Why was Click N Buy Added again

[Juri_Licious]

I'm a noob, and i'd like to know.

[Reiterpallasch]

Because instead of paying SE directly, they thought it would be better to use real money to pay a 3rd party to buy fake currency to pay SE.

[Zatias]

To kick all the non-Japanese off the game.

SE are racists!

[Runespider]

I guess they just picked it cause they gave them the best deal, was done as quickly and with as little thought as possible. They made sure to give JP playerbase the best options they could of course. When FFXIV was getting a bad reception they blamed the western players for it which showed how they felt about non-jp players as a company. Maybe these horrible payment options are kind of a punishment for what they see as western players ruining the rep of FFXIV.

[Xellith]

Maybe these horrible payment options are kind of a punishment for what they see as western players ruining the rep of FFXIV.

FFXIV ruined the reputation of FFXIV

[Rosina]

the REAL reason, is they are phasing out playonline. This means they are getting rid of the use of it. Playonline will only be used as a launcher by september. SE choose C&B through a corprate decision. Playonline was a third party way for the non japanese to pay for ffxiv. Since japanese use different currency we really can not pay them directly due to the exchange rate, and possibly large fees to switch our currency into theirs. This is why japanese can pay SE directly. And in be for you name companies like blizzard, most mmo are seperated by region. And We pay the division of said company. Like european players pay blizzards european division ect. What you guys should understand, is SE did not forsee that we the players would have issues. Our issues are out of the hands of SE and it is the issue of your bank or credit union or credit card company verses click and buy. As well as click and buy verses your region. SE did inform the community reps that they are looking into better options.

[noodles355]

SE said they used click and buy because they wanted an external company with higher security to hold our financial infomation as it's more secure.

The real reason they want another company to hold our financial infomation is because they don't want to be held responsible if it's hacked and our financial infomation is taken.

Blame PSN.

[Rosina]

SE said they used click and buy because they wanted an external company with higher security to hold our financial infomation as it's more secure.

The real reason they want another company to hold our financial infomation is because they don't want to be held responsible if it's hacked and our financial infomation is taken.

Blame PSN.

Once the transfer is done our POL friendlist will be removed.

[Nianny]

I'm a bit confused with the friend list thing... they're actually removing the friend list? ; ;

[Aver]

It's just friends list plus, from what I've surmised.

Se's usual vague wording is vague.

[Nianny]

It's just friends list plus, from what I've surmised.

Se's usual vague wording is vague.

I hope you're right as in my opinion removing the friend list would be nonsense. Thank you. :)

[Tamoa]

Since japanese use different currency we really can not pay them directly due to the exchange rate, and possibly large fees to switch our currency into theirs. This is why japanese can pay SE directly. And in be for you name companies like blizzard, most mmo are seperated by region. And We pay the division of said company. Like european players pay blizzards european division ect. What you guys should understand, is SE did not forsee that we the players would have issues. Our issues are out of the hands of SE and it is the issue of your bank or credit union or credit card company verses click and buy. As well as click and buy verses your region. SE did inform the community reps that they are looking into better options.

SE have stated on this very forum that they chose to have payments done through a 3rd party for security reasons. They never once said anything about different currencies being a problem.

And if it really is matter of security - I guess that doesn't apply if you live in Japan then, since they can pay SE directly. Heck, they could charge us a fixed fee in yen then, or at least give us that option, and let the bank/CC company do the maths. I have no clue about rate of exchange from yen to my currency, but at this rate it sounds like a valid option to me. -.-

[Khiinroye]

the REAL reason, is they are phasing out playonline. This means they are getting rid of the use of it. Playonline will only be used as a launcher by september. SE choose C&B through a corprate decision. Playonline was a third party way for the non japanese to pay for ffxiv. Since japanese use different currency we really can not pay them directly due to the exchange rate, and possibly large fees to switch our currency into theirs. This is why japanese can pay SE directly. And in be for you name companies like blizzard, most mmo are seperated by region. And We pay the division of said company. Like european players pay blizzards european division ect. What you guys should understand, is SE did not forsee that we the players would have issues. Our issues are out of the hands of SE and it is the issue of your bank or credit union or credit card company verses click and buy. As well as click and buy verses your region. SE did inform the community reps that they are looking into better options.

SE had us paying divisions of the company too, so I don't see what your point is with that. Click and Buy also has regional divisions, but I don't know what they are doing--perhaps they're using their UK division to charge North American clients instead of using their North American division.

Anyways, I doubt SE is converting all the income to the yen anyways. International companies have expenses and employees throughout the globe, so it is advantageous to them to keep accounts with several different types of currency, in particular their nation's currency, the US dollar, and the Euro. By not changing these currencies, the company is able to use those to pay international expenses and employees without having to convert the money back to whichever type they need, which would incur a second currency exchange fee.

