Gaming has changed a lot in recent years. In an era of instant gratification, where speed reigns supreme, fast payments have never mattered more.
That’s where Trustly comes in. The Pay by Bank provider works across gaming, e-commerce and financial services, with almost two decades of experience behind it.
In the first of a two-part Payment Expert special, Tom Voaden, VP Account Management at Trustly, explains how the company helps operators tackle some of the biggest challenges in the sector.
Does the industry recognise how critical payments are to growth?
It’s increasingly doing so. Payments are the last step in the acquisition journey, which makes them the step that decides whether everything spent getting the player there counts for anything. A player who doesn’t complete a deposit is acquisition spend with nothing to show for it.
The same goes for payouts. Fast, simple journeys on both deposits and payouts have become more important and more widely recognised in recent years, especially in more digitally advanced markets. Trustly has long focused on making those journeys easy for players, which in turn adds value for operators.
But moving money from A to B is no longer enough. The most successful payment providers also offer identity checks, KYC data, and financial data to support operators in meeting their required checks to onboard players.
Take Pay N Play, one of our flagship products, helped set the industry standard in several European markets and recently launched in the UK. It uses Open Banking data to support operators to meet their requirements for identification and registration of players, without long registration forms.
Added value like this is what separates the strongest payment providers from the rest. It’s also why operators see payment providers as more important than ever.
What’s holding operators back from seeing payments as a true growth lever, and how does Trustly help?
It really depends on the market. Today, operators face a perfect storm of higher costs, tighter regulation and new challengers entering the scene. Payments can help them run more efficiently, improve their data and find new ways to onboard players, take deposits and pay out.
In markets such as Scandinavia, the UK, the Netherlands and Germany, the banking infrastructure for Pay by Bank is strong. That’s allowed us to build products that give players a smooth, fast experience, with average gaming deposit conversion above 95% and, for our top-performing operators, above 98%.
In markets such as Italy and Portugal, the infrastructure isn’t there yet, so these products can’t perform at the same level. There, we focus on popular and trusted local payment methods, such as MB WAY in Portugal. That way, we can still offer a high-converting experience that players trust.
Trustly has an almost two decades legacy. What does that actually mean for your partners, and how does it set you apart?
Trustly existed before ‘Open Banking’ and ‘Pay by Bank’ were even terms, and long before regulation like PSD2.
Being in the market earlier than most gave us time to focus on building infrastructure that’s hard to replicate. At its heart is a broad network of integrations and relationships with banks and local payment schemes.
That matters especially in gaming, one of our strongest verticals. Finding banking partners across Europe that will process gaming transactions isn’t easy. You then have to build and maintain those integrations, and build products on top that give players a great experience.
Our coverage across Europe and North America, and the network of bank and local scheme integrations behind it, is something few providers can match.
Being local matters, too. If you’re a player in the UK, you want your withdrawal to arrive from HSBC or Santander, not from an unfamiliar bank in Finland or Estonia. We can offer that because we hold local bank accounts in most of the markets where we operate. This also helps avoid IBAN discrimination in some markets, which keeps payments running and payouts instant.
Our network also means we can reliably process large volumes for some of the largest operators in Europe and North America. If one banking route isn’t available, our smart routing finds the fastest alternative.
We also recognised early on that Pay by Bank alone can’t deliver strong enough deposit conversion in every European market. So where a strong local deposit method exists, we’ve added it to our offering. We combine it with the Pay by Bank capabilities we already have there, like instant payouts, so operators get the best combination for each market.
Beyond gaming, we have a strong presence in e-commerce and financial services.
That almost two decades legacy, and being in so many cashiers across so many industries, has built strong brand recognition among players and operators alike. In some European markets, having Trustly in the cashier is almost a seal of approval for a start-up or smaller operator. Players recognise it and trust it.
Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. In some markets, it’s easier to win a bigger share of wallet when the payment brand isn’t front and centre.
