Why exact change is an MS Point no-no

It's happened to all of us. There's a game on Xbox Live Arcade that you want for the ever attractive price of 400 MS Points. You don't have any points, so you decide to buy some. But what's this? You can only purchase them in multiples of 500, leaving you with useless leftover points. This begs the question, why can't you buy the exact amount you need? 1UP's Patrick Klepek asked just this question of Xbox 360 group product manager Aaron Greenberg. While we've always assumed that spare change is produced in order to entice users to spend more money so they can spend more Microsoft Points, Greenberg has a different answer. "The reason why we do that, the core reason, is around credit card transaction fees," says Greenberg, adding, "If we do this in bulk, we don't have to burden the consumer with the transaction fees, or ourselves or publishers." He conceded that it's annoying to end up with odd leftover points, but added that Microsoft isn't planning on changing the system anytime soon.

So there you have it folks, you're spending extra money so you can save money. Simple, right?

[Via Joystiq]