Credit Card/Paypal Alternatives?

[Starbird]

To keep it short, I live in Japan - which is a country where it's insanely hard for foreigners to get even basic VISA/credit card functions on a bank account. Oh, and the Japanese Paypal requires a credit card...

I'm wondering if there is some simple alternative I am missing. It's really hard to buy stuff online (Battlenet games, Steam games) without one. There are prepaid VISA cards floating around but a lot of people have had problems using them on Battlenet.

 

[sky14kemea]

I think a lot of Paypals need (or at least prefer) a credit card nowadays. Does Steam do any "Steam Points" cards? (probably a dumb question, but I don't buy from Steam a lot).

 

[Mister K]

Well, there are PSN cards for sure, although you have to buy a card for a specific country (for example US accounts will have different cards then France one). I think I saw Steam cards somewhere.

Also, there is another method popular in Ukraine and Russia called WebMoney. You basically fill your accout the same way as you'd fill your phone number balance (via those ibox thingies). Steam accepts it as a payment method. However the company takes at least 5% of the sum you are uploading and I do not know whether you can fill your wallet in Japan.

Hope that helped.

 

[stroopwafel]

Yeah, I think buying giftcards for any of these services is the only solution. And if you can't buy them in Japan directly use something like Entropay to buy them from an international vendor. Entropay/prepaid creditcards often don't work directly(I guess a lot of services reject them in combination with region specific IP addresses) but buying a giftcard and using that to transfer funds into your account should be no problem. You can always google what vendors that sell gitfcards accept Entropay.

 

[Michel Henzel]

http://store.steampowered.com/yen
There seem to be several cash transfer options via steam you could try.