More payment methods for Indigo

Station
1

It feels like the current payment methods are not really accessible for european users. Current options are:

  • Credit card - Not that widely used in EU
  • Cash app - Never heard of it, plus it’s not available in my region
  • Bank transfer - Only american? banks listed

Any plans to include more universal payment methods like PayPal, Google Pay etc. ?

2

Hey there :wave:

You have a great point, we have a couple popular options enabled at the moment, but we should be able to add more without too much trouble.

Google Pay should already be enabled, and although it looks like our processor supports PayPal, there’s some additional work required before it can be enabled.

Are there any other options that you think are popular or should be added? I have access to a list of popular European payment methods, but your insight could be helpful as well.

3

Heya :waving_hand:,

appreciate the quick reply. Not sure if it’s linked to my location (Germany) but Stripe does not give me the option to use GPay.

I trust you have better insights into which methods are most used. I guess supporting PayPal, GPay/Apple Pay would be enough to cover most people already.

4

No problem.

Strange that Google Pay isn’t showing up, I can see it showing as enabled and it seems to be popular pretty much everywhere. I’ll spend some time tomorrow looking into it and will reply here if I end up adding any additional methods.

5

Alright, I did some digging and found a few things. I should mention upfront that, since I can’t really test cross-regional payment methods very well, a lot of what I’ve learned comes from a combination of what others have seen and reported, and what’s in Stripe’s official documentation.

First, Google Pay is enabled, but you mentioned you aren’t able to see it appear as an option:

  • From what I’ve seen, this might be due to a device incompatibility or a currency incompatibility. Google Pay apparently works (better?) on Android devices and Chrome, so try one of those if you’re able or haven’t already.
  • If you’re using an iPhone, it might not show up, but we also have Apple Pay enabled so I would expect at least one of those options to show up.
  • If neither option appears for you, it may be a currency incompatibility. Right now, we internally only handle USD for accounting and bookeeping purposes, and currency conversion should be handled seemlessly through Stripe, but that might create more limitations with what payment methods can be used.

You suggested PayPal which is a solid option, but here’s why we aren’t currently offering it for Indigo subscriptions:

  • Stripe does offer this as an option, but it is limited to cases where both the business and the customer are in certain EU countries or regions. As a US-based service, Stripe’s arrangement with PayPal is not available to us.
  • We do use PayPal for other things such as our music and merch website at https://gensokyo.store as well as one-time donations via https://gensokyoradio.net/support, but we specifically chose to use Stripe for subscriptions because PayPal’s subscription fees are higher than their regular merchant fees (at least at the time we made that decision). Plus, we’ve been using PayPal for store-related payment processing for much longer, so we had an opportunity to shop around when it came to creating a new subscription offering.

Looking into new options for EU-based customers, there are a couple that caught my attention

  • Klarna: This initially looked like a promising option which should be available in all regions, but Stripe once again limits this pretty severely to the US and Puerto Rico.

Despite its limited reach, Klarna has been enabled as an additional option.

  • SEPA Direct Debit: This looks like the most promising option for EU users, but it may require some additional work on our end because subscription processing using this method would not be immediate. In most cases, this would almost certainly create a sub-par user experience, but it would at least provide a viable option.

SEPA Direct Debit has also been enabled with the subscription set to kick in immediately after the Stripe session is complete, which means that technically you’d get an extra 5-6 days of time when first subscribing while it processes. If processing fails, access to Indigo’s lossless stream will immediately be cut.

I’m unsure of how recurring payments coupled with the delayed transaction confirmation would appear for a user; there might be service gaps, or Stripe might be smart enough to pre-bill you before access lapses. This is something I would need feedback on.

For a “real” service, I probably wouldn’t do it this way, but this is mostly just a way to provide listeners with a way to support the station and to get something in return through lossless endpoint access.

So that’s what I’ve got for now. If that ends up not working or is just not a good option, I can try looking into integrating PayPal subscriptions directly (despite the higher fees), but it would also require building out a duplicate webhook path for things like validating active subscriptions when connecting to the station, assigning roles in Discord and on these forums, etc. It’s doable, but it is extra development time.

Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you or if you have any other questions about Indigo subscriptions. Thanks!