Besides, with Bird, you don’t even have to walk anymore

I hate it when online stores only accept credit cards.. have my favorite sir!

@electrineer regarding extra costs in supporting most common payment methods, which do you think is going to be more damaging to the company, lost sales because of incompatible payment methods or paying an external payment processor that can support pretty much everything and takes care of all the payment stuff for you?

Just like how hosting companies are the most sensible choice for servers (instead of having to build your own little DC) payment processing should be dealt with similarly. And yeah credit cards are uncommon across Europe because they're often viewed as sources of debt. I don't want my purchase in a store to complete if my balance can't back it. Neither do I want to have to worry about constantly watching my balance to ensure that I never go below 0.

The US is the land of welfare and debt, with fast food and swipe cards all over the place. We Europeans think very differently. Does that make us financially illiterate? Then so be it. We think the same about the US.

@Condor Yes but that depends on where they aim to sell. If they want to sell to the Western Europe, it's one provider. But if they want whole Europe, it may be a dozen. Who knows.

@electrineer Even in Western Europe there's multiple payment standards. Here in Belgium it's Bancontact, apparently in the Netherlands it's iDEAL.. while the standards have been harmonized within each nation, standards vary across the EU member states. I do think that this should be harmonized with a single payment system that applies across the entire EU. But I doubt that it'd be based on credit cards.. Europeans generally oppose the credit cards for the aforementioned reason of credit cards being associated with debt.

Anyway.. awaiting that, it's possible to derive what bank should be communicated with from the IBAN. That's how e.g. AliExpress can know my bank from just my IBAN, name and expiry information, then ask them to process it. Now of course AliExpress' sole purpose is to sell goods, so the fact that they support most payment methods including debit cards is no surprise. For smaller stores however, an external payment processor should really be used instead of some in-house hackery. That solves the payment method issue.

@Condor I thought it's a given that debit cards work everywhere credit cards do. I have no idea how they work.

@whoneedsgit no debit cards can not always be used as a credit card.

All dutch debit cards are running on maestro, which is a product of Mastercard. One would think that if a debit card could be used as creditcard it would be a debitcard using systems of the biggest credit card company world wide?

@Condor aliexpress supports iDeal and doesnt have to do that trickery for dutch people.

@Codex404 the more you know! :D

@electrineer It depends. I think that when the length of the card ID number matches, you can use them and then just put 000 at CVV.. but Belgian cards aren't supported because the length differs. I recall that using my debit card in credit card fields did work in some places long ago though. Perhaps it's just a crappy hardcoded number count that for some reason is often used at the front-end (which is yet another reason why external payment processors should be used).. but not sure.

@Condor Im a bit curious about what external payment options you prefer.

I'm a bit back and forth on the direct bank payments and using a credit card.

@BigBoo I don't run a store, so I have no idea. All I know is that payment method incompatibility generates lost sales and that critical stuff such as servers and financial transactions shouldn't be done in-house. And I think that it's safe to assume that external payment processors in general will do a better job at supporting a variety of payment methods.

As for the payment options that I prefer as a customer, bank transfer or cryptocurrency (mainly Ethereum).

@Condor I see. I was a bit curious if there were different payment alternatives that you had used as a customer which you preferred to others.

I.e. if there was an option that you knew supported your bank or something.

@BigBoo that would be bancontact for him since every bank in belgium supports it. And one payment provider can build in both ideal and bancontact.

@Codex404 Why would you want to use bank account over iDEAL in Belgium though? I don't know what the difference is but I am very interested.

@BigBoo iDEAL is a product of dutch banks and Bancontact of belgium banks.
Dont know how bancontact exactly works, but theys erve the same purpose and can be added together if the EU would do something for it.

@BigBoo Just checked on my card and apparently it supports Maestro as well. Perhaps that's why those few credit card purchases from long ago completed successfully.. and perhaps that means that most front-end devs these days just hardcode the digit count in for their leety card verification :')

As for why you'd want bank transfer over iDEAL in Belgium: I don't think that Bancontact and iDEAL are compatible. Every country here in the EU has its own national standard that's been harmonized within the country, but they're probably incompatible with one another. That's where bank transfer comes into play. I think that even across banks in Belgium that's still the default transfer method. Like how payments to my account can take a few days of processing when both sender and recipient don't use the same bank.

Again, far from ideal and I think that it definitely needs to be harmonized and made cross-compatible to make things easier for online payment processors.. but currently the status quo is.. well, kinda backwards I guess. Standardization is needed, but I don't think that credit cards will ever penetrate very well in Europe.

@Condor I see. I thought you could prefer bank transfer over iDEAL internally for some reason.

But across country borders I totally get why you want to do bank transfers.

@BigBoo Come to think of it though, during that meeting in The Hague earlier I bought some stuff in an Albert Heijn there and also used my bank account.. I think that there were some issues initially but that at another counter it worked just fine. Perhaps an issue in that particular cash register... But I think that if I can make a purchase with Bancontact in the Netherlands, those could very well already be compatible.

@Condor the reason payments between banks is delayed is because they want to keep the money as long as possible and they dont run the service in the weekends because there will be less fraud detection people.

But the European bank is working on instant transactions.

@Condor thats bad luck because it happens to me also once in a while.

@Codex404 Hmm.. good point. Especially with those magnet strips (those are really backwards considering that everyone these days has a chip on their cards already :/) fraud detection is indeed something very important. Nice to hear that the EU is working on instant transactions though.. I always wondered why we haven't dealt with that already.

@Condor the magnetic strip cannot be use in the netherlands anymore.

@Condor When I traveled to Germany I never had any problems with paying with my bank card either. So I guess that's fine.

Do you use manual bank payments or some kind of direct bank payment when ordering things online?

@BigBoo both are options supplied by payment providers.

@Codex404 Alright. Thanks for your answers! 😀

@Codex404 Nice! My card still has one but perhaps demagnetizing could be possible at this point.. or even asking the bank to give me a new card without the strip. My current card is already quite old after all. I think that I got it somewhere in 2014.

@Condor new cards still get the strip for third world countries where its still used.

@BigBoo I mostly shop on AliExpress for electronics (pretty much the only thing that I shop online for) and there they just redirect me to my bank's payment portal. Then I can use my Digipass card reader to authorize the payment.

It troubles me that I'm the only one who spells it as Cheque or nobody gives a fuck about the spelling 🙁

@achintyakumar thanks. They didn't just colonize India, they gave us shitty English spellings 😒