Also, Noodles and Tamoa already responded with SE's claim for the reason for the change. The reason doesn't make sense because SE is still keeping the Japanese direct payment with a credit card (No 3rd party) option.



Once the transfer is done our POL friendlist will be removed.

Incorrect. Friendlist plus (using friend list while online, but not logged into POL viewer / FFXI) is being phased out. The friend list feature will still remain in game. The reps answered a question about this somewhere, but it it buried in old threads.

[Octaviane]

Once the transfer is done our POL friendlist will be removed.

FOR THE LAST TIME! NO IT WILL NOT! Just the advanced or w/e it's called. You have been corrected about this before.

[Tamoa]

Anyways, I doubt SE is converting all the income to the yen anyways. International companies have expenses and employees throughout the globe, so it is advantageous to them to keep accounts with several different types of currency, in particular their nation's currency, the US dollar, and the Euro. By not changing these currencies, the company is able to use those to pay international expenses and employees without having to convert the money back to whichever type they need, which would incur a second currency exchange fee.


This. I highly doubt that the monthly fee from each player no matter which country they live in, are all paid into one and the same bank account, that would make no sense whatsoever.

[Rosina]

that is what I read, sorry I didn't see the plus part.

[Rosina]

There is a fee for doing a currency change, and how yen is calculated is different then how euros are calculated which both are different from the us doller. What I was trying to explain, is our servers are not region locked.

We use international servers. Mmo with region locked servers are headed by the division the servers are under. Like Blizzards US servers control the US servers and US pays the US company. While Blizzard EU controlls the EU servers and EU pays the EU division. This means since SE is located in japan, they can take the payments from the japanese player base. Since they are local.
Playonline was a middle man, and prob converted our money from their own pocket. But since it is getting phased out and our accounts turning into SE accounts. They needed away for us to pay them. And picked what they could. We just gotta get used to it, or give them Ideas on a better way we can pay them. I would perfer time cards Like blizzard and Aion issue out.

[Neika]

Umm...playonline isn't a third party. Playonline was created/owned by Square Soft, now SE. And if they could take direct payment from other regions before, why can't they do it now?

[Alhanelem]

I'm a noob, and i'd like to know.
Lowest bidder. Same reason any company contracts with anybody.

[Selzak]

I believe mostly for an increase in SE's convenience at the expense of Western players' convenience, frankly.

Or, according to Rosina, "didnt' u kno that japanese dollers r diffrent from us dollers lol u idiots thats y u r all so stoopid!!"

[Tamoa]

There is a fee for doing a currency change, and how yen is calculated is different then how euros are calculated which both are different from the us doller. What I was trying to explain, is our servers are not region locked.

We use international servers. Mmo with region locked servers are headed by the division the servers are under. Like Blizzards US servers control the US servers and US pays the US company. While Blizzard EU controlls the EU servers and EU pays the EU division. This means since SE is located in japan, they can take the payments from the japanese player base. Since they are local.
Playonline was a middle man, and prob converted our money from their own pocket. But since it is getting phased out and our accounts turning into SE accounts. They needed away for us to pay them. And picked what they could. We just gotta get used to it, or give them Ideas on a better way we can pay them. I would perfer time cards Like blizzard and Aion issue out.

You really have little to no idea what you are talking about.

[wildsprite]

I'm a bit confused with the friend list thing... they're actually removing the friend list? ; ;

not according to their information, they removed access to anything to do with billing within playonline and they closed friends list plus and access to billing information from the playonline website

[RAIST]

USD is an established standard for international commerce. There was a movement to try to make it the Euro at one time, but I think it died out. Go to most currency rate trackers, and the tables are often calculated against 1USD. So it would make since for international companies to keep USD and Euro accounts on hand for ease of operations. Assets are appraised for their value in whatever currency you request for the appraisal--but you may need to have a currency more readily acceptible for buying/selling just to avoid complications in the process.

That being said, companies do in fact keep accounts in regional currencies also to facilitate trade with locals in that region. Could you see SE, CA goint to Office Depot to get supplies in a foreign currency? I don't think so.

Also, they have contracts with regional credit card processors for the their online store. Surprise--it goes through the same division that my FFXI fees went through for years. So these agreements are still in place, and should still be available to use--just for some reason, SE has chosen not to use it. Either because the way they want to bill created some technical or regulatory SNAFU they either couldn't/wouldn't address for some reason, or maybe it was indeed a simple cost analysis. Who knows... simple facts remain: pieces to the puzzle are in place to accomplish directpay via CC as they have always done, but for some unknown reason, SE has CHOSEN not to do what would be required to continue to do so.

