Payment Options

[Firespirit]

Hi,

I'm considering payment options for my game and have to questions I was hoping someone could help with.

a) Would it be stupid to implement payment directly on my own website through a credit card solution provider, or should I go through something like Plimus?

The first option seems more professional and flexible, but I might be wrong?

b) I'm surveying credit card solution providers, and was wondering which cards should be supported.

I think it might differ a lot from country to country - here in Denmark for instance we have a national 'Dankort' ('Dancard') which almost everyone have, and most others have Visa or MasterCard.

But what about other countries?

I have found a provider that supports Visa, Diners, MasterCard, Visa Electron and JCB. Does anyone have any idea how many % this covers. Notice that it doesn't support American Express for instance.

Thanks for your help.

[Game Producer]

One (old) thread (with bit old data & missing links...)
http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=1928

Another comparison:
http://www.blackcatsystems.com/regservices/

Most developers on these forums seem to favor ecommerce providers, such as these:
- BMT micro
- Plimus
- Esellerate
- share it
...etc.

[GnadeGames]

I would definitely advise using 1 or 2 ecommerce solutions providers. They are very flexible and their fee is worth the ease and security.

[Sune]

I wouldn't recommend handling creditcard payment yourself. Partly because it will be an accounting nightmare to handle if you aren't all that into bookkeeping. But the main reason is VAT (called "moms" in Denmark). When selling electronically distributed software to EU citizens, you have to collect VAT. What VAT rate you should use depends on where you are selling from. If you are selling from an EU country, you have to collect the rate of your own country from all EU customers. Being from Denmark that would mean 25% which is the highest possible afaik. That wouldn't be very good for your price. If you are selling from a non-EU country, you have to collect the rate of the individual costumers country, and pay the VAT to that country.

We use Plimus for all our sales. This means that Plimus is the one actually selling to the costumer, and since they are based in the US they only charge the VAT of the costumers country. Since we are from Denmark, this cuts the price for all other EU costumers with VAT lower than 25%. We also save a lot of bookkeeping, because all we have to write is the amount we receive from Plimus once a month.

Of course Plimus takes 10% of your income, but I doubt you can do it cheaper yourself at the moment. You will have to have very good sales before it will pay off to handle it yourself. The only problem is if you intend to do direct marketing towards Danes, because they don't support dankort, but only visa/dankort. We looked at getting our own dankort solution, but it was simply too much trouble and too expensive for what we expected to gain from it.

[Firespirit]

Hi Sune and others,

Thanks for the feedback - there are some very good points there.

Also I can see a lot of issues with refunds, rebates, etc. for a custom solution - so I think I have my answer

[gamedujour]

Another thing to consider: payment processing companies such as RegNow, Plimus and BMTMicro also typically offer an affiliate program allowing others to redistribute your games.

[Techdojo]

I'm curious about this - my first title is very close to completion and I'm starting to think quite seriously about how best to leverage my IP.

Do I a) go the portal route and take a low percentage and the risk of my game dropping off the front page in a couple of weeks

or b) host it myself and promote my own website,

I'm considering a mix of both, but as for my own hosting - what about payment solutions...

My first thought was to install a paypal checkout system and use them - but I've heard a lot of bad things recently about paypal freezing accounts and having other shoddy unregulated business practices, next there are other payment processors like Plimus or SWReg, are these any better - would I get a greater percentage of the sale cost - how do I get my money?

From what I can tell - Plimus would charge a fee for use of a merchant account (can't argue with that) but would then pay me via Paypal (as I'm in the UK and they're not) which means I get hit with a second set of fees as Paypal take their cut. Although Plimus make a point of saying that they "buy" the product from me and act as a reseller so I don't have to worry about VAT issues depending on the customers home address - how does the VAT thing work anyway - do I have to charge that if I make a sale.

What about going down the "donation" route, if I "give" someone a code to unlock extra stuff or remove a nag screen as a thanks for "donating" is it still considered a sale?

If there are any small scale UK based developers out there who've been through this mess before and would like to share their experiences then please post here (or send me a PM or an email to jon@whitetreegames.com).

Thanks in advance...

Jon...

live the dream!

[DanFromFastSpring.com]

Don't leave us out here at FastSpring

[ionside]

Speaking of FastSpring, I have signed up with them. My product isn't ready to sell yet so can't comment on a lot. But I can say they've been very helpful with all questions I've asked.

[Obscure]

What about going down the "donation" route, if I "give" someone a code to unlock extra stuff or remove a nag screen as a thanks for "donating" is it still considered a sale?

Yes. The tax man doesn't care what you call it. They only care that you are generating money in return for a product or service and they will expect their share.

[Thomas@BMT]

You also might want to consider your currency options. Ideally you should accept payments in the 3 major currencies - USD, Euro and GBP.

I think all major processors do this but AfAIK I think we're the only provider that lets you set a base rate other than USD.

Thanks,
Thomas

[Jack Norton]

Thomas, I know you're the only one that lets keep 3 separate currency balances, and that's invaluable for an european dev like me who has prices in eur/gbp

Short Explanation:
Other vendors like plimus lets you put any currency too, but then they convert everything back to USD when they have to pay you. Which means on every sale you lose a good % with "bank conversion fees".
A simple random example: you set the price to 5 eur, the ending user who want to pay in USD see 9 usd, and you get into your pocket 8 usd. That 1 usd is lost in bank conversions, multiply it by thousands sales over a year and you see how much money you're throwing away if you can't keep separate account for each currency...