Can't buy Crysta

[Kingkie]

So i'm having this issue where I can't complete my Crysta purchase.
Back a few months ago I could pay with paypal fine, no problems.
But now if I want to buy Crysta, once I get sent to paypal it requires to add a credit card. 'Please add a credit card to complete your purchase.'
I have sufficient funds on my paypal balance and I even have my bank account linked to paypal, and it just still requires to add credit card.
How can I fix this? I don't have a credit card and I don't plan to.

[Kingkie]

BumpBumpBumpBump

[Kingkie]

So incase someone else also has this problem, i've contacted SE and they said:
'Unfortunately, due to recent changes, use of Paypal now requires that a backup credit card be attached to the Paypal account.
We can only suggest that you use an alternative form of payment under these circumstances. Your subscripiton can be paid for with a Game Time Card. Although it is possible that other payment options which are not currently available may be added at a later date, we do not have any further information on when or if this would happen.'

I hope they add other payment options soon like iDEAL.

[CodeCass]

Not sure if it would help your situation or not, but I've had similar problems in the past with purchasing Crysta. What I found easiest to do was to purchase a pre-paid Visa card from a gas station, Walmart, Toys-R-Us or any retailer for that matter, place my desired amount on that card, and then use said card to purchase Crysta from the site. It's a little bit of a hassle, but it works for me. It's more akin to using a gift card than an actual credit card.

Hope this helps even a little!

[idioch]

Yeah this is my one gripe right now as customers we shouldn't need to jump through hoops to get something it should be them (SE) making it more accessible for us. It's weird too because I can use paypal without a credit card attached to it to buy games off steam no issue. You can also buy game time cards off SE's main website without this restriction. (@CodeCass That's great and all but my paypal account is linked to my bank account, the whole point of doing that is so I don't need to go out and get something else.)

Look at The Secret World MMO, basicly the same exact set up for their shop, mainly cosmetic set up. You purchase a currency for it as well, and I've never had this issue that I seem to have with purchasing crysta. Now it's been a while since I've played that MMO so I'm not 100% sure if it's changed at all, but I would highly doubt it.

You know what though at the end of the day if SE is content in not making more money out of the player base so be it. I'll certainly not be complaining about spending less money on this game, it still sucks, especially when you can't do transfers/other account things as well as purchasing stuff in their shop. Oh well though.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest.../blog/1656716/

Last guy to post on there might be of interest, Paypal is very secure as it is, I wouldn't have bothered linking my bank account to it if it wasn't after all. Makes no sense from a business point.
That answers that though, don't think they have an interest in changing things. Again very strange that they don't have this limitation setup on their official SE site for buying game time cards, seems a little two faced to me.

[Raist]

Just curious... you say you were doing it through mogstation. When you go to add the Crysta, are you still in the Mogstation interface for the transaction, or does it kick you back to the older SE Account Management screens? The reason I ask is I always go in through the old SE AM system and click the big button to add Crysta (I do bulk dumps just a couple times a year) and it appeared to be basically the same as it has been for a long time now.

Just wondering if maybe their are two different interfaces available to use (Mogstation or SE AM) and one of them is still using a scripted process that won't call for the CC or not.

Edit:
Nevermind... just loaded it to have a look and noticed that PayPal is only in the Credit Card options list now. So, it actually makes sense if you pay attention. You are opting to process a credit card payment through PayPal...you aren't opting to pay with the available PayPal options. You no longer have the option to use PayPal as a standalone payment option now. PayPal is just an alternative for managing the CC processing versus the normal merchant they would use to directly handle a MC/Visa/AMEX/etc. card.

[idioch]

For any MMO I've played though Paypal has always been set up as the no credit card means of paying for a subscription though. It just seems very odd that SE would set it up like this, they're basicly restricting the money they gain. I know I would spend more money on this game hands down if Paypal was setup differently, between additional retainers to the Mogstation shop items. That said those are small things that don't really affect me playing and enjoying the game, so I don't really see it as a big loss, just seems like bad business to me. And the Mogstation has always redirected you to the SE AM system for crysta purchase, even back when Playspan options were around.

[Raist]

The previous no-credit card PayPal options were through PlaySpan's system and via a separate tab and set of scripts...guessing it was somewhat proprietary so SE just had to sign on to it back then and send a proper XML string for them to parse.

Never set up merchant services with PayPal, but with every other company I worked with, they basically sent you the scripts to paste into your existing shopping cart framework to process the cards (provided you were using common servlets like Tomcat, IIS, etc.). SE may have simply just taken the "easy" way out with their CC option...just another copy/paste into the existing script to add it. To make the paypal processing cover all payment options it may have to be along the lines of the old ebay deal where you had to have them request payment from you and then you logged in to pay an invoice or release payment...otherwise they may have to build a whole new portion of their shopping cart from the ground up to have more automation for it.

Who knows... but it is likely much more complex than just adding them as another clearing house in addition to Global Collect.

[idioch]

Okay that's slightly weird Disclaimer thing there. I personally don't think it'd be that challenging to do, considering MMO's like Dofus/Wakfu. The Secret World, Aion, SWTOR, possibly WoW (never played it), have it set up this way with paypal. I have a feeling it's more of a personal preference on their part at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if I went wandering MMO sites and find they too have a no credit card paypal setup. Did you actually right up that disclaimer bit??

[Raist]

Okay that's slightly weird Disclaimer thing there. I personally don't think it'd be that challenging to do, considering MMO's like Dofus/Wakfu. The Secret World, Aion, SWTOR, possibly WoW (never played it), have it set up this way with paypal. I have a feeling it's more of a personal preference on their part at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if I went wandering MMO sites and find they too have a no credit card paypal setup. Did you actually right up that disclaimer bit??

All depends on how the shopping cart was designed. The Crysta shopping cart is basically leftover from when they started it with XI many years ago---and it was built around proprietary systems (namely PlaySpan, which is now defunct in the scope of this setup.). To bring it back would require a rebuild of the system, if not in whole at least in part. It could very well be sort of the old spaghetti code conundrum we faced with XI---no one still around that knows it well enough to make it work with things now, so they just tabled it until they can build/test something new to replace it. Credit Card processing is pretty simple to update, provided your cart/site follows the normal frameworks. You almost literally paste in about a paragraph worth of code that is edited to reflect your specific credentials and server addresses and such, make sure the links are there and the on-click calls, post-backs, and such work and off you go.

As for the disclaimer...it's spins on several disclaimers I've seen in the past--mostly broadcast media. It evolved from some heated threads back on the XI forums....cleaned up for this crowd, as it had a reference to a Dirty Harry quote at the end that may offend some people.