I haven’t seen this forum so frisky in a long time! I thought PayPal would be boring. 
Though I am learning about a lot of new payment networks. So many companies with their hands in our wallets…
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I would like to add that it is not just about cards. People here are doing internet payments directly from their banking accounts. You don’t need a “card” for that not even from your bank.
If you pay someone through giropay for example you don’t enter a card number or something. Instead -if I recall correctly- during checkout you get transferred to your regular online banking from where you send the amount. The seller gets a confirmation that the amount has been successfully sent. No account details get exchanged.
This is an entirely different approach than a credit card and passing the account details to the seller.
But we also have direct debit a lot. This is where you pass your account number (often when it is about recurring payments) to the seller and give them permission to debit your account. With that they can fetch the amounts required directy from your account.
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Super helpful. I’ve added this info to the list as well.
Learning so much about regional payment systems today!
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If you are using Storj tokens it should be fine unless you anticipate a change we need to address
That is exactly what I am attempting to do, gather the relevant information from the regions represented by our community to begin to address all this.
I won’t go on and on about PayPal because this is not strictly a personal account for me but trust me when I say that fraudulent charge backs are a huge issue for small merchants. Perhaps larger companies like DigitalOcean can deduct the losses somehow in their tax processes but its a documented disaster for small businesses.
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Google says Giropay is a German based company available via Stripe.
I hesitate to make blind guesses but if a company already has Stripe perhaps its less of a barrier?
Maybe its regionally available to Stripe customers?
We will ask and see what the answers is.
Can Storj partner and integrate somebody that is accepting a wide variety of payment methods and is basically converting fiat to tokens instantly? That way we we would be able to use anything to pay in fiat and would be sending tokens directly to our Storj accounts. Of course with additional fees the provider would take.
That is a good question.
I don’t know the answer, but I just sent all this over internally and we will see what they say.
We may not get an answer until after the weekend, so please keep adding your regional issues to this thread and we will add them to the list of questions.
That’s great.
But it is also a matter of what type of customers Storj is looking for.
Like what @BrightSilence has said. Larger companies may have company credit cards while smaller ones might not and might prefer to pay with something else. And the public sector may have totally different ideas how to pay.
And I do believe there are regional differences by country. What I don’t know is if or to what extent they actually prevent Storj to attract new customers.
Please check here: https://stripe.com/en-de/payments/payment-methods, scroll down a bit and click on “Show all payment methods”. Then as I understand it you can see all methods available through stripe. Giropay is only one of many. So if all of these are already available through the payment provider Storj is already using, this is what makes me wonder why Storj is insisting so much on credit cards and STORJ token only. I don’t know. I am just wondering.
Yes I saw the link to payment methods via Stripe, but I am not privy to details about the type of Stripe account the company has.
We will know more when we get some internal eyes on this thread.
I’m certain there are reasons for things being the way they are now, I just don’t have those reasons to give you yet.
That said this is all super valuable information.
Personally I’m learning a lot from this thread and I know it will be useful information for the company as well. It’s fantastic how the Community speaks up and brings these issues to light in specific concrete ways that can lead to important conversations.
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Exactly.
A great “WHY?”, can overcome ANY “how?”.
Imho, STORJ inc. should focus on making benefits better and better for the WHY to be irresistible to pay in STORJ token (its also win-win
-for customers coz its 10% cheaper!
-for eco system of SNOs, who keeps some tokens)
Here is a video about giropay:
It is from 2 years ago and I cannot guarantee accuracy or if giropay would be a good option for Storj. But it gives a bit of an idea what it is all about and how it works.
Thank you. This is so interesting. The more I learn about international payment services from you all, the more it seems like a miracle that all these systems somehow work together in cross boarder payments.
There’s a joke in there somewhere about “bitcoin fixes this”
I’ve added Giropay to the list I sent over from this thread so now we wait for the official answers
Yes, but this requires a contract with the bank and these payments can always be refuted and reverted. If the company misuses them, they lose their license to perform these kinds of transactions. It works quite well for recurring payments. Though it’s a bit outdated. I believe the plan is for Wero to cover this usecase as well. The upside is that with all of these solutions, there is just you, your bank and the party that needs to be paid involved. No other payment providers or companies taking a cut of the transaction.
For a list of which redirect debit systems stripe supports you can look here.
These all work similarly to Giropay, though unfortunately most don’t support subscriptions. You can see why iDeal has been chosen for wider European rollout as it checks all the boxes. (At least the ones listed here.)
For the ones like Giropay, that don’t support recurring payments, you would have to consider letting customers use it to store a balance on their account. Not sure if you want to do that, but it is an option. But perhaps you could enable a few of these already by just flipping some settings in your Stripe integration. Worth looking into.
Definitely worth looking into.
This is all far beyond what I have access to however all the info, suggestions and questions are forwarded to the Billing Team and we will know more when they get back to us.
