Zophan Canister Overhaul
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(Update at end of post)
They're now red!
Nah, not really.
A new payment method, lower fees, packs and bulk discounts!
New payment method We have integrated Stripe to process payments. Stripe offers better rates, especially when it comes to currency conversions. Bearing in mind that the vast majority of our customers are from outside the UK, this can only be described as a good thing. Stripe has additional benefits too. Not least of which the fact that payments are charged and processed immediately, whereas PayPal may, at their own discretion, withhold payments for as much as seven days without any apparent reason. Payments are handled through a special widget within the site, so you don't have to navigate elsewhere. No "Stripe account" is needed, just a bank card. Payment details are handled securely by Stripe - we never actually see your details. Stripe is fully PCI compliant and are held to the highest standards of security. We realise that not everyone has access to a bank card, so PayPal will continue to be offered as an option - however it is strongly recommended that you use our new Stripe integration if you can. It costs less both for us and you!
Lower fees As mentioned, fees are lower when paying with Stripe. I'll be honest, I can't actually figure out how PayPal's currency conversion fees work, but it's always at least 3-5%. With Stripe, the currency conversion rate is set on our end, and it's being set at 2.5% - winning already!
Packs Having a free-form number input (100 - 50,000 ZC) was a nice feature, but let's be honest how many people would order 273 ZC? ... One. The answer is one person, ever, out of almost 65,000 payments to date. So that's going away, to be replaced with a set of 6 different Zophan packs. These range from 100 ZC up to 10,000 ZC and have been chosen based on actual data from what users have purchased in the past.
Bulk discounts By having fixed pack sizes, we can actually (and finally!) offer bulk discounts on the larger packs. Conversely, however, we've had to add a small fee to the 100 ZC pack. This is because transaction fees are calculated as a percentage plus a fixed amount. That fixed amount is £0.20 and as a result the transaction fee on a £1 payment is almost 25% of the amount! That's quite high, hence the fee has been added to offset that cost while still being able to offer a small pack. From now on, Zophan Sales (which I will try to make a little more frequent than just once a year or less!) will not grant bonus ZC, but instead discount the prices on the packs.
I hope these changes help our economy going forward. Thank you for your continued support!
Update 28/Jan: Thank you for your feedback so far, and it's good to see how quickly Stripe has been adopted by our customers. In response to feedback, you will now find an additional option: "Custom". Use this to type in any amount of ZC you choose, between 100 and 50,000 (as per the original setup). The system will calculate a price for you, using the best deal it can offer. For example, orders between 1,000 and 1,999 will benefit from the 5% discount. 2,000 to 4,999 gets 10% off, and so on. It will also determine if you could get more ZC for less money, and applies this automatically when you check out. For example, 975 ZC would cost £9.75, but if you buy 1,000 ZC then it only costs £9.50. Therefore, typing in 975 will instead submit an order for 1,000 ZC, saving you money and getting you extra ZC! I'd also like to mention, mostly to our German customers, that unfortunately Stripe does not support Maestro cards. There are plans to do so, but no specific timeline as to when. In the meantime I will look into other options, but just to get an idea, are any of you familiar with SOFORT as a payment method? Apparently that's a thing in Germany and a few other countries, but I know nothing about it so your feedback could be very helpful here. Thank you! And for customers in the US, it has been brought to my attention that Visa Gift Cards may or may not work. This is most likely due to them not being able to work for international payments. Unfortunately the only thing we get on this end is a "do_not_honor" message from the bank when we try to charge it, so check your gift card's terms of use or contact your bank to ask about it.
Nah, not really.
A new payment method, lower fees, packs and bulk discounts!
New payment method We have integrated Stripe to process payments. Stripe offers better rates, especially when it comes to currency conversions. Bearing in mind that the vast majority of our customers are from outside the UK, this can only be described as a good thing. Stripe has additional benefits too. Not least of which the fact that payments are charged and processed immediately, whereas PayPal may, at their own discretion, withhold payments for as much as seven days without any apparent reason. Payments are handled through a special widget within the site, so you don't have to navigate elsewhere. No "Stripe account" is needed, just a bank card. Payment details are handled securely by Stripe - we never actually see your details. Stripe is fully PCI compliant and are held to the highest standards of security. We realise that not everyone has access to a bank card, so PayPal will continue to be offered as an option - however it is strongly recommended that you use our new Stripe integration if you can. It costs less both for us and you!
