Dear Johan.
Let me start by saying that I own many of your games, and have been a supporter of Paradox since I found EU2 over 10 years ago. Also, when I was a purchasing agent at Microcenter, I made sure that many of your games were represented in our chain of stores.
Anyway, I had an idea when getting ready to place an order for the new CK2 expansion on Gamersgate. I noticed the only payment processing method you had for credit cards was Paypal.
I used to work for an internet based company, that had about 10 million dollars worth of sales a year, and we hated doing business with Paypal. Not only were we always being hit with charge backs, but they were expensive, and there was no one we could talk to when we had problems with payments. It was so bad, that I prefer to use any other payment processing method because of the bad blood I have for the company. I hope your experience is better, but even if it is you must admit that their merchant fees could be lower.
So, we decided to try a new payment method called Dwolla (
www.dwolla.com). They charged a flat $0.25 fee per transaction that was over $10.00. It was also painless to add it as a checkout option. The checkout process with Dwolla is slightly more involved for the customer, and only a minority of customers chose that option, but we still ended up saving tens of thousands of dollars at no cost. And, we have no idea how many of those orders would not have came through if we only had paypal as an option.
I encourage you to look into adding Dwolla as a payment option for gamersgate. Also, if you would like to discuss my experience with Dwolla further I can make myself available over email, telephone, or skype.
Thank you again for helping to make so many good games.
Sincerely,
-Pddyx