thranx said:
theprof00 said:
1 Yeah, so nothing has changed. You do know that users still had to pay with their cc to buy points through LIVE
2 Yeah, and there won't be a difference here, either. The cards will say 20$, the retailers will pay 18$, the distributors 17$.
3 Right, so nothing has changed.
4 *shakes head* You do know that the whole reasoning behind it was that MS would rather have you pay 20$ one time, than 5$ four times.
It saves them roughly 50 cents or so...and yet, they'll still be selling the dollar value cards, and will likely have you purchase in quantities on LIVE.
They still pay the same percentage, it's just now they'll be skipping the smaller charge, which is usually about 10-15 cents for a big retailer.
So even if you spent that 20$ buying 20 1$ items, the most they'll lose out on is about 5%, meanwhile, your cost went up 35%.
And trust me, there are still ways to push sales around, like not expensing until the end of the month, and other tactics like simply holding your cc info, so they can collect all at one time.
It's not rocket science.
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Usually for credit card transactions there is a per swipe fee(or a fee everytime you have to verify a credit card and make a purchase with it), and an overall fee on the amount. By reducing the per swipes (the number of times a CC had to be processed) they would save money. With MS points you could buy multiple games with one CC swipe buy buying points in bulk. Now every single purchase will be a different swipe. So there will be an additional fees for every purchase. They add up. That is why some bars and restaurants make you do a tab with a Credit card instead of using it a bunch of times.
Here is some info on it http://www.retailmeansjobs.com/swipefees
its a massive drains on business to have 3-7 % of your revenue taken right from you
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Actually, I was the one that explained that to him.
However, I also countered, and he agreed, that the majority way to buy points currently is to buy cards. In the future, this won't change much. It's the same reason why when you buy a game on PSN, it offers you to just purchase in 20$, 50$, etc, along with the direct game cost. While it is 3-7%, it's 3-7% on less than half the revenue stream, as retail based cards are greater than 50% of where points come from, and according to adinnieken, they are now cutting retailers margins out.
So, on 50% (conservatively) they will lose 3-7% (probably closer to 3% as high volume corporations tend to get much much lower rates per swipe), and on the other 50%, they will be making an extra 25% on the new found margin.
EDIT: Oh, also it's not 3-7%. It's between 10 and 70 cents, depending on volume, and pricing. So, on a dollar purchase, they will actually lose 10%, but on a 5$ purchase, it's 2%. Being MS, they probably also stay at the 10 cents area.
