Payments, Steam, PlayStation, Xbox

Pre-ordering a game when your bank card will not work abroad

Steam, PlayStation and Xbox all want a card most Zimbabwean banks do not issue. A wallet top-up goes around that, and here is how to do it without losing money.

It is the same wall every big release. The store wants Visa or Mastercard, your card is domestic, and the payment fails with nothing useful on the screen to explain why.

Paying for a foreign store with a local gift card

A gift card goes around it. You are not asking a foreign store to accept your bank. You are putting balance on your account and buying with the balance.

The whole process

Find the country your game account was registered under, which is not necessarily where you live. On most platforms it cannot be changed later, and it decides which cards will work.

Set that region at the top of Gemworks and we will only show you cards that redeem on your account. Pay with EcoCash or a local card. The code appears in your vault, you redeem it on the platform, and the balance is there to spend.

Which card for which store

Steam takes US and UK wallet cards. PlayStation takes PlayStation Store cards, and we have South Africa, the UK and the US. Xbox is UK for now.

Battle.net, Epic and EA app balance are not things we sell. Where a game is on several stores, the one you can fund is usually the one to buy it on.

What goes wrong

Tax. Shop prices are generally shown before it, so topping up the exact price leaves you a dollar or two short at the till.

Region. A US card on a South African account will not redeem, we cannot override it, and once a code has been revealed there is no refund. The Loot Guarantee replaces a code that genuinely fails, but it cannot rescue one redeemed against the wrong store.

Timing. A pre-order needs money before the pre-order and a pre-load needs money before the pre-load. Our cards do not expire, so there is no reason to cut it fine.

Splitting and stacking

Balances add up, so an awkward total is not a problem. Two $25 cards and a $50 card all land in the same place.

You can also top up your Gemworks wallet and buy from that instead, which suits people who would rather convert money once and shop over a few days.

If a payment goes astray

Money left your account but the order did not move? Contact support with a screenshot of the payment message, the email on your account and which card you were buying, and we will trace it. That screenshot is the useful part, so keep it before you close the message.

Ready to buy?

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The whole process

Find the country your game account was registered under, which is not necessarily where you live. On most platforms it cannot be changed later, and it decides which cards will work.

What goes wrong

Tax. Shop prices are generally shown before it, so topping up the exact price leaves you a dollar or two short at the till.

Timing. A pre-order needs money before the pre-order and a pre-load needs money before the pre-load. Our cards do not expire, so there is no reason to cut it fine.