Has GOG ever given any indication of which payment method they prefer? PayPal using a Mastercard or direct Mastercard payment. I would normally expect since GOG is a big company they would negotiate a better deal on credit card fees with their payment processor than PayPal would provide.But I know it's often hard to say since PayPal fees aren't too bad.

Of course it may be too complicated/dependent on the type of credit card, card country and amount. In any case I'm guessing the difference is small so it's no big deal but I prefer to to reduce the amount which goes to third parties when I can't. (I can't send money to my PayPal account in NZ.)

For me, I don't care whether it's PayPal or direct. I always use my banks conversion process here in NZ since it nearly always ends up better than PayPal (my bank only charges a small percent for conversion, they don't charge any fixed fee). And I trust GOG enough that I don't feel the need to rely on PayPal for security.

Cheers

No, they haven't. But I would guess direct payment is better. The less hands the money has to travel through the less people get a cut and it should also be faster.

Lol I always say this here. Check Paypal+card foreign fees!
If the commission per transaction is too high, I prefer direct payment.

There is no such thing as "direct credit card payment".

Online credit card payment is always handled by a payment processor - Skrill, Paypal, Global Collect, ClickandBuy, Ukash, Rixty, etc. There's always someone that takes their share for facilitating the payment process. Stores just usually don't disclose which payment processor(s) they are working with exactly, for whichever reason.

I've never thought about from GOG's perspective. I always choose paypal for the convenience. Paypal remembers my info, so I don't need my wallet.

I always choose the inconvenience approach of direct credit card. I don't like paypal. and if they're going to charge me the same FTF my bank does for buying from GOG, then I might as well use direct. Actually I think Paypal charges me a set fee and my bank does a low percentage which always comes out cheaper.

I would prefer to use paypal as an extra layer of security, but when I tried it a couple of times, paypal was asking more money than the value of my cart (converted to euros by google). The difference was like 4% (6,13€ instead of 5.88 €) so I just used my credit card directly.

I just put it though Paypal because it is easier. Don't need to have my card on me

Since i think GOG get the same amount of money both ways I don't think they care too much

I prefer paying with my credit card directly. PayPal fees are too damn high!

That's not really true. If you have a merchant agreement with Visa then you can accept Visa card payments yourself, if you have a merchant agreement with Mastercard then you can accept Mastercard payments, and so on. It's attractive to use a payment system such as Skrill, Paypal, etc. because it means you have fewer responsibilities and need to manage only one merchant account (instead of a separate one for Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, American Express and who knows what else a customer might want to use) and it's often cheaper because the costs are divided amongst many clients - but if you have enough transaction volume that you consider it worth the effort then it's entirely possible to handle your own payments without going through an external payment processing company.

I use Paypal, it add a plus security layer to my money, I buy from many places, so on little shops I don't trust they have the money to be secure enough for me, and it is more easy than card...

No they haven't and maybe they can't because of NDAs. But I would guess that there is hardly a difference. For me there is hardly a difference. I once compared on the same day buying the same game twice once with VISA (better conversion rate but 1.5% fee) and PayPal (worse conversion rate) and it came out nearly the same for me (VISA being better by 0.1%). Also both are drawing directly from my account so no difference either.

I would like to know that too or I would like to have GOG charging people differently according to which payment method they use and the difference should be exactly the transaction costs involved with each payment method. That way we would see the differences and could react according to our own transactions costs.

We could choose what is cheaper for us, or what is cheaper for us and gives GOG the greates profit or a mixture of both. Mastercard payment is also indirect? There is still a bank attached. Only the levels of indirection are variable. PayPal using a credit card using a bank account is probably the worst you can have but PayPal using a bank account or a credit card using a bank account should be about the same probably.

Since they get the money whatever way you pay, I doubt they really care.

Thanks, it's a long time ago (and GOG was I think a lot smaller then with a lot fewer transactions which probably made it harder for them to negotiate good rates) but it seems the only indication we have from GOG. I take it they were accepting credit cards directly rather than via PayPal at the time?

BTW, in case there was any confusion, as I indicated at in my first post, I'm well aware that there's usually a payment processor involved in some fashion (although it does depend on what you mean by 'payment processor too). When I said 'direct Mastercard payment', I meant payment with a credit card via the website rather than going through PayPay, however they process that paymentl.

Also just to emphasise, as I also mentioned in my first post, there's no difference for me between using PayPal or direct payment in terms of convience or cost (and don't feel I need whatever added security PayPal may provide compared to GOG since GOG are large enough that I trust them particularly since I am using a credit card as with many, with decent protections, in fact there are some advantages to using GOG such as being able to use my credit cards dispute resolution without risking being permabanned from PayPal). Well to be fair, if I haven't used PayPal recently it's slightly faster to pay directly because PayPal tries to use my PayPal USD balance which I don't want them to so I have to hide it. If i have used PayPal recently, it's nowadays slightly faster to use PayPal because I've had two recent credit card number changes so can't remember my number any more. Ultimately it's a mixmatch and the amount of extra time I spent on either is likely dwarfed by the time I spent discussing this :-P

May be things are different in different countries, but here in NZ it's trivial to choose whether to use PayPal's conversion or your credit card's conversion process when paying with PayPal via credit card. (If you have balance in the currency in question or IIRC your local currency, you do have to hide that first nowadays.) So it's also easy to see which would have been better. First tell PayPal to use their conversion and see how much it would cost in your local currency and record it but don't pay. Then tell PayPal to use your credit card's conversion, pay and wait for your bill (well I can check online in a few days). Then compare the 2 and see if you should have used PayPal, or your bank was better.

Hence why if I do use PayPal, as mentioned in my first post, I never use PayPal conversion because I've found using my banks credit card currency conversion is generally better no matter the price since my bank only charges a fixed percentage which tends to be lower than PayPal and they also provide decent exchange rates (as I think many large banks though). Because of timing issues relating to exchange rate differences, once or twice PayPal would have been slightly better than my bank as in a few cents better, but it's rare.

Hence why in my particular case, none of that is a deciding factor and why I was wondering if anyone had any idea which was better for GOG as the only suitable deciding factor. As I mentioned, the difference is likely to be very small and may be complicated anyway due to reasons like different banks, cards etc, plus a good point Trilarion made that I didn't mention, there's a fair chance GOG can't really say much due to NDAs etc. (The better the rates they negotiate, the less likely they are to be able to disclose much. To be clear, they obviously don't have to disclose the rates, just which one is better, e.g. calling one a preferred payment method but there may still potentially be contractual issues preventing that.)

BTW, I don't think anyone doubted GOG would get there money. But I also think most vendors would prefer to get the most money they can from the transaction, although most also accept the added lost is generally worth it from having multiple options if it gets more people to buy from them and for various reasons it's not necessarily worth it encouraging people to use a certain payment option or possibly even trying to work out which is better.

In fact one more thing which wasn't really mentioned before, while I was concentrating on fees there are other issues which would likely affect which payment system is better for GOG. E.g. fraud rate (I suspect PayPal is lower), successful dispute rates, how easy (including cost) it is to get their money/how long it's held (and whether in an interest bearing account or not) etc etc. So yeah it's complicated. (To be clear, I was never thinking it was a big deal, was just wondering if anyone had ever heard GOG say anything since as I mentioned it's really the only reason to choose one over the other for me.)