The total digital transaction capacity is expected to double from the current value to surpass a whopping $7 trillion by 2023. The boom of digital payments has a significant impact on related industries, especially giants like electronic gaming. Indeed, we have been witnessing the transformation of iGaming from a rather inconvenient underground niche in the mid-aughts to the mainstream one with plenty of opportunities to prove and monetize oneself easy & fast. That said, the mutual shaping of iGaming and online payments is still ongoing and therefore we are entitled to review the main channels and ways through which it happens.
Alleviating Gambling Routine with Online Payments
With more than 660 million Crossfire accounts, 500 million accounts in QQ Speed, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, Candy Crush Saga each, and at almost the same number of Minecraft players, gaming has long gone the stage at which it was just about having fun. But it’s not always easy for global gaming businesses to monetize unless they choose the correct online payment channel, preferably a KYC & AML-compliant end-to-end payment solution covering all the relevant countries and territories.
KYC & AML Compliance
No matter all the recent progress, iGaming is still considered one of the riskiest sectors along with gambling. While the latter is always burdened with local rules and regulation and therefore should combine local solutions such as, say, trustworthy payment system Euteller as an online casino deposit method, and global ones, for instance, cryptocurrencies, for most iGaming businesses it would be impossible to withstand the pressure of KYC and AML requirements. Just imagine yourself passing KYC and AML to donate to your favorite streamer – you wouldn’t do that, right? That’s why most iGaming companies onboard payment providers with inbuilt services for ID verification and payments so that both players and viewers stay focused on the process and pay easily and without completing any superfluous aka burdensome procedures.
Removing Local Borders: End-to-End Solution
Overcoming local legislation barriers is crucial for global gaming providers. There are hundreds of jurisdictions to comply with and for sure it’s much simpler to onboard a payment provider that is already in line with the rules and allows you to move funds freely throughout all the necessary jurisdictions. And that’s exactly what leading iGaming giants do – they conclude agreements with several end-to-end payment solutions and instantly ensure smooth money transfers instead of spending months and years on clearing the way by themselves.
Re-Shaping the Online Payment Industry to Meet the Gamers’ Needs
Just the way video gaming adopts the best experience of online payments, the payment market evolves to introduce up-to-date financial services to meet the growing demand coming from gamers. The most noticeable change of the past decade is a shift of iGaming payment preferences towards alternative payment gateways, which, by the way, so far comprise 50% of all video game transactions. Every 3rd gamer pays with an e-wallet, every 3rd gamer pays with credit/debit cards, and the rest 33% use other gateways such as crypto, vouchers, and prepaid cards – pretty balanced, huh?
Unprecedentedly Huge Market that Stimulates Competition
The competition between online payment providers is overwhelming – with the advent of first e-wallets and then cryptocurrencies; real-time processing, zero fees, no interruptions during operation, and impregnable security became the beacons for online payment providers while those still missing to keep abreast of the latest payment trends & ensure all the mentioned qualities are literally doomed. For sure there are still barriers to solve, for example, effectively combine privacy & security in a single payment method, but the fact that the demand from the iGaming sector stimulates the development of online payment systems is undeniable.
Integrating Into Gaming Experience
So what’s next for iGaming and online payments? Since providing customers with instant payments is no longer a challenge, the next step is probably integrating payments into the gambling process while preserving the convenience & easiness of the payment process itself. Whether that and other key online payment challenges are to be solved in the nearest future is out of the question, the only real question is what company will be the first to solve? Make your bets!