Appcharge has published an analysis of direct-to-consumer payment transactions in mobile gaming, drawing on more than USD $1 billion in annualised volume processed through its payments stack.
The data points to three operational choices that affect whether players complete purchases, how much they spend and whether they return for later transactions: the location of the acquiring bank, the local payment methods shown at checkout and the use of buy now, pay later options.
One of the clearest findings concerns local acquiring. Routing a payment through a bank in the player's own country rather than through a cross-border setup lifted approval rates by 8.4 percentage points.
On USD $10 million of annual volume in a single market, that gap would represent USD $840,000 in transactions that might otherwise fail at authorisation. Local acquiring outperformed cross-border arrangements in 17 of 20 combinations of processing entity and payment method where volumes were large enough to assess.
Card network data in the study showed a wider gain for Visa than for Mastercard. Visa transactions improved by 8.1 percentage points under local acquiring, while Mastercard transactions improved by 5.3 percentage points.
Appcharge linked that result to the structure of the two card schemes, where acquirer and issuer sit in different countries on a cross-border transaction. That arrangement can increase the risk signals seen by issuing banks when deciding whether to approve a payment.
Checkout choices
The analysis also examined the effect of payment method selection on repeat purchases in Brazil. Appcharge tracked a cohort of nearly 44,000 Brazilian players across Pix, credit card, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
At the second purchase, the methods finished within about three percentage points of each other, with Apple Pay slightly ahead of Pix. The gap widened at the third purchase, where Pix moved into a 1.5-times lead over Apple Pay, a 1.7-times lead over Google Pay and a two-times lead over credit card.
By the fourth purchase, Pix extended that advantage to 2.3 times over Apple Pay, 2.2 times over Google Pay and 3.1 times over credit card. The figures suggest that, for this group of Brazilian users, the strongest signal from local payment methods appears later in the customer journey rather than at the first conversion point.
That challenges a common assumption in online payments, where local methods are often judged by their ability to win the first sale. In this case, later purchasing behaviour may be the more revealing measure of value.
Order value
A third strand of the study focused on buy now, pay later products and average order value. On matched storefronts, Klarna orders were 25.7% higher than credit card orders, while Afterpay orders were 11.7% higher.
Other digital wallets in the same comparison recorded lower order values than cards. Apple Pay orders were 11.3% lower than credit card orders, and Google Pay orders were 15.1% lower.
Appcharge said that difference matters because payment choice may reveal information about a player before longer-term spending patterns appear. In mobile gaming, publishers often rely on behavioural data gathered over weeks or months to identify users who are more likely to stay active and spend more.
The company argues that the payment method itself can provide an earlier signal. If a player chooses a buy now, pay later option on a first purchase, the publisher may be able to infer something about likely spending behaviour without waiting for a more extensive account history.
Chen Aspler, Director of Payments at Appcharge, set out the company's view of the findings.
"Acquiring geography, payment method mix, and payment flexibility each take real work to get right, and none of them look like priorities until you see what they cost you," said Chen Aspler, Director of Payments at Appcharge.
"The gains from each individually will be modest at first, but combined as a whole - that's where we see publishers making major uplift to their transaction success rates and ultimately, revenue," Aspler said.
The results add to growing scrutiny among mobile game publishers of direct-to-consumer sales channels outside app store payment systems. For companies trying to increase margins and strengthen direct relationships with players, payments infrastructure has become more of a commercial issue than a back-office function.
Appcharge said it passed USD $1 billion in annualised direct-to-consumer transaction volume in March, giving it a broad base of payment activity from which to assess approval rates, repeat purchase behaviour and order values across different markets and payment types.