I predict that this will absolutely tank the sponsorship for projects that are not US-centric. But maybe that's the intention here???
In Germany, most people don't have a credit card because you don't need one in daily life.
Instant payments to friends? Giropay is free.
Buy stuff online? PayPal, Giropay, Klarna.
Send money to other EU countries? Every bank account supports SEPA, which is free.
With that in mind, nobody is willing to pay $50 annually for a card which then charges 3% of every transaction, because there are good and free alternatives. And I don't think anyone will create a CC just for GitHub. Let's hope Microsoft will think this through and offer sane alternative payment methods (like SEPA deduction, the default for recurring payments in Europe) before removing the only non-CC option.
Like other people have said, in Europe most banks give you a MasterCard/Visa debit card with your bank account, which work in virtually every online transaction without issue and don't charge (the sender) any fee. I would even say that with services like SEPA payments and Bizum, banks have caught up with tech and made platforms like PayPal/Stripe/Square essentially obsolete.
I have never owned a credit card, but have owned cards issued by five different countries, and I never had a problem where specifically credit card was required as a payment. Including Germany, where exists a number of neobanks that have free accounts which include a debit card.
Thinking about it, I haven't met anyone in my life that doesn't have a card (regardless whether it is debit or credit).
Are you talking about actual credit cards or just using the term to mean payment cards in general? Regular "debit" cards generally don't have memberships or payment fees and can be used online anywhere credit cards are accepted, because from the vendor's perspective, they're the same thing.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096803/credit-card-and-... reports 38m credit cards, 121m debit cards. German population is 84m. So "most people don't have credit card" might be true but it's still a lot. I'd expect - without having data to back it up - the group using Github Sponsors (who know what Github is) have credit cards.
At least for me, PayPal is outgoing. Used to use it for almost 20 years. But when they started to randomly verify identity with SMS TAN code, I moved to ApplePay wherever possible, and am no longer willing to use PayPal.
Besides, at least in my area, banks are deploying debitcards finally, so there is actually no need for a classical credit card anymore either.
Good, everything that allows me to ditch PayPal is a step forward.
> In Germany, most people don't have a credit card because you don't need one in daily life.
Same in Poland. I vaguely remember not being able to pay for something online with Visa Debit or Mastercard Debit something like 15 years ago.
The cards were issued by Polish banks. From my understanding, the situation in Germany is similar regarding card payments - debit cards have the same payment functionality as a credit cards.
I have lived all my life with only a debit card, the only two instances I experienced of debit card being refused is when booking hotels abroad and renting cars abroad.
So I am pretty sure Github will gladly accept debit cards.
I only had issues with car rental using a debit card in the USA. Debit cards now let merchants "freeze" funds in advance just like a credit card, but that seems to work only in the EU.
People usualy have bank accounts with debit cards, but often using schemes like maestro or v-pay, which are great for in-person payments and have lower fees than VISA or MasterCard, but don't have a credit card number and can't be used in online purchases.
Traditionally banks charge about $20/year extra for an actual VISA/MasterCard debit or credit card, though this has started to change. And of course the speed of change varies wildly by country, in some debit/credit cards are already widespread, in others not so much.
The former. It's pretty well established to have just a debit card that for does almost everything a credit card can do. I think in most EU you can get a similar set-up.
Yes, debit card is the norm. Germany quite early had the EC/Giro card system as a default feature for any bank account. (Nowadays Maestro owned by MasterCard) Which was cheap and quick. Back in the 90ties credit cards were rare and only used by people travelling to U.S. or other specific needs.
But I think credit cards are way more spread these days and many banks leave the old system.
I also have virtual debit card only and making all my online payments with it. My bank had a phase cca 5 years ago when they were offering credit cards to people, but they stopped completely as they weren't able to tell people why they should be using credit cards instead of debit cards - from end user perspective in EU, there is no difference between those two.
No wonder, they probably got their account locked by PayPal for "fraud" on regular basis, while paying exorbitant fees for it. At least that's my experience with PayPal.
> A credit card is the most insecure [...] payment method.
On contrary, it is the most secure because of the chargeback.
Someone stole your credit card data and bought anything with your money? No problem, just fill in chargeback request and money are back. Bank will handle the rest (including the finding the place where it was stolen and stopping accepting credit card transactions from that place at all, so if you are running online shop, better really secure the transactions).
> On contrary, it is the most secure because of the chargeback.
So a leaky card is better because you have chargeback. Meanwhile, debit cards are more secure and also offer chargeback.. Meanwhile, my debit card can get stolen and nobody will be able to use it. If I lose my credit card, anyone can do anything.
> So a leaky card is better because you have chargeback.
Yup, I will still stick to my point.
Someone stole my card? Not super convenient, but I do not lose any single penny. All will be back on my bank account.
Someone stole my Paypal password (on the phishing site)? It is my problem, Paypal will not refund it to me.
I bought some travel trip but travel agency did not fulfilled its obligations?
With credit card and chargeback I have all money back (and travel agency has their deal with payment company ceased).
With Paypal this is my problem and Paypal is not going to refund me any single cent.
Since my first chargeback request I don't hesitate to pay with cards at all. (And chargeback processing was faster than anyone expected: bank always contacts the other side to see their point of view and because other side doesn't want to loose their deal and go banckrupt, they send me money back on very same day)
so you didn't get back your money, yes? what did your bank answered to you?
edit: ah, so you started the chargeback from some UI on the startup site? I think you hit their honeypot; you should initiate by contacting your bank. There is no point to report thief on a thief site :)
This is clearly a bad idea, because credit cards are not as ubiquitous everywhere as they are in the US. If they don't want to do their research properly to figure this out, then they should at least ask, e.g. by giving a proper, timely notice with some option to back out. A month is clearly not enough. It's not even enough time for people to look for other income streams as the current ones will inevitably be affected.
