Hello, everybody,
First of all I would like to say that I have been using Cloudflare for years in the free plan. And I love it.
Now that some of my websites are getting higher user numbers, I’m thinking of switching to a paid plan.
Now I have looked at the payment methods and I noticed that only Paypal and credit cards are supported, which I think is a great pity.
In Europe, or my country of origin Germany, not everyone uses PayPal. And not all Germans have credit cards (82790000 Germans - 35079000 credit cards approx. 42%). Therefore I find it a pity that the payment via SEPA direct debit is not supported. This is the most widely used payment in online trading in Germany. And anyone who has a debit card can use it.
If this payment should be offered I would choose a fee required plan for some of my websites and also switch directly to the Cloudflare Registar.
Credit/debit card penetration in Germany is the lowest in Europe. Germany is on the for front of Fintech.
Try N26 a German with free debit card and competitive forex rates.
I understand these kinds of payment types are not necessarily something you are using on a daily basis and might seem a bit foreign to you, however particularly on an international level it is rather tricky to cater globally to all sorts of local payment types. While probably not impossible I’d imagine it to be a bit of a hassle for a US based company to offer SEPA transactions.
Generally my advice would be to simply get a credit card. Not that you’d have to use it for every single purchase from that moment on but it will help you in cases like this.
If that is absolutely not an option I’d say open a Paypal account where you’ll be able to have that very SEPA transaction you wanted.
The third alternative would be to open an account of the type @adaptive mentioned, these cards are still debit cards but can be used for most online payments (that is Mastercard and Visa Debit, not their Maestro offers). TransferWise, Revolut, and N26 offer that.
but it will help you in cases like this.