You can pay with direct debit (Elektronische Lastschrift) via Paypal. It is not necessary to have any balance at your Paypal Account. So, what is the problem? Yo are not from cuba and i assume, that you are not a terrorist...

There is some country other than Serbia that's hit by this issue? I thought we are only country without it...

If you don't want to deal with them then don't(And I am[again] sorry to hear someone had trouble using paypal.), but for me and others it works....should I stop using it just because others had issues with the service because of the way it's designed/run?

I could understand if they denied a transaction and/or hassled you/others due to racial/nationality profiling issues(Of you or the nation you were going to/staying in at the time) or some other truly vile/evil reason, but this doesn't seem to be the case here. They just seem to have really odd/crap policies for people travelling abroad while using their services.

Again... the only method I can pay for on ebay.fr at least, and probably on ebay.com is via Paypal.

Was the only reason I created an account with them.
I could buy happily from France. But when I tried from Lebanon, with the same french credit card, it would just state that the transaction failed.

When you're the 1st bidder on ebay, try explaining to the vendor that's waiting for his money, that you have an unexplainable problem with paypal.
He called ebay support... claimed I was trying to steal whatever ... etc..

Very bad experience. Will never buy from ebay again nor paypal.

I buy from priceminister now. Never had problems and don't have to create an account exclusive for payment methods.

If you have problems with eBay then don't buy from them, as you said. :\

That's why monebookers.com does exist. It allows you to use Giropay, Switch and many more under one hood.


But, if a national marked is big enough, it can be profitable and manageable to use a national payment method directly. It's also a little cheaper than man in the middle payment methods like moneybooker.com
I don't know how many German customers gog.com does have, but i assume the marked is not small. So it might be reasonable even for gog.com to offer additionally a national payment method.



BTW, i can't recommend Sofortüberweisung, because using it, is a vioaltion of your contract with your bank. Normally banks do not allow that you give away your online banking PIN to 3rd partys like Sofortüberweisung.

In Europe, especially in Germany you can easily come along completely without credit cards.
We have a lot of alternatives and many of them are even better, so credit cards are not a requirement here like they are in the USA.


That's the major reason why i dont have one.

And it's not worth the money you pay for a loaded giftcard, just to be able to pay on only one online shop.

It just doesn't make sense.

I was talking more about buying from online sellers than German local merchants and retailers. As such, my point still stands.
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Also how much would you pay? I get mine for the price on the card plus a dollar or two to the store selling them. Not bad, imo.....especially if it allows you to buy from places you want to which don't take other payment methods.

That's actually very true. Germany has perhaps the lowest incidence of credit card ownership among the developed markets for no other reason than we have had a well-developed bank transfer system in place for a very long time. You'll be hard pressed to find a company in Germany that doesn't support bank transfers or direct debit. More or less every form of electronic payment in Germany revolves around transfers (Überweisung) or direct debit (Lastschrift).

I'm not sure whether I'd describe it as better though. The German system has completely failed to keep up with developments in global trade. Look at almost every other national payments system and almost all have made steps to integrate themselves into internationally accepted payment processing schemes such as Visa or Mastercard.

Your bank probably does some kind of prepaid rechargeable credit card. Volksbank has one called Generation2Go which you charge up by wire transferring the funds (oh, the irony!) from your main VB account to your credit card account. Sparkasse, Deutsche Bank and so on have their own versions of it.

OK, so then what? Just pirate everything that is only available via PayPal? Just do without? A lot of these things are only available from one source and can't be easily substituted for other things.

I always use something other than PayPal when given a choice, but you don't always have that option and often times you really do need the good or service.

No it doesn't.
As i said, here in Germany/Europe we have plenty of alternative payment methods, even for online sellers.

So the only online sellers that are left, are those outside of Europe or those within Europe that do not offer alternative payment methods.
Which is for me now only gog.com (as far as i know, gog.com is in the UK).

So do the math.
Paying about > 20 € for a credit card per year, just to buy 2-3 games on gog.com for 2-4 € per game isn't very economical.

And free credit cards or gift cards have a lot of other drawbacks that doesn't make it cheaper.

GiroPay in comparison does cost me nothing, because it is a service of my bank account, that i already have. Read the fine print, Giftcards or credit cards without an annual fee do have some drawbacks too. They are not that cheap as they look like in first place.

GOG is already offering GiroPay:
http://www.giropay.de/index.php?id=acquirer

As you can see in the list, PayPal is a Partner aquirer for GiroPay.

I do all my payments on GOG using this method (I don't like to use my credit cards online).

Using PayPal with your Bank details, does not cost you a cent as well, I wonder what your problem is with it.

Find an alternative seller that sells what you want, or find another payment method you cna use(Technically, morally, etc.) that they DO accept and use that...or have someone you know and trust who has such payment methods available to them buy your things for you from that one seller. Lots of options, if you think it through. Sure, they might all flop, but you don't know until you try.

Not really, that presupposes a lot of things that are often not the case. For one thing not all goods have multiple sources, the goods I was buying were from the only source available, and the only method of payment they take is PayPal. So, no matter how I go about paying for the goods, PayPal gets a cut and having somebody else pay for me just creates the new problem of figuring out how to pay them back.

If you want mass produced crap, then yes there are tons of options, but often times there's only one store, or there are multiple stores, but they all use the same payment options.

It does when dealing with, as you said, sellers that don't take alternate payment methods.
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I never said to just get a credit card for GOG.com(And I was actually suggesting you get a bank debit card or reloadable gift card rather than a "credit" card perse.).......but if one does alot of shopping with sellers that don't take Giro/etc then it can become a very economically sound decision.

Also what drawbacks do gift cards/free credit cards have? Yes, some are more expensive to use than others but not all are this way. I get one usually for the cost of the card plus 1-2 dollars for tax/to activate the card. That's it. No fees(Short of a 1-2 dollar a month fee if I don't use it within a year or so.).
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Again, not all such cards are this way.

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1. I didn't notice the part about it being the only store for the item you wanted when I read it/replied.....sorry about that.

2. I was just offering possible answers/solutions to your question(s)/problem(s) to answer your reply & to try to help if I could.
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What kind of stuff is it that it's so limited in where you can buy it? :\