Well as Posipil and others have said, in the USA it is a nightmare finding these paysafecards either as PINs or as physical cards. Physical cards have a certain amount of location in a department or grocery store. Basically an outside contractor negotiates to stock that space with various cards, renting out that location in the store. So they want to stock cards that sell well. In addition, I would suspect that someone representing paysafecard, and from what I can tell that also is another agent but just for paysafecard and independently operating, has to convince the person running this rented boutique within the stores with foot traffic, to actually take some of the paysafecards. That's the way this sort of idiocy is normally done in the USA, from my understanding.
The result is sort of a catch22. The only real way something like this is going to get off the ground is if someone in the USA, say a bunch of Gog users, went ahead and paid a fee to paysafecard to represent them, and started to call on the various boutique lessees or the actual stores to have a location near the cash registers advertising Paysafecard and also it's connection to Gog and any other major online companies that use it. That's a lot of start-up cost.
That leaves the alternative, which is for someone to get through to the boutique lessees, the guys with the gift card etc stalls in the grocery stores and start either proving the need or paying something up front as fee. That requires a lot of sales off the foot traffic. Unfortunately, given Paypal and so forth, I think the result is that unless Paysafecard itself heavily advertises directly to these boutique guys or stores, it isn't going to result in anything anyway.
This was why I was making it clear that if Paysafecard and Gog really want to get this to work, at least in the USA Midwest and East coast, they would have to pretty much do at least one of two things.
1) Sell the PINs directly from Gog which still runs into the purchase by Debit Card from USA failure, or ...
2) Get some online store operating in the USA to carry Paysafecard PINs or Cards. This is why I asked www.pcgamesupply.com if they carried them or if they intended to do so, since they carry Rixty cards and that allows a USA citizen with a debit card to purchase online from a USA based store (doesn't trigger a debit card failure to purchase) to purchase a Paysafecard PIN or card to use at Gog. I explained in short my reasoning, but received a very quick reply , within 12 hours that there were no plans to do so and I should not expect it to happen. It was a very nice "No, not going to happen."
The other problem is that getting a PIN is no easier. Again, in the USA, there are various "services", much like Western Union, that provide terminals (that only the cashier may use and see) inside gas stations and convenience stores, and they are the primary way you can purchase these sorts of cards, if not physically a card. But everytime I go into these sort of lesser known gas stations or convenience stores, they have either never heard of Paysafecard, or don't even know about the various services mentioned in the locator that carry it. It's not even a matter of how to use the service, you can't even trouble them to go farther over the "No. No sir, again we don't have it. Never heard of it." and strange stare at you asking about it. Note also that since only the cashier actually knows that the terminal is there and carries it, it isn't a great marketing tool since the customer has no vision nor access to the various offerings.
So, it's a bad situation. I don't know if Paysafecard is aware of it, but basically their operations in the USA are made up of mostly non-existent locations in the locator. That is to say, most of the addresses are duplicates, some of the stores have changed or do not exist, those that do exist have never heard of either Paysafecard or the service that should carry the PIN, and a lot of these stores also have few people who speak English.
Now, again that is based on my having tried at least 7 locations several times, with zero success. It is also based on the comments of Posipil, who has the same experience in this thread. Also, when in the previous version of the paysafecard locator website, when I updated the rating on the site and put in the choice that they had never heard of it, I did not see any update to that site in the locator or its rating even after a couple days of time. To me, that suggests that at least the old locator had someone not even updating the information about the locations and availability. This wouldn't matter, EXCEPT that since their business is in the very beginning stage in the USA, that information is PRIORITY #1. They should immediately be on the phone with that location, and if they get ANY confusion or ignorance or static, they should send an agent out there to physically talk with the owner or manager, pronto. Otherwise, in the fast moving American market, they are toast.
I don't mean to be so negative. But based on the things I have read, and the situation in at least my locale (within 20 miles) I can't see this working unless the new paysafecard website just sets up a USA location where we can purchase these online. That's the quickest way for it to work.
The bad news is that I think the main reason to do all this would be for those wanting to make purchases from the USA to Gog.com easier. Without some sort of action by Paysafecard to achieve that and without Gog.com hearing about it and making a big deal about it, I don't see Paysafecard making any meaningful inroads into the American market.
If I may be blunt, if I was researching their stock and one of the analysts described what was going on at ground level in the American market, I'd sell all stock and place a put order to make money. Without an energetic bunch of field reps and an American website source, it will go nowhere.
IMHO of course.
Post edited June 18, 2014 by DedNLeft