[Chamaan]

Seems to me it's this: It's because they want to consolidate the accounts for players that pay for XI and XIV both, since they originally planned to have a bundle deal where you got charged an even 20 bucks for subscribing to both before XIV went into free-to-play-Beta limbo. They need both billings to be in the same system so they're not trying to marry two billing systems together. And they think it's easier to make XI switch to what they planned for XIV than to give XIV PoL.

Which is fairly stupid if you I'm right, because the whole purpose of PoL was that they wanted to branch out into a bunch of online games, starting with Tetra and XI. Why not just revamp PoL to not suck and let us connect to XIV through that? Only complaint with PoL I have right now besides random crashes (which could be fixed) is that it's a whole extra hoop to jump through just to get at one game. They already had a billing infrastructure put together, should've just stuck with it.

[RAIST]

That might hold water except for the simple fact that they set up the same POL billing option for the JP with-in the SEID biling system. If it is integrated into the SEID account management for FFXI, it can also be integrated for use with FFXIV. So, that negates the notion they are trying to pull FFXIV/FFXI into the same billing system options if they are going to single out one option like this for just one region of players.

In short. that is where it all breaks down, regardless. They have tipped the scales of equality by taking the extra steps required to extend this established method to just one region of players.

[Sp1cyryan]

the REAL reason, is they are phasing out playonline. This means they are getting rid of the use of it. Playonline will only be used as a launcher by september. SE choose C&B through a corprate decision. Playonline was a third party way for the non japanese to pay for ffxiv. Since japanese use different currency we really can not pay them directly due to the exchange rate, and possibly large fees to switch our currency into theirs. This is why japanese can pay SE directly. And in be for you name companies like blizzard, most mmo are seperated by region. And We pay the division of said company. Like european players pay blizzards european division ect. What you guys should understand, is SE did not forsee that we the players would have issues. Our issues are out of the hands of SE and it is the issue of your bank or credit union or credit card company verses click and buy. As well as click and buy verses your region. SE did inform the community reps that they are looking into better options.

Rosina works for corporate SE, they know these things. SE did not think we have a problem guys, see we never have problems with any new SE implementation so how could they have forseen problems, inconvenience, outrage, and so on?!?

On a more serious note the best one I have heard so far that I like is that as with other companies, they are outsourcing their billing to cut down on transaction fees and headache.


SE did inform the community reps that they are looking into better options.

This would better be known as a PR stunt.

[noodles355]

I wasn't being synical or sarcastic in my last post. Saying "We want a 3rd party to deal with it as they have better security" directly translates to "If it gets hacked, we don't want to be the ones responsible". That's all this is, SE is trying to cover their asses incase our financial infomation gets hacked. It's not currancy or exchange rates. It's just they don't want to be held responsible.

The argument that should be brought to SE's attention now is their choice of a 3rd party. I find it ironic they want to use a company blacklisted by many banks to improve our financial security.

[Tamoa]

I wasn't being synical or sarcastic in my last post. Saying "We want a 3rd party to deal with it as they have better security" directly translates to "If it gets hacked, we don't want to be the ones responsible". That's all this is, SE is trying to cover their asses incase our financial infomation gets hacked. It's not currancy or exchange rates. It's just they don't want to be held responsible.

The argument that should be brought to SE's attention now is their choice of a 3rd party. I find it ironic they want to use a company blacklisted by many banks to improve our financial security.

It still doesn't explain why Japanese players can pay SE directly though. ; ;

[Sp1cyryan]

It still doesn't explain why Japanese players can pay SE directly though. ; ;

Until we morph into dollar bills that SE can spend on things, SE does not care about us other than keeping us interested in paying.

[Atomic_Skull]

Lowest bidder. Same reason any company contracts with anybody.

Unfortunately like many companies SE has forgotten that when a contractor makes an unrealistically low bid they are lying about being able to do it for that much.

[RAIST]

I wasn't being synical or sarcastic in my last post. Saying "We want a 3rd party to deal with it as they have better security" directly translates to "If it gets hacked, we don't want to be the ones responsible". That's all this is, SE is trying to cover their asses incase our financial infomation gets hacked. It's not currancy or exchange rates. It's just they don't want to be held responsible.

The argument that should be brought to SE's attention now is their choice of a 3rd party. I find it ironic they want to use a company blacklisted by many banks to improve our financial security.

That all breaks down as a valid reason though when you save the CC info from one specific region to allow them to still pay driectly with a credit card. As I stated in another post, server security is not a regionally specific thing. Firewalls and encrypted communication are the same regardless of the region--it is a HARDWARE issue that is universal. 3DES encrytpion works the same from my bedroom as it does from my bank, a laptop in the UK, or a server rrom in Japan.