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“Chargebacks not supported”. That’s not very consumer friendly. I understand how it’s extremely merchant-friendly though.
The video is also conflating authentication, authorization, and payments. And credit cards are for some reason vilified repeatedly, painted like some boogie man. You can have the same authentication with credit cards, nothing prevents that. The fact that account is credit vs debit makes zero difference.
In fact, payment systems like ApplePay already integrate user authentication, authorization and payments, along with end-to-end encryption and zero knowledge, without taking away ability to chargeback from the customer.
And rhetorical question to close: Why would anyone willingly choose payment system that does not allow chargebacks?
(On topic of PayPal – I agree, its dispute process is random and unfair.)
Absolutely, this is all rolled in into the cost of goods and services. Prices are already inflated. So now the choice is – use credit cards, get some of it back in the form of rewards and benefits, or not, and pay inflated prices for nothing.
Sure. I’m not sure I agree – but this won’t matter. Prices are already inflated.
I actually prefer the perks. Like ability to chargeback and other buyer protections those companies offer. This boosts economy. It’s overall net benefit.
Never had either of issues honestly, so can’t assess how frequent they are. Essentially, using credit card as a charge card is the only sane way to do it.
I started to vaguely remember this being the case in my home country. Bottomless bank accounts, with variety of credit line options attached to them.
It’s painfully obvious now.
In US fees to process debit cards are lower than credit cards. Merchants prefer debit cards. Some merchants offer discount for cash payments. But credit card companies want their customers to use credit cards of course. So they give them perks to incentivize their use. Fraud protection is one such perk. And it works. People gladly pay few percent more in exchange of all those benefits. Those who don’t need them can pay cash or debit in some places and get a small discount.
Well yes, it has less capabilities and therefore attack surface is smaller.
This also conflates payment processing and type of an account. Those are not the same.
Does it allow chargebacks? If not, I would not want to use it. I’d rather pay more in transaction fees but be protected from fraud.
At some point you have to trust something. Be that PayPal, or your bank, or whoever implements iDeal, because every system is compomisable, however safe a design could be.
Even with iDeal and redirect to a bank, I can see how social engineering and poisoned DNS can easily siphon some money away to third party account. Nothing is absolutely secure.
Then the question becomes who is liable.
You are saying the is broken in terms of payment systems – but I disagree. Not every problem requires or benefits from technical solution. The risk management is often enough. I maybe pay 1% extra for everything but in return have zero liability. I vastly prefer this to jumping through hoops authenticating every transaction and being extra vigilant all the time.
This is the problem right here. It does not prevent it. Fraud is impossible to prevent. It makes one of the attack vectors less fruitful, yes. It also opens new attack vectors. And guess what – if fraudsters can’t attack a system – they will attack a user, through social engineering. I’m not sure what’s worse.
Instead, the solution to fraud is not more technical measures; but insurance. You account for some fraud inevitably happening in the system, definitely continue work to combat it, but since it can’t be completely eliminated – cover users with a sort of insurance policy. It’s user friendly, and simple.
Bingo. This has nothing do to with credit cards. For example, payment networks like ApplePay and GooglePay already implement authorization, authentication, and end-to-end zero knowledge payments. They works just fine. Regardless of whether you use debit or credit account.
Yes. There is third part – insurance.
You need all three:
- Robust authentication to reduce fraud
- Detection for remaining fraud
- Insurance to reimburse victims.
The perfection is achieved by this third bit.
It’s not solvable. It’s impossible to eliminate all fraud, no matter what technical solutions you will concoct.
I have no idea why people use this service. There is no reason for it to exist. Every single credit card already provides everything this service claims to do. I guess it’s useful for debit card users, that don’t have protections that credit accounts offer.
I agree on this one. There is ApplePay and Google pay that fixes it, until global solution exists.
Correct. Same here. Most are contactless payments, which are challenge-response based, and not skimmable.
This is all good for in-person payments.
For card-not-present transactions over the internet you need some sort of robust authentication and zero knowledge payments. iDeal is one way to do it. IT reduces fraud, but does not eliminate it.
Providing users with the policy based solution on the other hand – eliminates the impact of fraud on the user. And if so – why bother rolling out technical solutions, when you can solve it on the policy level? Furthermore, automated fraud detections is getting better every day, so this would be even less of a problem going forward.
I think iDeal is a bit late to the party.
It looks like Storj is listening:
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Do you know when ApplePay started in Germany? 2018
Do you know when Giropay started? In 2006.
I am not saying Giropay is the best payment system but everyone has different tastes. What they do is they connect buyer and seller without the need to reveal your account details like you would have to do otherwise. But what is most important it let you use what you have (your bank account, no additional card needed) to pay on the internet. Only your bank is involved, no 3rd party.
Yes, there are no chargebacks available. It’s on the bank to offer a buyer protection, like for example the bank “Sparkasse” does when you pay with Giropay. Otherwise you have to contact the seller directly and go the official way.