Seemingly simple question. I'm a person who lives in South Africa (Currency: ZAR) with a bank account - A normal persona (Relatively), but for various reasons, I do not wish to own a credit card.

Let's see what Steam offers ---> Here<---

From the top!
WebMoney: http://www.wmtransfer.com/eng/addfunds/banking.shtml - Doesn't support my currency.
Visa: Credit Card
Master Card: Credit Card
American Express: I'm not American
Discover: Credit Card (I think)
JCB: Google only partially helps, but looks like a Credit Card
PayPal: Only allows bank transfers from within the US (Yes, I'm serious)
ClickandBuy: Unable to register, as they do an address check, and my road isn't in their system.

MoneyBookers: Looks promising - Doing a test deposit of R100 (+- US$12.5)

If this doesn't work - Who knows ;(

1 decade ago*

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What is the point to this thread? You can see all these options yourself if you are purchasing funds for your steam wallet. Also you can just go out and buy a gift credit card and use it even though you will lose some funds from activating it.

1 decade ago
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No Steam Gift cards in this country.

1 decade ago
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I think he meant a prepaid credit card.

1 decade ago
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We don't get those here :<
Only Credit Cards are from banks

1 decade ago
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How about Western Union? They have prepaid cc's apparently. :)

1 decade ago
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Western Union only operates with 1 of the 5 major banks in this country (I am with a different one)

1 decade ago
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Sounds like you should move to a not third world country~

1 decade ago
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I'm thinking the same thing >_>

1 decade ago
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There's no such thing as a steam gift card. You get a visa/mastercard from a store and use it on steam.

1 decade ago
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I wish there was steam gift cards :(

1 decade ago
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Get a debit card and send funds to your paypal account, it works for me and I'm outside the US

1 decade ago
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Yeah. I use Vanilla Visa gift debit cards. I get em at my local convenience stores.

1 decade ago
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1 decade ago
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That's for bank transfers, not cards. Just get a debit card and treat it as a credit card, it'll work just fine.

1 decade ago
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Actually, I tried using a pre-paid debit card to purchase one of the bundles that came out over the holidays and they wouldn't take it. Next, I tried putting the money into a PayPal account to try and get it to work, and that failed as well. If you know something I can do to transfer money from one of these to a PayPal account, I'd like to know for future reference, because I never got it to work.

1 decade ago
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you have to register the gift card (prepaid card) with your information then it will work

1 decade ago
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I did that, but it didn't work. Maybe I did it wrong or had to do something else in addition that I missed. Oh well. Thanks for the help anyway.

1 decade ago
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I.. why would you use a debit card to send money to your paypal to then send money to steam wallet? Why not just use the debit card?

All I own is a debit card and use that to buy stuff online all the time. It works just like a credit card.

1 decade ago
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Where does the Steam Wallet have the option to charge using a Debit Card... ?

1 decade ago
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You can use a debit card wherever a credit card is accepted.

1 decade ago
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if your debit card has visa written on it it means it can act as a credit card. i use my debit card to purchase funds in steam wallet. no problemo.

1 decade ago
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"PayPal: Only allows bank transfers from within the US (Yes, I'm serious)"

That's weird... I live in middle Europe and have no problem with "my bank -> paypal" transfers

1 decade ago
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Canada, no problems either.

1 decade ago
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My bank unfortunately doesn't have the option to add funds to a Paypal account

1 decade ago
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Can you not link your checking account to PP?

1 decade ago
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Only a Savings account :p

1 decade ago
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If you come out of your shell and get a checking account, all of your problems will be solved :P

1 decade ago
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I use paysafecard which I can buy from various stores but I see its not available in your country. I guess the only way is to find a friend who uses paypal and get games from him.

