[Dev] Go Live Billing Options

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Originally Posted by MajestacaL

I went to walmart and bought a $20 ultimate game card, scratched the back of the card and redeemed the code under my se account was as simply as that. I didn't have to signup with click n buy or anything thought it was a really simple solution. Now I did all of this when the game was first released and I still have the 2000 cysta still sitting in my account.

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You still have to use a third party though.

Also, in my experience, PayPal isn't much better.

Pay has the ability and has used the ability to put a hold on your bank account (if you link it) over payment disputes. They also have the ability to arbitrarily resolve those disputes by taking money out of your account. There are other options that, while no more legal, are definitely more service friendly and have better business practices. Still, pay-pal at least is relatively trustworthy.

Click and Buy is like Fort Knox guys. Chill the f-ck out.

I don't understand what the Sony hack has to do with Click & Buy in fact you could make an argument that the entire fiasco with game companies being hacked is directly related to them using their own payment/account systems that have less protection than professional companies like click & buy.

Click & Buy is such a hassle specifically because of its protections, protections for both users and the companies so that people can't issue charge backs (which was a serious problem especially among RMT in FFXI and in most MMORPG's).

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Originally Posted by Atoli

I don't really get people complaining about buying a "useless currency"(Crysta), because it's not useless if you can use it to pay your FFXIV account with?

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You can't pay for an entire number of months with Crysta.

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Originally Posted by Carver

You would think with this many posts about the payment options that Square Enix would pull their heads out of the sand and actually reply or address this issue in some way.

Do they seriously think people will cave and risk their credit card info with Click and Buy? (I put my CC info into that site and i was unable to remove it) Since Click and Buy wouldn't let me delete my CC info, i canceled my card and got a new one(specifically asked for a different number, which my bank graciously gave me).

I've been a Square fan since the days of Final Fantasy for the NES. My faith as a fan is definitely not as strong as it used to be.

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With 2 topics on the issue both having over 60 posts nah why respond people don't care enough about it and SE and the Devs would probably rather wait until they go live to address the fact that everyone just quit because they refuse to use click and buy.

SE decisions are just driving away more and more of the playerbase rather then looking at the issue and developing or at least acknowledging that Click and Buy is a major issue.

Honestly idk what it is maybe with the hackings SE is afraid to take direct billing info idk.

[QUOTE=Misha;240423]Just buy Crysta through pay pal (Have a extra few K from going through them when game was released, so will have some free time when game goes P2P^^)... or do you guys not trust Paypal too? o.O LoL ... either way it beats Playonline by far! QUOTE]


Issue is not that people don’t trust Paypal and I don’t care if I have extra Crysta, the issue is not everyone has access to buying Crysta. In some countries their only option is Click & Buy and some countries don't even have any payment options at all.

The Billing System over all is a total mess.

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Originally Posted by Cidolphus

Click and Buy is like Fort Knox guys. Chill the f-ck out.

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Click and buy is very shady and many European banks have told people not to use it due to that fact. Also as someone said a few posts up:

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Originally Posted by Eunys

C&B is under review by two banks in the US, and has a F rating with the BBB. SE thinks we should use it for payment. I'll pass.

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This conversation is also going on over at:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Payment-System

Many have said they had issues with C&B, or don’t have any payment options at all once the game goes P2P.

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Originally Posted by Elkwood

With the sheer size of SE why can they not accept a CC or Debit Card directly, why the need to go through a 3rd party to accept a CC/Debit Card? Can SE Not afford the $0.35 per transaction fee that Visa or MasterCard would charge just to have the service? I find this hard to believe considering most companies can easily do this especially one of SE size and magnitude, using Verisign to verify all is ok.

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I haven't read through all of the responses, so this may have already been addressed.

As a software engineer who works on a web application with a billing component to it, I feel I can shed some insight into this issue. The process for handling a credit card transaction is more complicated and involved than simply "paying the service fee" associated with running a charge against a card. There are verification and security issues to be addressed, in addition to having to support multiple different credit cards, currency exchange (particularly in international markets, as SE is), etc. this is why most companies do not perform the actual processing of a credit card directly but rather they rely on what are called a payment gateways--which more often than not tend to be financial institutions or companies with ties to a financial institutions.

Click and Buy, like PayPal have the financial infrastructure to process, charge, and credit various debit and credit cards. Click and Buy is an international organization supporting different currencies for payment and processing.

The odd thing that we see with SE and FFXIV is that they expose Click and Buy to the customer, something most companies don't do. Most companies interface with their payment processing partner and have a front-end that makes the process of paying for goods and services appear seamless and well integrated with the company offering said goods and services. For SE, this would have (should have?) been a web interface that integrated their payment services (e.g. Click and Buy) seamlessly so that the consumer (us) would never know what company was responsible for actually handling and processing all of the credit card transactions, unless we read the fine print.

Plain and simple SE isn't really doing anything different from a better majority of service and retail vendors out there, they just haven't obfuscated the process as much as others have.

Edit: I'm not going to get into the reputation of Click and Buy, others have already addressed that, I have my own opinions of SE's choice of payment gateway service, but that isn't relative to the part of the question you asked which was "why can't SE process the payments directly."

Short and Sweet.

Billing now is terrible mistake. The idea isn't to start billing so it APPEARS as if FFXIV is good, but to start billing when FFXIV is ACTUALLY good.

Meaning 1.20 at the earliest or the PS3 Release +30days.

KaiKatzchen, you shouldn't waste time to reply to a child like Cidolphus. His mom, and dad pay for his things. He has no clue how bad it can be to put your money into a company with a bad reputation and proven shady billing practices.