Security wasn't the issue... maybe the COST or DIFFICULTY for supplying that security to everyone elses information, but just security itself was not the issue, as they've seen fit to use their Firewalls and encryption to store, protect, and process JP credit cards.

[noodles355]

They probably had some bullshit notion about japanese less likely to get hacked or something.
I still find it ironic they want us to use a company blacklisted by lots of big name banks to increase our security.

[Puck]

They seriously need a rate-down feature on this forum so when a certain idiot posts the same false information a million times, we can rate them down so that people that are new to the forum aren't exposed to their inane BS.

[Maacha]

japanese less likely to get hacked or something.

It's more likely that less JP people are using the restore process after being "hacked" to duplicate gear/gil than US/EU people are. I hear about people being "hacked" all the time, where they actually had a friend "steal" their stuff so they can get it restored, effectively doubling their loot.

[Zumi]

This has nothing to do with PSN getting hacked. This payment system SE has with Clickandbuy, UltimatePay and Crysta was long in place for FFXIV. Wasn't much of a surprise that they now using the same system for FFXI.

[Sortis]

ClickandBuy has the lowest Rating possible at the Better Business Bureau, why would they have someone with a HORRIBLE reputation handle the money of their loyal subscribers, do they even care?!

[tifia]

ClickandBuy has the lowest Rating possible at the Better Business Bureau, why would they have someone with a HORRIBLE reputation handle the money of their loyal subscribers, do they even care?!

More then likely when the bid when out, ClickandBuy offered the lowest amount to SE. So they went with them. It's always about money. Still urging those that are saying "I'm not going to ClickandBuy or Crysta" next month to actually follow-through with this! If enough of us say no and no longer play, they have to listen because we'll be cutting into their profits. No company wants to see that.

[Rizon]

the REAL reason, is they are phasing out playonline. This means they are getting rid of the use of it. Playonline will only be used as a launcher by september. SE choose C&B through a corprate decision. Playonline was a third party way for the non japanese to pay for ffxiv. Since japanese use different currency we really can not pay them directly due to the exchange rate, and possibly large fees to switch our currency into theirs. This is why japanese can pay SE directly. And in be for you name companies like blizzard, most mmo are seperated by region. And We pay the division of said company. Like european players pay blizzards european division ect. What you guys should understand, is SE did not forsee that we the players would have issues. Our issues are out of the hands of SE and it is the issue of your bank or credit union or credit card company verses click and buy. As well as click and buy verses your region. SE did inform the community reps that they are looking into better options.


There is a fee for doing a currency change, and how yen is calculated is different then how euros are calculated which both are different from the us doller. What I was trying to explain, is our servers are not region locked.

We use international servers. Mmo with region locked servers are headed by the division the servers are under. Like Blizzards US servers control the US servers and US pays the US company. While Blizzard EU controlls the EU servers and EU pays the EU division. This means since SE is located in japan, they can take the payments from the japanese player base. Since they are local.
Playonline was a middle man, and prob converted our money from their own pocket. But since it is getting phased out and our accounts turning into SE accounts. They needed away for us to pay them. And picked what they could. We just gotta get used to it, or give them Ideas on a better way we can pay them. I would perfer time cards Like blizzard and Aion issue out.

You are spot on with most of your observations though I must disagree with a couple of points.

1. SE could have forseen the problems they are having with player concern about C&B. Most of the issues we are reading here were 1st aired with the launch of FFXIV. Because FFXIV has been on an extended trial basis since launch concerns about C&B died until it was added to FFXI. As such the responsibility for this remains in SEs hands and not with the CC issuers.

2. C&B was the only CC option made available for FFXIV so therefore they did not "pick what they could". This is a move by SE to consolidate billing for both games under a single format. SE could have avoided most of these problems if they had done proper due diligence when researching C&B.

SE also bears responsibility for the current state of unrest within the player community because of the misleading and vague information presented to us with the initial information post concerning the changeover. We were lead to believe that direct payment would be available if we had 3D or VbV cards when this was not true. Also if SE had properly explained that we did not need a C&B account for CC billing the number of frustrated people would be a fraction of what they are now.

Hmm wonder if the previous comments will get me a permanent disclaimer attached like Raist seems to have.

[Niyariko]

More then likely when the bid when out, ClickandBuy offered the lowest amount to SE. So they went with them. It's always about money. Still urging those that are saying "I'm not going to ClickandBuy or Crysta" next month to actually follow-through with this! If enough of us say no and no longer play, they have to listen because we'll be cutting into their profits. No company wants to see that.

The notion of "it's always about money." its kinna stupid, why do they hire experienced programers to develop their games, while they can just hire some high-school-part-time students to do the work for cheap! Cause part time students can not do the job like the experienced can.

SE can save a few bucks by switching to CnB, but they didn't know that CnB are just high-school-part-time students.