What ecommerce merchants can learn from the iGaming industry

When it comes to innovation, few industries lead the way quite like the iGaming industry. The appetite for risk that gaming companies have makes them open to trying new ideas; as a result, they tend to be on the cutting-edge of technology.
Take Pay N Play, for example. Trustly developed this payment and registration technology in 2015, and today it has become a standard in European online gaming. Registering at a gaming site has traditionally involved filling out lengthy registration forms, and then waiting days for the online casino to conduct its due diligence. But with Pay N Play, in order to register and deposit, all a player has to do is make a deposit via their trusted online bank – no redirect away from the mobile gaming site is necessary, which drastically improves conversion.

From the player perspective, it’s incredibly frictionless. But in the background, it’s rather complex; as the player makes a deposit, Trustly extracts necessary information from the player’s bank account to fulfil KYC requirements and delivers the data to the operator, who can register the player account in the background. During this step, operators can verify the player’s identity and age, ensuring that they are allowed to play. Not only does it streamline the registration and deposit steps but it also ensures that operators stay compliant with increasingly strict security regulations.

Pay N Play also enables instant withdrawals, so players can cash out their winnings to their bank account right away. When Trustly first introduced Pay N Play, some operators were very sceptical. They didn’t see how offering instant payouts to their players would actually increase deposits and ultimately build loyalty.

They were worried that if players could withdraw their money instantly, they would cash out and never return. But it turns out that offering instant withdrawals had the exact opposite effect.

According to internal Trustly data, not only has Pay N Play helped to attract a large player base quickly, but players remain more engaged and deposit over 80% more every month compared to a traditional gaming operator on average because they know they can withdraw their money instantly.

What ecommerce merchants can learn from the online gaming industry

So what can ecommerce merchants learn from a solution that has revolutionised the gaming businesses? At the end of the day, players are shoppers and shoppers are players. Their behaviours are influenced by the same innate attitudes: they want to be in control of their money, and they want a frictionless experience that won’t disrupt their expectation of instant gratification.

Likewise, gaming and ecommerce merchants are not so different. They both strive to increase the number of purchases and to offer the most convenient and simplified processes for withdrawals or refunds. And, realistically, they would prefer to ignore the reality that their customers are asking for refunds at all. However, there is much to be gained from giving your customers – whether they are players or shoppers – what they want.

According to a recent Trustly report called ‘Rethink Your Refunds, Perfect Your Payments,’ while free returns are now commonplace, refunds have not kept pace. In fact, timely processing of refunds is a core factor affecting the customer’s experience. But many companies overlook this, assuming the offer of free returns is good enough. As a result, 69% of customers report waiting four days or more for their refund.

However, the report goes on to reveal that offering faster refunds would lead to 58% of customers spending more and 56% shopping more frequently. On top of that, 95% of shoppers said they would be more loyal to a merchant that offered same-day refunds. Overall, this represents a solid uplift in revenue without merchants needing to fundamentally alter their product offerings or business model. So while free returns earn you the sale, smart returns earn you loyal customers.

A frictionless future

Clearly, there are financial advantages to offering faster refunds to your customers. However, when we look more closely at the magic of Pay N Play, the true value comes from the data that Trustly can deliver to the merchants during the bank payment process. When applied in an ecommerce perspective, the potential can be equally transformative.

Imagine shopping on your favourite brand’s website, and when it’s time to check out, you simply make a payment through your online bank and you’re done. No need to fill out a long form with your shipping details. Because Trustly can fetch that data during the payment process, the merchant can pre-fill the shipping form, which the shopper can confirm with one click.

Or the merchant can even create a unique shopper account, but there’s no need to remember a username or password because shoppers verify themselves through the payment. The result is a much more frictionless checkout experience, which benefits both the shopper and the merchant.

But why stop there? Trustly’s latest service, In-Banner Pay N Play, takes things a step further and puts the streamlined payment experience into a banner, which can be distributed across the internet. While scrolling through your favourite fashion blog, when you see a banner advertisement for a beautiful pair of shoes, you can buy them by making the payment from directly within the banner (hosted by the merchant) and never even need to leave the page you were surfing. It’s an ecommerce experience that meets shoppers where they are, rather than redirecting them to a new page. It finally takes ecommerce into the world of impulse buying. 

When ecommerce merchants, like gaming operators, start to view payments not as an obstacle but as an opportunity to increase conversion and streamline the shopper’s journey, everybody wins.

About Adam Bowman

Adam serves as Trustly’s Director of Partner Sales, managing a team focused full-time on growing and managing Trustly’s pan-European Partner network. He joined Trustly following stints at PAY.ON and OmniPay. Adam grew up outside of New York, and is based in Budapest, Hungary.

About Trustly

Trustly is a Swedish fintech company that makes online banking payments fast, simple and secure. We cover 29 European countries and our payment solutions attract global merchants in ecommerce, travel, financial services and more. Trustly is a licensed Payment Institution under the supervision of the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority.