They do it for anything under 5$ for me. Anything over 5$ is exact.
Is this a thing? I just bought something earlier today for £1.30 and I paid the exact amount. My balance was empty at the time as well
how is this any different than a brick & mortar store having a 5 dollar minimum on credit card purchases?
its really not that hard to understand
People with the minimum problem: Are you using Mastercard?
I have this issue, and I'm wondering if it's linked to the card companies. Like, maybe Sony has a deal with Visa in exchange for doing their credit card through them.
I use a Mastercard and don't have this issue.
$5 isn't so bad and is understandable I guess for transaction cost alone. I wanted to add some funds to my Nintendo account yesterday. Your choices go from 10, then 20, to 60 euro's! Nothing in between!
This is probably what OP did and why people are confused:
Why did you add $5 to your wallet instead of just buying the game directly from the shop? That's your problem.
If you bought it from the shop directly it would have taken whatever is left in your wallet balance (presumably $0) then taken the rest from your account, which can be any amount over $5 ($5.32).
Since you added $5, now when you try to buy it from the shop it uses your wallet amount ($5) and the rest from your account, which has to be an amount over $5 (so charges $5).
You pay the exact amount for things if the purchase process would end up requiring you add $5+ to your wallet.
By adding money to your wallet on your own, you screwed yourself.
Go through the process procedure without money in your wallet and it'll end up prompting you to charge the exact amount.
Judging from your posts, the reason this didn't happen is because you'd already charged $5 to your wallet. This means you need to charge a few cents to cover taxes. Since you can only charge a minimum of $5, you have to charge $5 to cover those cents.
If you'd had nothing in your wallet, you would've been prompted to charge the exact amount instead.
Edit: A probable reason for the minimum fund limit is credit card transaction fees. Every time they make a transaction, they have to pay a fee and if the charge is too small that fee can be too large a percentage of the cut to be worth it. Because of this, many companies will enforce a minimum charge.
Adding $5 to the wallet first is where the fuck up happened. That $5 transaction has already happened. Now OP needs 32 cents for the game. But obviously, there's a $5 minimum for a transaction. Hence he'll need to do an additional $5 transaction now.
Basically, lesson learned the hard way OP (which is still not so bad seeing as it's not like those $5 are gone altogether). Next time you have something $9.68 or above to buy, you'll be able to pay exact. And then from that point onwards, just don't add credit to your wallet manually by yourself, the system will automatically do that when you do a checkout. It'll either add $5 if the transaction is under $5, or pay the exact amount without any funds left over in your wallet.
That... makes sense though? In moving money from your credit card to your wallet, they have to move a minimum $5. So in buying a thing that costs more than you have in your wallet, they have to move a minimum $5. So they move the $5, charge the $5.32 on the $10 on your wallet, and you're left with $4.68 in your wallet.
Am I crazy?
Nope nevermind beaten.
What? How did you draw that conclusion?
Correlation = / = causation, as in, it's clearly not that simple.
I don't disagree with what OP is saying but is this really that big of a deal? How often are you buying things under $5? and if you are then you are using the leftovers right away anyways. And if you aren't then who cares if you are out $2 until you need to buy something else from PSN. IT'S $2. If having $2 waiting on your PSN account is an issue then maybe you shouldn't be spending the original $3 to begin with.
I haven't had this problem on PSN for a while TBH.
Holy shit, is this real? I've never bought anything digital on a Nintendo platform ever, so I had no idea.
The main reason I'm selling my ps4 for a Scorpio
This doesn't happen to me (UK), I paid £1.20 the other day for stuff.
In UK I can buy and item for £1.30 and only £1.30 is taken from my card/bank.
Holy shit, is this real? I've never bought anything digital on a Nintendo platform ever, so I had no idea.
Lol. On a serious note, I secretly like it because it gives me an excuse to buy avatars and themesBest reason to jump ship to another platform.
Yeah it's dumb. Steam's purchasing experience is the best.
No. In his case it works like this:
if $0 in wallet: product costs $5.32 and he can charge exact amount, because this charge is larger than $5
if $5 in wallet: product costs $5.32, the wallet covers $5 and he needs 32 cents. The purchase process will not allow him to make a charge lower than $5, meaning he has to spend $5 to get the necessary 32 cents.
Edit: The moral of the story is don't pre-charge your wallet. And maybe hope you're able to avoid the minimum charge.
Really dumb way to do things.
Well that is not the case everywhere, it's like how some smaller shops enforce a minimum for their cards while others do not.
Meaning it is not introduced from the top, just something implemented at the base (the US, and apparently France)
Valve won't let me add more than 100 at a time to my Steam Account - I'm not in saving my credit card details anywhere for "convenience" so it bothers me to type them in all the time
Yea, just tested this. Put $5 in my wallet. Tried to buy something for $7.49. At checkout, it only took $2.49 from my wallet and charged another $5 to my card, leaving $2.51 in my wallet. Really dumb way to do things.
It's not that I don't understand the rationale behind it. But like the local stores that have, for example, a $10 minimum requirement to use a credit card, I'll just shop somewhere else that doesn't have that policy. I have my doubts that between small and large purchases on their digital store by their large userbase, that Sony's video game division cannot absorb the cost of the extra credit card transaction fees.Credit card fees consist of TWO portions, added together:
1) A flat fee
2) A percentage of the transaction amount
Credit card transaction fees are generally looked at as "the cost of doing business." But because the flat fee is there, charging very small amounts (for example, a few dollars) causes the fee to be a significantly larger portion of the amount paid, which cuts into the profit margin.
Recall that Sony (and Valve, and Microsoft, etc.) is running a digital marketplace where they sell a lot of third-party goods. They've promised those third parties a certain % of the purchase price. So if a larger % of the purchase price goes towards credit-card fees, that's all coming out of Sony's pocket.
Hence, the minimums. It makes sense when you think about it.
This is also why you should use cash when paying small amounts (like, under $5). If you go to a local store and buy a newspaper, or a cheap food item, or something else where both the price and profit margins are very low, and then charge it, the store might be paying more in credit card fees than they're making off the transaction...which is why many stores post credit card minimums.
But also, think about where the money is going. Some folks complain about income inequality, and how huge banks and businesses (and their investors) rake in money hand over fist, and how consumers and local businesses are left with the scraps. If you charge everything on your credit card, especially sub-$5 amounts, you are part of the problem, because a portion of every transaction is going not to your local businesses, but to a huge bank or corporation that doesn't particularly need the money. Those redirected fees literally add up to billions of dollars.
For some perspective: during just the 3rd quarter of 2016, MasterCard made a profit of $1.18 billion on revenues of $2.88 billion. And that's just on a small portion of the fees collected using cards with the MasterCard logo on them. The majority of the fees go to the banks that issued the cards.
So yeah. Sony's minimums are there to reduce what they lose from credit card transactions. I'd do the same thing if I were them.
No, it isn't.
The minimum transaction is $5.00. You could have spent $7.49 in one transaction, if you wanted.
I explain above why Sony made this decision.