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The online gaming domain is set to hit a valuation of $32 million by 2025, with about 1.3 million unique users. This market growth projection allows online gaming platforms and creators to grow their user base. However, remaining competitive and relevant in the market requires them to improve every aspect of the services they provide continuously. One of the central components of a seamless gaming experience is choosing between a payment gateway vs payment processor. The end goal is to have a system that ensures secure and fast transactions without disrupting the gaming experience.
Choosing Between a Payment Service Provider/Processor; Acquiring Bank and Payment Gateway Service Provider:
Payment Service Providers or Payment Processors:
Generally, a payment service provider is a leading choice for an online payment system, particularly for online businesses and e-commerce portals. Typically, a PSP provides features like built-in payment processors and payment gateways. Sometimes, they even set up your merchant account ultimately. There is a small fee attached to it, and the entire process is relatively simple.
Additionally, you don’t need to enter a long-term contract to avail of these services. However, for a gaming platform, the select payment solutions provider must comply with PCI DSS, GDPR and other international standards.
Acquiring Banks:
An acquirer or acquiring bank has the primary task of proving a business with a merchant account. This is where the money from online payments goes first. An acquirer sometimes helps with processing credit cards for online and offline businesses. However, the merchant needs to carefully go through the agreement document to understand if the payment gateway is included in the offer or if it is chargeable. Besides, only setting up your gaming payment gateway with an acquiring bank can cost significantly high.
Payment Gateway Service Providers:
This is ideal for an online gaming merchant who only wants an online payment gateway and not the payment processor or merchant account.
Factors to Consider while Choosing a Payment Gateway:
Having the most advanced and resourceful gaming payment solutions out there should be one of your top priorities. We live in a highly competitive market, which makes it even more vital to have a payment processing system that is highly competent and adds value to your business.
Integration and Technical Factors:
All technical considerations should be at the top of your mind when you consider setting up the payment platform on your portal. Whichever solution you choose must integrate easily with the technology and infrastructure you are currently using. It should also have a hassle-free integration without restricting or negatively impacting the end user’s gaming experience. Before you go through the process of setting up the payment platform, use test mode to experience the payment gateway instead of paying immediately.
Mobile-centric Interface:
According to the ‘Games Market Revenue Worldwide in 2021 by Device’ report by Statista, mobile gaming was the largest gaming sector globally, bringing in revenues of US $90.7 billion in a year. Console gaming was the second-largest segment, with annual revenues of $49.2 billion, while PC gaming was worth about $35.9 billion and came in third.
Based on this information, make sure you consider the value and opportunities available with a mobile-centric UI for your platform. This is an advantage both when it comes to user experience and from the payment convenience angle too. The payment gateway UI and payment process should be integrated with the mobile application you develop and should be smooth and presentable.
Gaming Experience:
Gaming has come a long way in the last decade. Gamers today expect smooth and seamless experiences in every field, from the gameplay to processes to network speed to payments. They are looking for uninterrupted services, which could easily be disrupted by hiccups during the payment process.
To avoid this and increase brand love, you should ensure you choose an easy, fast and smooth checkout process that you can enable on your platform. A complex or lengthy process could interrupt the player’s game experience and your platform. Ensure that the purchase of extra coins, cash, characters, weapons, levels, subscriptions, or upgrades should be hassle-free.
Merchant Experience:
The satisfaction of the gamer is not the only thing to consider. Payment gateways should also consider the merchant’s experience. This includes several points such as:
– Customised and affordable pricing plans according to the volume of transactions.
– Smart dashboard for merchants with smart functions and features that allow easy analytics access for records, transactions, refunds, reports etc. This helps in improving service delivery and strengthening customer relations.
– Personalised customer support from your payment service providers.
– Fast and easy assisted onboarding
Protection and Security:
In the world of gaming, threats, fraud, chargebacks are all relatively higher than in most other industries. Thus, it gets categorised as a high-risk sector. Therefore, you must check whether the online payment gateways you are considering for your platform will support the high-risk environment and offer them the best solutions and measures.
Gamers can file chargebacks in incidents of friendly fraud or recover recurring subscription amounts that get deducted without them realising it or if they don’t recognise transactions in their bank statements.
For such chargebacks, customers approach their bank directly and file chargebacks instead of asking the merchant for a refund. These chargebacks bring down the gaming merchant’s reputation. This is a common occurrence in the business of gaming. Chargebacks can also be filed for other incidents of fraud, like transactions on a stolen card. There are also a growing number of data breaches and in-game thefts that make it essential to ensure security protocols on various levels.
The payment processing system you choose should be able to handle a wide range of elements. This includes PCI DSS compliance, cybersecurity, SSL, curbing risk and dispute resolution, gaming traffic and encryption methods.
When choosing a payment processing system for your gaming platform, make sure you consider each of the factors given above. This will ensure you have lower expenses, superior user experience and customer loyalty.
