Steam finally adds the Philippine Peso to supported currencies

For a majority of Philippine gamers, anything with dollar signs will look expensive, but Valve will be dealing with that this month. It recently send an email to all Steam users from the Philippines, announcing that the Philippine Peso (PhP) will be a supported currency from later this month.

If your Steam wallet has any money in it on September 16th, 2014, your US dollar balance will be converted to [Philippine] Peso, at a conversion rate dictated by market value at the time of conversion.

Judging by this, it doesn’t seem that Steam prices for Philippine-based players will be any higher or lower. Rather, it looks like they will simply be equivalent to their US dollar values. While this makes things convenient in terms of determining prices, it still doesn’t solve the lack of payment methods for the Philippines. Steam’s payment methods mostly utilize credit cards, which are difficult to apply for in the country due to economic reasons. Steam Wallet codes are also available locally in the Philippines, but are usually sold at high, marked-up prices.

(See: 4 ways for Philippine gamers to top up Steam funds without using a credit card)

As announced at the Steam Dev Days conference in January this year, Philippine Peso is only one of the 12 new currencies that will be supported by Steam in 2014. Other currencies announced include Rupiah (Indonesia), Ringgit (Malaysia), and Baht (Thailand). However, no actual dates for when these will roll out have been confirmed. We contacted E-Club Store Malaysia for more information, but it was unable to disclose anything more.

India also needs alternative payment methods:

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