Statement: https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/press/2025/august/clarifying-recent-headlines-on-gaming-content.html

Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations.

Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law. Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. At the same time, we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.

Media contact

Seth Eisen

seth.eisen@mastercard.com

    • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Honestly, wouldn’t be surprised, they have spent god knows how much to push linux to unshackle themselves from Windows and Microsoft

    • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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      23 hours ago

      There’s multiple steps to this sadly, including the payment gateway, processor, acquirer and this is before even Mastercard, VISA, Amex or other card companies come into the picture.

      It’s not impossible, but Valve would need to convince the card issuers that they are a valid processor and then also make deals with banks all over the world for GWs. Or they could just act like Stripe and own the full stack and bully their way through the fintech world.

      • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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        23 hours ago

        They already support local payment processing schemes such as Bancontact, iDEAL, JCB, Pix, etc. A good chunk of their international customer base already isn’t dependent on the big American payment processors.

        The way towards undermining Visa/MC’s power is for more governments/Central Banks to push for indigenous alternatives which abide by local regulations rather than foreign puritanism. This is already a desirable goal for most both from a geopolitical POV (reduce American control over world finance) and a financial one (VISA/MasterCard charge outrageous transaction fees).

        American consumers are fucked whichever way things go though, it’s not like the regime is going to make a move to break up the monopoly nor to push for less censorship in media. If Valve somehow goes through with this and makes deal with all major American banks, they’ll be done just in time for the Save The Children From Pedostanic Video Games Act or whatever the fuck that will force them to purge all thought crime from their platform.

        • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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          23 hours ago

          Yeah I’m surprised they are not on board with Interac Debit in Canada.

          • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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            23 hours ago

            Weird, either there’s some backroom drama with Interac or now might be the time for you to ask their support about it.

      • kieron115@startrek.website
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        23 hours ago

        In America I think you also either literally or effectively (to compete) have to own some banks as well. I think it’s called vertical integration.

      • Billegh@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        That, and I’m like 70% sure that as a payment processor you can’t take your own payments in the way that valve would need to.

      • kboy101222@sh.itjust.works
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        23 hours ago

        Unfortunately Taler still needs a lot of maturing, but having a distributed payment system not running on that horrendous waste of time and energy that is the block chain is promising!

      • bss03@infosec.pub
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        23 hours ago

        I’d never heard of this before. I hope Liberapay adds support for it. I don’t think all itch.io developers would be interested. I’m not sure it quite solves all the problems that Steam has with getting payments to game publishers.

        Quite interesting; thanks for the link!