Lower fees As mentioned, fees are lower when paying with Stripe. I'll be honest, I can't actually figure out how PayPal's currency conversion fees work, but it's always at least 3-5%. With Stripe, the currency conversion rate is set on our end, and it's being set at 2.5% - winning already!
Packs Having a free-form number input (100 - 50,000 ZC) was a nice feature, but let's be honest how many people would order 273 ZC? ... One. The answer is one person, ever, out of almost 65,000 payments to date. So that's going away, to be replaced with a set of 6 different Zophan packs. These range from 100 ZC up to 10,000 ZC and have been chosen based on actual data from what users have purchased in the past.
Bulk discounts By having fixed pack sizes, we can actually (and finally!) offer bulk discounts on the larger packs. Conversely, however, we've had to add a small fee to the 100 ZC pack. This is because transaction fees are calculated as a percentage plus a fixed amount. That fixed amount is £0.20 and as a result the transaction fee on a £1 payment is almost 25% of the amount! That's quite high, hence the fee has been added to offset that cost while still being able to offer a small pack. From now on, Zophan Sales (which I will try to make a little more frequent than just once a year or less!) will not grant bonus ZC, but instead discount the prices on the packs.
I hope these changes help our economy going forward. Thank you for your continued support!
Update 28/Jan: Thank you for your feedback so far, and it's good to see how quickly Stripe has been adopted by our customers. In response to feedback, you will now find an additional option: "Custom". Use this to type in any amount of ZC you choose, between 100 and 50,000 (as per the original setup). The system will calculate a price for you, using the best deal it can offer. For example, orders between 1,000 and 1,999 will benefit from the 5% discount. 2,000 to 4,999 gets 10% off, and so on. It will also determine if you could get more ZC for less money, and applies this automatically when you check out. For example, 975 ZC would cost £9.75, but if you buy 1,000 ZC then it only costs £9.50. Therefore, typing in 975 will instead submit an order for 1,000 ZC, saving you money and getting you extra ZC! I'd also like to mention, mostly to our German customers, that unfortunately Stripe does not support Maestro cards. There are plans to do so, but no specific timeline as to when. In the meantime I will look into other options, but just to get an idea, are any of you familiar with SOFORT as a payment method? Apparently that's a thing in Germany and a few other countries, but I know nothing about it so your feedback could be very helpful here. Thank you! And for customers in the US, it has been brought to my attention that Visa Gift Cards may or may not work. This is most likely due to them not being able to work for international payments. Unfortunately the only thing we get on this end is a "do_not_honor" message from the bank when we try to charge it, so check your gift card's terms of use or contact your bank to ask about it.
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Injustice
Feedback welcome!
I'm happy for the better currency conversions. :D
Avatar is a screenshot of my character from Pokémon GO.
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Terraria Help
I need a bit of help finding a new Terraria world, as I've lost mine some time ago.
Here's the details: Courruption, Large, Jungle on the right (I would pefer it un-corrupted), Blue Dungeon on the left. Un-corrupted Oceans. A semi-large un-corrupted forest biome on the left side of the world (where my main base was).
If you find a world like this, please send me the seed name in a Private Message. Thank you in advance!
highkey there should be a 700 zc pack for people who just buy uber and month HM and dont have the funds for 1k or 500 and two 100 packs, i dont know how useful that is i just know id use it XD
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Do Visa gift cards work for this? :o
Other than that question, this is amazing news!!
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I really like the fact that we can see the conversion from GBP to USD where as before we had to go to paypal to see the price in USD. I like it!
I can say I actually enjoyed the free-form number imput. It was useful for when I was just a couple hundred ZC short, but I didn't need say, 500 more. I'm open to the new system however and I'm happy to see PayPal go -_-
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lul it's funny 'cause I JUST bought some weird amount of ZC to even out my Premium Box progress bar to be evenly divisible. I apparently wrecked it at some point in time and OCD was like SQUINT WHY ARE YOU THERE?? Must fix.
Either way, cool stuff, just kinda wish the custom amount hadn't gone away... It was nice and I did use it. Not gonna fuss though, this is alright.
But thank you for the update and getting better fee rates, hope that helps y'all out. ^u^b
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QUOTE originally posted by CASSIEL
And yet i dont can buy Zc anymore.
Paypal is gone.
Its not cool
:(
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