1 decade ago
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If I want a game, I can currently pay (Price of game + 10%) to a friend to gift it to me.
Whilst this works, I'd rather like to be able to buy my own games :p

1 decade ago
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well you have greedy friends :P

1 decade ago
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WebMoney: that sucks, not a viable option
Visa: this is a valid option
Master Card: this is a valid option
American Express: /shrug
Discover: this is a valid option
JCB: Yea, i have no idea what this is either
PayPal: if you say so...
ClickandBuy: lol
MoneyBookers: problem solved?

I don't see an issue in here. Figure out one of the non-CC options, or suck it up and get a CC. Sorry if this comes across as rude, but I don't know how to express my "problem solver mode" on the internet without sounding curt or rude, and it is not intended to be.

1 decade ago
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Well, I'm not sure how difficult it would be for you to get a bank account here in the U.S., but if you did, I'm sure you could transfer funds to it, and then to PayPal from there. Also, if Western Union operates with a different bank there, maybe you could just switch banks. If you knew someone elsewhere who would help, you could also perhaps send them money from a Western Union location or by some other means and they could send it to a PayPal account for you, or purchase a pre-paid card and give you the information to activate and use it, or any number of other methods. Since you already have a friend who does it for a 10% additional fee (kind of a crappy thing to do to someone who's supposed to be a friend if you ask me, but whatever), it wouldn't be too different, though. Also, if I were doing this for you, for example, it would cost $3 U.S. for the card, plus whatever Western Union or other fees were incurred in getting the money to the person, so it might even cost more that way, not sure. The point is, you probably have some other options available. I'm just throwing some stuff out there.

1 decade ago
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Paying the fees to open up a US Bank Account, and switching banks totally aren't really an option for simply adding funds to a Steam account. The friend I've never actually met IRL (Although has proved trust-worthy in the past), and everyone I HAVE met has never bought a game over Steam - Primarily due to the hassle involved :p The other options really requires a trust-worthy person in the US :p

1 decade ago
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Fair enough. Do you mind if I ask how you manage to get the money to your friend? Every way I can think of that doesn't use a method you could just use to buy from Steam directly and cut out the middleman is quite a hassle. If you don't want to say, just tell me to fuck off, though. Not trying to pry or anything. :)

1 decade ago
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paysafecard is the best way, but you cant add this option :C

1 decade ago
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If your bank's debit card is a Visa or Mastercard, just enter it as if it were a credit card and it'll pull the funds from your bank account. If not, ya might be screwed. This is how I pay for Steam games.

1 decade ago
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Are you sure about Paypal only allowing bank transfer from the US? I say this because a friend of mine (i live in Argentina) buys the games for me using his paypal account, and i seriously doubt he has a bank account in the US :P

1 decade ago
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Know your friend well.

1 decade ago
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Lol i do :), there's enough trust to do this kind of stuff, to the point where he bought Battlefield 3 for me a couple of days after launch day.

Just asked my friend, he doesnt have a bank account in any other country....

1 decade ago
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Neh, that's why I use the credit card when I can (it's my dad's, so I can't use it very often!), or ask a friend to buy me something and I buy something to him after (Mostly an indie bundle =P )

Also, Argentina~ <3

1 decade ago
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I'm in Viet Nam, PayPal works just fine here. I buy gifts for my friends on Steam only through PayPal in fact.
With purchases for myself, I just used my Pre-paid Mastercard.
I sure do wish that they have some way to pay for the games without a credit card tho ( like phone bills or something like that), that way i don't have to buy anything and gift them to my cousins anymore.

1 decade ago
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I heard you can buy PayPal money cards in stores.
EG: You pay then 20$ then you get a 20$ PayPal "gift" card and that will add funds to your account. There may be regional restrictions on this though.

1 decade ago
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Like other said, prepaid card. What's wrong with this or this?

1 decade ago
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If anyone is curious, I tested out MoneyBookers.

I added the funds on Friday afternoon, and received them Monday night (They DID say 2-3 working days), successfully recharged my Steam wallet, and I now am able to buy my owns Steam Games! \o/

1 decade ago
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Closed 1 decade ago by Reelix.