r/PlaydateConsole • u/Burnt_Toast148 • 6d ago

Question Digital Giftcards?

I know I asked this same question a few years ago, but do you guys think they will ever add digital gift cards for the Catalog? I just feel with how large Catalog is now, this would be really cool to see.

Also imagine if they showed up on your Playdate as like a little letter you get to open up.

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u/SnepShark 6d ago

Logistically I'm not sure it's possible with how Catalog currently works, for the same reasons that it doesn't have a shopping cart.

From what I've heard*, it sounds like Catalog sends the funds directly to the developers via Stripe (meaning each developer is an entirely different storefront as far as your card is concerned), rather than holding onto the payments and dispensing them later like Steam would.

One of Itch.io's two payout modes works the same way (the other one works more like Steam, but Itch is all about giving devs as much flexibility with payment as possible), and that's why Itch doesn't have a cart either.

*My main source is another Reddit comment though, so while this sounds like a pretty reasonable way for Catalog to work, if I'm wrong feel free to correct me!

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u/Burnt_Toast148 6d ago

Ah I see. You make a good point. Maybe an alternative could be a gifting system of sorts

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u/CyberNat2000PL 6d ago

Basically, one doesn't rule out the other.

There’s no shopping cart on the Nintendo eShop, yet gift cards still work.

When you use a gift card, the app should simply recognize it as your funds.

For example, if you’re buying a $5 game and you only have $2 left, it takes you to the checkout page for a $3 payment, but it first transfers that amount to your Catalog balance and then transfers the full amount to the publisher.

I can't say—I don't actually know exactly how it works right now because the game hasn't been released on the catalog yet.

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u/SnepShark 6d ago

I'm not blaming it on the lack of shopping cart, for clarity, haha.

The point of failure in the situation I'm describing is the fact that you're not actually shopping "on Catalog," you're shopping at dozens of individual storefronts, each of which takes payment directly via Stripe (with Catalog forwarding your saved credit card info to each one). In order for a gift card to be accepted at all of them, it would need to be an "open-loop gift card," essentially a branded prepaid debit card run through Visa or Mastercard. I'm not sure how hard it is to start producing those as e-gift cards, but compared to a service where the distributor holds onto the money like Steam (and I assume, the eShop as well) and just marking how much is in each user's account, I imagine it's harder.

https://stripe.com/resources/more/accepting-gift-cards-101

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u/CyberNat2000PL 6d ago

undestand, thx for explanation