Can someone explain to me why people and companies even use credit cards? Why not bank transfers? Why credit cards are often in exclusions to other payment methods?
I wanted to support 3blue1brown on Patreon and I can't because I need to have a credit card. Even PayPal requires a credit card.
If I want to have a server on AWS or Google Cloud I need to have a credit card.
Why not prepay trough bank transfer? It's some American thing that is just imposed on Europeans because why not or there are some valid reasons why companies try to force credit cards on me?
As I see it, if I send someone money it's up to me and that person, eventually to a court, to resolve any issues. Why bank can't be a neutral third-party?
To me it seems like a beneficial deal to companies. If they got the money then it's up to them to return them or not, so they are in beneficial, safe position.
Currently I try to somehow go around need for credit cards with virtual credit cards that are prepaid, but it seems like they are banned quite often... E.g. I haven't found a way to do prepaid for Google Cloud, so I can't use it.
Credit cards offer a lot of benefits and cash back (essentially a discount).for bank transfer to compete they’d need to offer the consumer similar fiscounts in lieu of the benefits and cashback.
Some cards can offer 3-5% of the transaction back, on top of a slew of benefits including extended warranty, 90 day accidental damage or theft reimbursement, price protection (a refund if the price changes), return protection (a refund if the store doesn’t accept a return).
Yes, that would explain why customers may want to use, so companies may offer them as an option, but why companies don't offer bank transfers? In Europe we do most of the day to day payments with bank transfers and companies seems to be OK with that.
I offered bank transfers on Instapainting.com but nobody used it. It required logging in with your bank credentials. Other times I’ve seen it you would have to enter your routing and account number, and then wait several business days to verify the transaction from two deposits before they could debit your account.
The user experience is simply not in place by the incjmbent players.
It’s like the adoption of QR codes in China vs US, apple, facebook never baked in native qr code support like they did in WeChat in China. So in China it took off like crazy, but in the US no one used them because no one could (you’d have to find and download a special app).
Apple did this because they were banking on bluetooth beacons instead, but that never took hold either.
Corporate strategy and policies thus are largely to blame for this, and unfortunately it can boil down to a single decision from a C-level that doesn’t know better.
Your company is located in USA and I guess you cater mostly to USA based customers.
I start to suspect that this is partially a cultural thing.
In Poland, my home country, we pay mostly with PayU and DotPay, or direct bank transfer. Many companies even offer templates that one can print and use to pay from a post office :). I have been even using it from time to time as a kid before I had my own bank account. In Belgium almost all payments can be done with Bankcontact. I think some people even consider card payments one with Bankcontact, because I quite often would be asked if I want to pay "with Bankcontact" instead of "with a card". In Netherlands most payments go trough iDeal. Sometimes I also see Sofort, PayPal or PaySafe. PaySafe is a prepaid code for X money that you can buy in a shop :) .
All of them are some kind of third-party that seems to allow companies to verify immediately that a payment has been done.
In case of Patreon there seems to be a demand for non credit card payments and they even acknowledge that. So, it indeed may boil down to some decision to not invest in that :/ .
I wanted to support 3blue1brown on Patreon and I can't because I need to have a credit card. Even PayPal requires a credit card.
If I want to have a server on AWS or Google Cloud I need to have a credit card.
Why not prepay trough bank transfer? It's some American thing that is just imposed on Europeans because why not or there are some valid reasons why companies try to force credit cards on me?
As I see it, if I send someone money it's up to me and that person, eventually to a court, to resolve any issues. Why bank can't be a neutral third-party?
To me it seems like a beneficial deal to companies. If they got the money then it's up to them to return them or not, so they are in beneficial, safe position.
Currently I try to somehow go around need for credit cards with virtual credit cards that are prepaid, but it seems like they are banned quite often... E.g. I haven't found a way to do prepaid for Google Cloud, so I can't use it.