State of Play – The market opportunity in gaming

The gaming industry is continuing to grow at an exponential rate. The number of video game users is expected to reach almost 3.8 million by 2027, with user penetration expected to hit 35.6% the same year. In recent years, many gaming platforms have released subscription-based services, such as Ubisoft’s Uplay+ gaming flat rate, or Google Stadia’s game streaming platform to attract casual gamers and change the way consumers are playing games in general.

Beyond video games, the global esports audience is experiencing rapid growth, with figures predicting the total audience will surpass 640 million by 2025, and generating net revenue of over $1.6 billion by 2024, with China accounting for nearly a third of total global revenue.

As new games and business models spawn every month within the industry, the average revenue per user (ARPU) is projected to reach almost $84 by the end of 2022, so it’s imperative for platforms to ensure they’re doing all they can to capitalize on the opportunity.

So, how can a cloud-native payment orchestration solution boost gaming companies’ bottom lines and help them enter new and emerging markets?

Don’t lose health points integrating payments

One way gaming companies can attract and retain customers is by allowing them to pay for their service with their preferred method. Whether that’s an online cash application, money transfer, cryptocurrency, QR code, or a digital wallet.

However, for merchants, onboarding, integrating, managing, and scaling any new payment method can be a challenge. From negotiations with multiple payment service providers (PSPs) to accommodating different functionalities and APIs, it can result in months of integration work to add a single payment method to an existing payment stack and to its related fulfilment and accounting systems. Beyond that, resources will have to be invested into the back-end work needed to support updates and enhancements to a payment type across its lifecycle.

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Local data regulation: More XP needed

In addition to individual customers’ preferred payment methods, there is also geographical complexity for merchants to contend with. This requires deep knowledge of a market’s unique payment landscape plus linguistic and technical skills that many do not have.

Regulation presents still more complexity. In Europe, the EU General Data Protection Regulation mandates the local storage and management of citizens’ payment data. India and Brazil boast similar regulations. Meeting these diverse requirements is a significant challenge and requires cloud-driven Edge computing capabilities that bring computation and storage closer to the sources of data.

So, how can merchants, particularly those with finite resources, cope with such varied challenges?

Double points: Harnessing the power of the cloud

One solution is to use a cloud-native payment orchestration platform (POP), which facilitates payment routing and processing between multiple payment providers and unifies all the components of a transaction under a single control layer, enabling the end-to-end management and automation of payments processing. A POP can allow gaming companies to manage all their payment services and transactions in one place while dispensing with the time-consuming and costly coding and integration work involved in onboarding and supporting different payment methods.

A POP also helps keep them in compliance with local regulations governing the use and storage of citizen data by processing and storing data at the Edge. Another advantage is that a POP allows gaming companies to work with a variety of payment providers and thus avoid being locked into proprietary APIs or a single ecosystem. The result? More payment options for consumers, which helps to optimize conversion and increase sales.

At a macro level, a POP acts as the foundation for all current and future cross-border payments, making it easier for gaming providers to enter new markets and scale for international success.

Designed with advanced capabilities and benefits, Gr4vy’s service agnostic and universal capabilities across PCI-level 1 payment credential vaulting, 3D Secure, tokenization, Apple Pay, Google Pay and more ensures that merchants always have the flexibility they need across their payments stack.

Unlike other POPs, Gr4vy makes it easy to move between service providers seamlessly with just a few clicks. And Gr4vy’s no-code infrastructure enables merchants to orchestrate payments and risk management services across multiple providers — making it easy to deploy, test and learn what services work best for their business and scale.

For more information, please visit gr4vy.com