I really have trouble understanding decisions like this by companies that put so much focus on diversity and inclusion, but never really consider that other places outside of the US exist for many of their decisions. It frankly makes no sense to me to spearhead the effort to rename the master branch to main, but ignore that people outside the US can't sponsor projects without a credit card. The actual harm done by the latter is arguably larger and definitely more clearly measurable. It's very disappointing.
It totally does. I am from Germany and I cannot use my bank card for online payment and most people I know can't do it either. Especially if they have bank accounts at banks you can go to in person. Some online-bank accounts provide cards that can be used with online payments, but it's far from the most popular option.
What type of card do you have and what century is your bank in? I've had online capable Visa/Mastercard debit cards in Bulgaria (you know, poorest and least developed country in the EU) since at least 2010, if not before. In France even the legaciest of the legacy banks (the ones where to open a bank account you have to go in person and wait a week for everything to be processed) provide basic MasterCard/Visas, which are of course online capable. I don't know of any card being available in either country that isn't capable of online payments. I've heard Germany is behind the times in some aspects, but I didn't know your banking was so bad. Are you still using cheques too?
It’s the only widely supported payment scheme which allows consumers to properly manage automatic payments, i.e. authorization and revocation are not stuck in the 90’s.
Considering the fees paypal charges - no wonder. At our company we are also trying to ditch paypal, since it constitutes to the lion share of total fees we pay payment processing, though paypal overall share compared to other payment methods is in the bottom percentage.
Congratulations to Github on this step!
They have about 25 million customers, which would be about 5% of the EU population. Meanwhile about 38% of Europeans own a credit card [1].
Revolut is growing rapidly, so I assume there are plenty of bubbles where revolut is more widespread than credit cards. But the near-universal scheme in the EU would be sepa direct debit. And while the lack of instant confirmation is a drawback for online purchases, that shouldn't matter for something like GitHub Sponsors.
This is entirely a Dutch issue. Their banking system is extremely weird and they consider Visa and MasterCard to be credit cards (even if it literally says "DEBIT" on the card itself), and thus they aren't accepted in a lot of places, only Maestros (which don't work for everything) are. Thankfully that's changing now and my recent trips there didn't require keeping cash to pay.
almost every bank in almost every european country issues Visa/Mastercard debit cards that can work for ~everything that claims it wants a credit card.
I just checked all of my German debit cards and they're all Maestro, not Mastercard/Visa. So that's already two countries that don't typically issue compatible debit cards, not to mention the low penetration of credit cards in Germany, too. I probably know more people with PayPal accounts than credit cards.
I lived in Poland, Finland, UK, the Netherlands and Germany. Never had an issue pay online with a card since early 2000s.
There are two types of debit cards.
1. The legacy Bank Cards (think EC card in Germany) and
2. The "new" (I say new, but they have been around for 20 years) debit cards, which looks and act like Credit Card, but do not give you line of credit and requires fund on savings/current account.
Except for German Sparkasse (not a real bank) almost every bank offers you option which card you want (Fidor even issues "Smart" card which is both, legacy and new Debit Card).
The Netherlands had time with this super wonky Meastro cards, but I hear it no problem anymore.
Some dodgy bank will ask for an extra fee, but most don't.
I had my first Debit Card for online payment, as a student in 2004. Yes, paying with CC/DC in Europe is not an issue.
It is not novelty. They are common. Your bank might have simply not given it to you.
All that said, if I can, I will ALWAYS pay with SEPA.
The idea of giving someone the key to your wallet for a fee (merchants pays the fee, but it is baked into the cost of goods) is so absurd that I can't event fathom.
My business, Wide Angle Analytics, uses CC and even allows PayPal via Paddle. But we explicitly state that you can ALSO pay via invoice, with bank transfer for any annual subscription.
I'll stop the discussion here because some regions do issue debit cards that are usable online like a credit card and are connected to Visa and Mastercard with 3DS and such, but other regions either treat that as a luxury item or requires you to pay a maintaining fee just like credit card (for Americans, yes in other countries even if you always paid in time there is still a separate maintenance fee) because they have local systems like Interac or iDeal that are operating indepedently.
Honestly I do not understand why none of these sponsorship programs take direct bank transfers. Those are free in Europe for all parties involved, so they would have exactly zero processing fees. More money for them (since they can take bigger slice) and more money for the projects (since there are less parties taking their share). I just find it baffling.
This isn't true for a business. For business accounts with many incoming transactions many banks charge a small amount. Way less than PayPal and such, but more than zero. With Deutsche Bank for instance 0.06€/transaction.
Decentralized like...payment cards, controlled by a global duopoly?? The closest thing to decentralized payments we have is SEPA payments via PSD2 "open banking" APIs, but that is significantly more difficult to implement and bank support is spotty due to TPPs having to negotiate access with each bank individually.
People mention credit cards as alternatives, but forget paypal's ease of use. It's a lot of work to enter a credit card for small , mostly one-time payments. Paypal makes that easy, at least for me i tend to purchase more because of it.
In Germany, most people don't have a credit card because you don't need one in daily life.
Instant payments to friends? Giropay is free.
Buy stuff online? PayPal, Giropay, Klarna.
Send money to other EU countries? Every bank account supports SEPA, which is free.
With that in mind, nobody is willing to pay $50 annually for a card which then charges 3% of every transaction, because there are good and free alternatives. And I don't think anyone will create a CC just for GitHub. Let's hope Microsoft will think this through and offer sane alternative payment methods (like SEPA deduction, the default for recurring payments in Europe) before removing the only non-CC option.